How The Media/Popular Culture Portrays Schools - Some Examples

MOVIES
Urban: Sister Act 2: The setting is generic inner city, bordering on cliché, with mainly minority families. The community is exemplified by one parent who would prefer her child focus on academics just to make money and not follow her musical dreams. The teachers, being nuns, lack the creativity or edge to get through the students and need to bring in someone who can think outside the box. The students seem to follow the idea of urban high school kids, who don’t show respect, or lack the proper motivation but, deep down have that spark just needs to be Whoopi’d out of them. (Link)

Suburban: The Breakfast Club: What we see of the community is in the form of the main cast’s parents who are the adult stereotypes of what these kids could become and who expect them to follow in that direction. The teachers are similarly sparse, exemplified if the form of the principal who is a generic simple-minded authoritarian who just wants well-behaved and adjusted students. The students that we see are revealed to be more than stereotypes. They are individuals who are forced to struggle with other people’s ideas of who they are and what they should be. (Link)

Rural: Napoleon Dynamite: The community is modern and yet oddly backwards – so typically “rural.” The lone Hispanic family appears to stand out amidst the whiteness of everyone else in the movie. Teachers are merely a background presence, figures that need to be there but don’t play an important role. For the students, conforming to what would be considered “suburban” standards (the geeks, the loners, the popular kids) is prominent over anything that would be considered stereotypically rural. Conforming to these standards appears to be the norm, but at its heart the movie celebrates oddness. (Link)

TELEVISION
Urban: Teachers: A British “dramedy” about teachers at a school in the English city of Bristol. The community is seen as a mix of working and middle class. The school that is the setting is often seen falling apart with the students rearranging the name on the sign into various profane anagrams, or even stealing the letters entirely. The teachers are young and just as immature as some of the students, trying to hide their dedication to their job under a mask of “cool.” The students (as well as the teachers) are diverse, and are portrayed as either bright and exasperated with the teachers or difficult and the cause of much stress to the teachers who struggle to get through to them. (Link)

Suburban: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Obviously, the supernatural element may raise a few eyebrows, but the “high school is hell” theme of the first three seasons is rather appropriate. The community is typical suburban with a dark (very dark!) underbelly – yet it is oblivious to the very real problems faced by the kids. It is a great metaphor for parents who just want their kids to get through school, not caring about the social, interpersonal and academic problems they may face. The teachers are either a faceless mass that the students must put up with (and are horrified to learn are, in fact, real people when, in one episode, adults start acting like teenagers) or fuzzy liberals (which, we’re led to believe, leads to you getting eaten) or strict authoritarians (ditto). Similar to The Breakfast Club, the students are seen as more than just stereotypes who must juggle academic success with difficult relationships, growing pangs and, in this case, the undead. (Link)

Rural: South Park: A very odd choice but I find it is a great depiction of a not particularly diverse rural community (and what other show could address it such as way as to have the only African-America student be called “Token”?). Parents and teachers are shown as backwards and bizarre and prone to being overly reactionary. The students, while obviously unrealistically precocious and knowledgeable (it is a cartoon after all), are generally more open-minded and open to challenge than they are given credit for. They suffer the same foibles as adults yet see things with more clarity. The episodes about the racist town flag and the gay scoutmaster are wonderful examples of this. (Link)

SONGS
Urban: Eminem’s ‘The Way I Am’ briefly discusses and criticizes the shock of the media at shootings at suburban schools by stating that such violence has been plaguing urban schools for years and has been ignored until it happened to middle-class white children. Communities come across as overwhelmed by problems that everyone else in America has only just begun to pay any real attention to. Reading between the lines, students and teachers have been similarly ignored by society, cast to its fringes. (Link)

Suburban: Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall, Part II’ is a song that springs to mind when considering generic rigid schooling and the attempts to turn children into functioning members of society, but really creating mindless automatons to push buttons in the working world. Teachers are seen as authoritarians, while students are rebelling against such an institution (although a large choir singing the chorus does not exactly strike me as them being individuals, but this is just a personal complaint). (Link)

Rural: Jeannie C. Riley’s ‘Harper Valley PTA’ is the most prominent song about rural schools that I can think of. The community portrayed is stereotypically rural – overly moralistic yet deeply hypocritical. Teachers do not play a role in the song (although one can imagine that they may fall under the same category as the important members of the community), while it appears as though students are left in the background as the PTA clearly cares more about issues of morality than the education of children. (Link)

NEWS
Urban: A recent report about a Brooklyn elementary school student Kemoy Gourzang who found, and returned, a wallet containing $500 struck me as a great example. The fact that what would normally be a small, insignificant story made the news runs counter to the theme of the piece. The teachers interviewed were proud, to be sure, but amazed that the boy acted the way that he did. His actions ring out because they clash with the stereotype of Brooklyn as an urban community. Other students, the boy said, would have kept the money. Of course, this is the typical bravado of a ten year olds that would be found in any school. (Link)

Suburban: An article from the Manhattan Institute discusses the problems facing suburban schools and how they are just as bad as, if not worse than, those faced in urban schools. The communities are considered safer and “more wholesome” and are clinging onto an illusion about what goes on within the confines of their schools. Teachers don’t factor into the article suggesting that they are as oblivious as the community or are unable to do anything. Students are presented as, quite frankly, debauched, drug-abusing and no different to their peers at urban high schools. (Link)

Rural: Over the past few years, when one hears of rural schools one thinks of the debate over teaching evolution in the classroom. The communities are often portrayed as backwards, clinging to religion and resistant to commonly accepted scientific ideas. In many of these cases, the teachers are seen as opposed to such measures and become martyrs to the cause of rationalism. In all of this, the students are almost always cast to the side of the debate as if their education isn’t as important as the issues being debated. (Link) (Link) (Link)