Teaching as a Profession 101

The first major film to put a chirpy/quirky spin on the 'tough school' genre first defined by 1955's "Blackboard Jungle."

From a 1964 Bel Kaufman novella, born of her keen observations and notebooks while inside the New York City school system. First out on DVD in late 2007; WB's DVD transfer quality is surprisingly high.

Sandy Dennis slips easily into her role as naive break-in teacher at fictional Coolidge High. Coolidge's foremost problem is that it's more an impotent bureaucracy than any kind of institution of learning, with many of its teachers and administrators bunkered well inside silos built of complex, needless paperwork.

Along the way Dennis encounters a variety of now-predictable scenarios: student abused by parent, punk takes compassion as come-on, student crush on teacher (and vice-versa), student without parent or home. Dennis truly excels at her subtle revealing of the character's emotions as she navigates and eventually finds port within such choppy waters.

Perhaps the film's scenarios are no revelation today, but it surely jolted 1967 viewers reared amidst the cornfields of Iowa.

As a once NYC public school student, I know there is validity in the notions this film sets out to portray. Two-foot-wide red centerlines down each hall ensured only counter-clockwise flow of students. Classroom order was the only goal for many instructors; one Spanish teacher told endless macabre tales to mesmerize, skinning his neighbor's cats alive was but one of them. The Principal was unknown by sight; only his voice booming through the classroom speaker boxes was familiar. Truants went undetected for months until the paperwork caught up to them.

And there's a strong concordance between this film and many of my personal experiences while teaching within 'a high-need urban high school.'

These situations cannot be so much improved decades later.

Accordingly, I find this film is still well recommended immersion for those considering K-12 teaching as 'a profession.'

Ick. I would have thought that Hepburn's talent could revive any corpse of a film. This film proves otherwise. Incredibly dry and dull. The whole product, right down to the nauseating transitional melodies, reeks of Hallmark made-for-TV.

This is essentially a Hepburn showpiece and it's derived unchanged from the underlying stagecraft ... and everyone else on deck is pure summer stock. Hepburn arrives unwanted in a Welsh coal-mining town, struts around in Victorian garb and behaves willfully ... as Hepburn does do so well. Her aim is to impose a one-room schoolhouse on the miners and the town's overlords.

That said, there's just nothing much of interest for the viewer to see here. Kate back-sasses the local lawyer a wee bit. A young miner starts reading books ... and washing his hair ... and dressing in fine clothes. That sort of thing.

Good ol' feisty Kate comes up surprisingly dull here ... since she's bouncing her barbed script-lines off of a set of actors that are little more than cardboard cutouts. All her lines just drop dead on the stage floor with a thud.

Thirty-five minutes in, I gave it the gong and the red envelope back home.

RECOMMENDATION: Check out the 1945 version with Bette Davis. I haven't seen it yet, but it couldn't possibly be worse.

One of the many "tough school" films to fall from the loins of 1955's "Blackboard Jungle," "The Principal" follows Belushi and wingman Gossett as they go to the mat to save their out-of-control urban high school.

To add suspense, the duo never even bring knives to their gun fights.

Chong plays the teacher that might (or might not) have enough sense to ski-daddle to a good prep school - as well as Belushi's tepid love interest ... of sorts.

This script almost certainly took its basic inspiration from the true story of New Jersey principal Joe Clark, whose story is more directly told in "Lean on Me," a film that debuted two years after this.

Clark wielded a baseball bat, chained school doors shut and dosed out tough love - just as Bellushi does here - and Clark was taking much press just about the time this script would have been under development.

Unlike the far superior "Lean On Me" however, which is solidly built on storyline and drama, this film employs a heavy dose of violence & gore - and, unfortunately, an inflammatory racial perspective - to bait the viewer along.

Belushi, Chong and straight-up students all score serious bloody face-bashings. Belushi irrationally decides his High Noon should be held in a maze-like room, in which he scampers and cowers about for several minutes, not as a hero, but as a rat toting only a bat. Not inspiring in the least.

Belushi probably hoped this would be his career-shifting dramatic vehicle, however his performance is barely adequate. Gossett and Chong apparently saw the graffiti on the wall - and so here are working only at paycheck-speed.

The best delivery actually comes from Wright as the Machiavellian kid-hoodlum-capo. Wright deserved a ton of future work, based on what's seen here.

RECOMMENDATION: Really only for teacher-genre completists.

Certainly not among the cream of "teacher" films, a rather pretenious effort to cast Julia Roberts' character as a charismatic teacher. And it's an effort that falls way, way short.

