College Teacher Movie Nonsense

Posted by Naomi Rockler-Gladen Feb 9, 2007

According to movies, there are only two kinds of teachers. First, there are the teachers who give mind-numbing lectures and are completely out of touch with their students. Think Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (Bueller? Bueller? Trickle down economics?)

At the other extreme are the fabulous teachers who transforms the lives of all of their students, usually against great obstacles. And there's nothing in between. Either you're a fabulous teacher, or you're a lousy one. High expectations, don't you think?

Think Mona Lisa Smile, where Julia Roberts liberates the minds of her Wellesley girls with the magic of art history. Or Good Will Hunting, where the math professor and psychology professor save the brilliant but troubled young genius. Or for the high school version, there's the transformative poetry professor in Dead Poet's Society (Robin Williams seems well suited for this godlike teacher role.) And of course there's Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, who transforms the lives of inner city high school students in a variation of the troubling white-person-saves-the-day story.

Another example: The Mirror has Two Faces. This movie is interesting because it has a "good" professor and a "bad" professor side by side. Jeff Bridges plays a mind-numbing Columbia math professor who never talks to his students. In contrast, Barbra Streisand portrays an idealized English teacher who holds magically engaging class discussions.

Of course, there's not a direct correlation between how teachers are portrayed in movies and how they are perceived in real life. But there's something going on here. Students hold teachers to very high standards and expect something akin to this Hollywood magic. As part of the sense of entitlement that many (not all, but many) students have these days, they feel entitled to teachers who are entertaining, transformative, and magical. Some students have little sense that they themselves are largely responsible for making their own educations meaningful and transformative!

Just a thought. And on a related note, why are transformative movie professors always at big name institutions? Columbia? MIT? Wellesley? Don't they have Hollywood-quality teachers at state schools?

Please join me for more random thoughts as I blog about my last semester as a professor. And hey, please join the discussion!