Aside from Roberts' send-off of sunshine, smiles and song, none of the actions/decisions of the other major characters have actually been influenced by her message or presence. Not a soul alters his/her behavior in the least. It is as though she had never taught there at all.

Her students drop jaws, her superiors have fired eyes, but none are changed. As such, Roberts' smiley-faced exit is really more like sneaking out of town under cover of darkness.

The constrained role of 1950s women is accurately portrayed. The role of Wellesley women is not. Perhaps Wellesley was part finishing school, but constantly infusing students with exclusive obsession/compulsion to marry well? If so, then how did it produce graduates such as Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, Nan Keohane, Cokie Roberts and Diane Sawyer?

Just as Roberts states, these are the brightest women in the country, so how is the viewer to believe they are so easily seduced by the narrow role that larger American culture was defining for women at the time? Well, anyway, I sure didn't believe it. Even mid-Century, Wellesley was clearly graduating female leadership, not apron-strung Stepford wives.

The culture of Wellesley has been given a seriously bent "revisionist" treatment to suit the messages intended by the film, and it is hardly fair to Wellesley's reputation to do so.

The soundtrack is excellent. One highpoint is Tori Amos' homage to Jo Stafford's rendition of "You Belong To Me."

The lovely Wellesley campus is also starred well.

The film also deserves some credit for calling out educational administrative boondoggles such as master syllabi and lesson plans. Such devices do little more than oppress talented & visionary instructors, provide an elbow rest for mediocre teachers with little knowledge/message - and self-justify paper-pushing administrators who would like to believe they can "manage" effective teaching into a classroom.

RECOMMENDATION: Films such as "Emperor's Club," "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," and the 1939 (& fact-based) version of "Goodbye Mr. Chips" serve far, far better to exhibit the effect of influential teachers within elite private schools than this film does. See it ... but don't buy in.

Dim-witted, unemployed and obsessed with classic rock-n-roll, slacker (Jack Black) stumbles into a substitute slot at an elite elementary school and masterminds his version of 'teaching as a subversive activity.'

The viewer doesn't hear Alice Cooper's School's Out, but permanent recess is immediately declared and a full-time secret curriculum called "Rock Band" emerges. No small portion of camera time is devoted to solo stand-ups of Black using his psychotic/chaotic energy to infuse his students with the inspiration, individuality and goal-setting skills that, as educational versions of trained seals, they lack. In the process, slacker Black blossoms and finds his obsession can also become his calling.

The film is mildly entertaining feel-good candy with no greater purpose/message on deck. Predictable plot as high art; the viewer watches as principal & rich snotty parents, who apparently wear their knickers so tight that circulation to the brain is diminished, suddenly turn round to cheer their kids on in the finale.

At the end of the story, we are left with the impression that at least a couple of the kids have replaced serious educational work ethic and Ivy League ambition with the desire to just hang out and rock on. Not a message requiring further reinforcement among America's youth.

If the viewer wishes to rejoice in the notion that schooling should be a whole lot more like a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party, this film is the ticket.

The film might be considered as part of the argument against the decline of arts in K-12 and the need for more individualistic educational content in the style of Montessori, Suzuki and such, a position with which I do indeed concur. However, given that the kids were culled from 10,000 auditions & a variety of artistic incubators (they actually do play their own instruments and voices), there's apparently no cause for major alarm just yet.

RECOMMENDATION: One-half of a rental will suffice.

Play this in the faculty lounge and you'll see fisticuffs.

Fifty minutes of B&W 8mm-film documenting an "innovative" 1960s 5th grade NY teacher.

It's all-day-play, fun&run, 'dance-how-you-feel, read-what-you-fancy.' Floor-wigglin', you're a crocodile! Butcher-paper-wigglin', why it's the Mighty Mississipp ! Ditch the curriculum ! Instead let's mega-dose on Shakespearian theater all day. Look kids, you're real actors !

Top kids are assigned as "thoroughbreds," pulling the rest of the wagon-train out of the mud. See there - success for everyone!

Hmmph. This 'feel-good'-styled instructional philosophy is always endeared by those who haven't taught much -or at all. Kids are 'engaged and excited,' why it's just gotta be right, eh?

Yes, we know experiential, time-on-task, intrinsically-motivated learning can be very effective. And there IS much to admire here; you can tell since lesser teachers are envious (as they usually are).

But then there's the dark side. How much WASN'T learned during 30-minutes-o'-wigglin' frittered away on a few factoids? Teach children this way all day, that all-of-life is fun-fun-fun? Poor preparation for life indeed.

And not a minute showing in-depth learning of OBJECTIVE skills/subjects -math, grammar, science, dance STEPS. Because there's correct and incorrect, 'WORK till you get-it-right ,' to all that. And guess what, getting it right is what college entrance exams are all about.

And if YOUR children were thoroughbreds, would you want their K-12 years spent flogging dead horses - or being properly prepared to do as well as they possibly can for their OWN college/career?

Sorry teach, effective learning cannot consistently flow from never-ending ChuckECheese parties. It also requires pushing students' intellectual muscles PAST where they want to go -it makes their minds stronger.

After fifty years of hindsight and decades of kids, what did this teacher deliver? All the film-makers can pony-up are one pastor, one ER doctor, an unheard-of actress. And a NYC public teacher -who quit. Pretty unremarkable, given this was out of highly-affluent Westchester County.

The real lesson from this film? When it comes to teaching like this, it may feel good, but don't do it.

Sure, as a teacher, I am always going to be touched by quality films regarding instructors who truly change the lives of their students (eg, "Stand and Deliver," "Emperor's Club"). But this Hallmark-for-TV production is little more than cliches and wishful make-me-feel-good thinking.

James Earl Jones is a widower (with endless financial resources) who decides to open a small study room filled with books down in the ghetto. Amazingly kids just start drifting in begging for his books and help, as if the school libraries and public libraries just didn't exist.

Jones plays the stoic trooper when all the predictable dark clouds begin to gather - in the form of resentful street thugs, hostile community activists and bureaucratic principals.

Somehow the viewer is supposed to be impressed when Jones removes the security gates from his windows and the place is robbed that same night. And be impressed when he tools downtown in his $90,000 Mercedes every morning until he gets jacked at gunpoint, then trots right down to the used car lot to buy himself a $500 beater for the commute.

Rather than impress, however, Jones just comes off the naive idiot. Without Jones' talent it would have played out on screen even uglier.

Eventually Jones starts arguing that some students should have all the time they want to complete the SAT - which would neutralize it as any fair/equitable measure of student accomplishment. Someone should tell Jones the kids he's helping won't be able to move up in life through a good college placement - if there is no fair way to distinguish what they've achieved.

That's when I lunged for the eject button.

RECOMMENDATION: There's plenty of good films about teaching that will inspire and inform; this DVD is better used as a coffee table coaster.

A very interesting twist on the "good teacher tackles tough urban school" genre.

A twenty-something inner-city public school teacher (Gosling) once held a wisp of passion and purpose toward touching the lives of those around him, but he lacked any talent for it, and now the pilot light's barely a-flicker.

His soul - hollowed out by his own vacuous clubbing, uninspiring classroom lectures and failing personal relationships - ends up in the "half-nelson" grip of crack/coke addiction. He can barely remember to shave, much less to look over next week's prescribed curriculum.

Almost too far gone down the rabbit hole, Gosling's last nail-hold on redemption is his attempt to steer one of his young students (Epps) away from a wrong turn into the neighborhood of drugs. But it is street-wise-for-her-age Epps who is in far better condition to be behind the wheel.

Gosling's dramatic performance earned an Oscar nod - and discovery Epps delivers as well. Gosling's slo-mo tailspin is accentuated by the director's low-budget, indy-style realism - uneven zooming/focusing, real-time pacing and jittery hand-held cameras.

While the pace is slow, the characters eventually reveal and the film ultimately rewards.

RECOMMENDATION: Worthy viewing time. An interesting and insightful look at what classroom inspiration can mean - in a world that mostly lives far and away from the idealistic ivy-covered halls of "Dead Poet's Society." Recommended.

Eight 1980s middle-class Brit boys prep for entrance exams at Oxford under two instructors of different approach.

Half of the film is devoted to the actors debating whether learning is a game by which a person gets ahead in life (and so the system should be gamed) or if learning deserves serious pursuit since it serves in other, more meaningful ways.

It's not in the least a trivial question, given the former stance is how most college students perceive the matter today, but also not a new or insightful question either.

All eight students are eventually accepted to Oxford, no matter which side of the argument they sided in their quest. Further, no teacher actually teaches in the film; in every scene the students have already fully prepared the lesson. These two facts alone evidence that the film takes no position whatsoever in the debate it supposedly considers.

And that's not surprising, since the film's REAL intent is to use this altruistic poser as a framework for the other half of the film - to illustrate the issues that face four males, each at different tragic stages in the development of their homosexual persona and to put our sympathies with them.

THAT theme is, of course, the REAL reason why the play (from which this film is derived) was lavished with five Tony awards on Broadway.

There are decent performances, as well as slivers of interesting intellectual debate in the dialogue, that float the film along as it barely treads water toward its conclusion that being that the eight's chosen lots in life, beyond Oxford, turn out to be fairly random, unaccomplished (for Oxford grads)... and without any influence whatsoever by their prep experience.

And that's hardly an endorsement for either method of teaching - or any other message about teaching this film pretends to portray.

Not recommended.

Thumbs way down. On the eject button, that is, which I pressed barely half-way into this snail-paced mockumentary regarding the trials and tribulations of teachers trapped inside (a typically) dysfunctional K-12 system.

As someone who has a great deal of teaching experience in both good and bad environs, this film seemed utterly pointless to me. It does nothing more than introduce the viewer to a few of the basic dysfunctional scenarios unfortunately too often found in K-12 these days.

There's nothing here that most people would not already know or guess about what teachers typically face in such schools, especially if they've viewed any of the other mainstream "teacher" films that abound.

RECOMMENDATION: An uninformative and unengaging film.

The "socio-economic underdog triumphs over all" plotline always pops hankies and cheers in the mass-market audience. But that doesn't mean that "Rocky" was a genuine work of art. Or this film either.

The author of the fictional novel on which this film is based shamelessly collected and exaggerated every last ghetto stereotype known to humankind and then rolled them up into a single character - HIV positive, welfare check subsistence, welfare fraud, family violence every three minutes, rape by father, rape by MOTHER, steals a bucket of fried chicken to eat, pig's feet & collards for dinner, unwed teen mother of two. Throw in a deformed baby for good measure. A sixteen-year-old so illiterate she shown being unable to read the word "at." But a mere sprinkle of alternative school holy-water and she's cranking out journal entries and poetry daily.

This level of hyperbole insults any rational viewer. Precious Jones is no more an accurate caricature of economic hardship than was Scarlett O'Hara. There's so much embedded tear-jerking fiction here, I'm surprised there isn't some kind of charity solicitation at the end.

The real reason this film's been cresting Hollywood all-year-long is because it rode hard to town on the massive Oprah marketing machine and bankroll.

I'll admit this film triggered flashbacks of many truly sad memories from the years I taught in a "high-need" urban high school. But those memories were of real people and so sadness for them was deserved. Their true stories earned a right to be told, though they were not; this fictional hogwash BOUGHT its right to be told, though it shouldn't have been told at all.

Hey Oprah, next time spend a few bucks getting Pat Conroy's non-fiction "Conrack" out on DVD.

RECOMMENDATION: Proclaim yourself a non-lemming. Recognize this film for the politically correct sop-job that it is. Take a pass.

An outstanding piece of cinema, the best out of Britain this year. It's little wonder why this out-of-nowhere work took 3 Oscar nods, 1 BAFTA + 7 nods, 2 Sundance awards and about two dozen other higher-tier nods as well.

Storyline from Oxford-bred British journalist Lynn Barber's autobiography [see URL bit.ly/LynnBarber].

PLOTLINE: There's quite a romance and a coming-of-age here, as 1962 sixteen-ish schoolgirl Mulligan swoons over the older, suave & witty Sarsgaard. She gets swept away from the boredom of Latin lessons and prep school - and swept into the world of culture, arts, jazz and nightlife of which she's forever dreamt. Older, wiser viewers have learned the hard way life can't be so sweet so easily - and so they patiently wait for Mulligan to learn that hard lesson too.

Dialogue's a big plus; viewers repeatedly encounter razor-sharp wit regarding the true worth of education. And through its heady romance and incising dialogue, the film proves education's worth in a way viewers will absolutely take to heart.

Newbie Mulligan's good, but she ain't nowhere near the Audrey Hepburn some are calling her. Sarsgaard's spot-on, the role was made for him.

The biggest Music Award fail of the year is this film's hidden gem: Beth Rowley swayin' and vampin' up in sequins her self-penned torch song "You've Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger." The film-makers went way too light on showcasing it, yet even so, Rowley's voice and vibe hijacks the entire glittery nightclub set piece and scene right out from under Mulligan and Sarsgaard's tablecloth, with the viewer simply aching for more of Rowley and her sultry delivery. Sony execs wised up retro; it plays heavy behind the theatrical trailer.

RECOMMENDATION: Everyone else raved it, you'll likely enjoy it too.