(sung to tune of “Girls on Film” by Duran Duran)

When you consider how much time so many of us spend in school, that would be about one quarter of our lives if you continue to college, there really aren’t that many portrayals of teachers in film.  I’m not talking about television or streaming, like Abbott Elementary or Welcome Back, Kotter.  I mean films.

Quickly though, I’d like to pay homage to the wonderful Abbott Elementary, which is one of the best sitcoms to be released in years, in my opinion.

But I’d like to dedicate this chapter to those movies that have substantive portrayals of teachers, trying to avoid just brief cameos.

To Sir, With Love

I’ll start in the 1960’s when some of the classic teacher portrayals came about.  To Sir With Love is an outstanding film featuring one of the greatest actors (Sidney Poitier) and a timelessly classic song , titled the same as the movie and sung by LuLu.  In a nutshell, a highly qualified but somewhat controversial teacher is hired to teach the “juvenile delinquents” at an urban high school in London.

 First of all, what is considered “delinquent” from 1967 is, in many cases, laughable to us today, considering the horrors that some students and schools have had to face in the land our gun-worshipping culture.  Nevertheless, this teacher, they all call him “Sir,” is probably the first black person any of the students have ever seen, and certainly he is the first one hired at the school.  Yet, Poitier as Sir cracks the code for getting these miscreants to trust and respect him, and they all turn out to be better people from the experience.

 It seems that the real turning point in the film occurs when SIR allows himself to appear “hip” by dancing with the students at the school dance.  Although I like the film, this is not a blessed moment in film history for me.  I far prefer SIR’s lessons about manners—and I do think that many teachers have a need to teach manners in contemporary society, since it seems to be only sporadically taught by parents or other elders of our culture in America.

“Sir” teaching The Delinquents table manners

The Children’s Hour

About six years earlier, in 1961, a much quieter and more somber film was released, but I venture a guess that it was not seen by too many people.  The Children’s Hour, with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine, is a heartbreaking film, based on the Lillian Hellman play from the McCarthy era in the 50’s.

The premise here is that two young, female education majors who were college roommates and best friends open a private girls’ school.  The students are boarded at the facility, and the parents are somewhat involved when they come to once a month school shows or displays or such….or if a girl gets into any trouble.  Otherwise, the parents and other relatives take a distant backseat and proceed with their busy (privileged) lives.

One night, a perennially rotten kid who constantly tries to frame everyone in the school for wrongdoings that she herself always commits, overhears the two teachers in a personal conversation wherein the MacLaine character gets upset that her friend is engaged.  From that point, the girl formulates a story that the two women are romantically involved, and she tells her grandmother so.

From this point, the film becomes so tragic that it’s truly hard to discuss.  But it is a poignant and historic film, if you can withstand the final torture of the ending. How are these teachers portrayed?  Dedicated, wise, competent, caring, and nobody’s fools. The villain in the story is the young girl.  I don’t think this movie would go over very big now.  Americans don’t have a palate for seeing children as villains too much, except maybe in horror films. (try watching The Bad Seed!)  We much more often see the teachers portrayed as villains, or irresponsible, or just dull….or lord help us—perverted and rapey.    (I do not mean to say that there aren’t teachers who are villainous, irresponsible, dull, or rapey.  I’m only saying that those teachers are definitely represented in film.)

Bueller….Bueller?

I’ll head to the comedies now, and my favorite genre.  Ben Stein left an indelible image as a monumentally boring history teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.   I am pretty sure these four minutes of film made this guy famous forever.  And…it is a completely accurate portrayal of some history or economics teachers who think that things like the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 is the stuff of high entertainment. Well at least they pretend to.  Even though I enjoy history now, I did have teachers just like that who bored me witless.

Mr. Economics Teacher:  And now who can tell us the year the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed?  Anyone…..anyone….?

(Pan class full of students drooling, sleeping, staring blankly..)

   CLASSIC!!

Fast Times with Mr. Hand

What about Mr. Hand?  Can anyone name the movie?  Don’t look.

When the funniest Sean Penn character, Jeff Spicolli, orders a pizza during Mr. Hand’s history class in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, we applaud this teacher for his no bullshit approach.  He, in fact, forces Mr. Spicolli to share the whole pie with the class.  Also, the Biology teacher in Fast Times , Mr.  Vargas, played by the hilarious Vincent Schiavelli, is so dedicated to his subject that he brings his students to see a cadaver in the morgue of a hospital.  As his students are all passing out or throwing up around him, he proudly, happily discusses the atrophy of the musculature on the corpse while holding a disused human heart in his gloved hand. Lastly, there is the funny and understanding Debate Teacher in the great movie Clueless.  The characters like him, participate positively in class, and even matchmake him with a nerdy science teacher.   I feel that these male high school teachers are much beloved characters in culture.  Good!

On the other hand, Freedom Writers, Bad Teacher, and Dangerous Minds are not comedies, nor are the teachers favored or heroic.   They are lady teachers:  One smokes pot in the parking lot before heading into her classes, the other takes a male student out on a date as a “prize,” and frankly I can’t remember Freedom Writers.  You would think I could since I love teaching writing.  I really do wish the lady teachers would be more funny, memorable, or even heroic. John Belushi once famously stated that women aren’t funny. I don’t agree–there are hundreds of great examples. They just haven’t played the teachers (that I am aware of).

Some Other Ones

I like Election and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie but they both show teachers as extremely flawed.  The first one features a highly inappropriate relationship between the Reese Witherspoon character and one of her male teachers, and the second one shows what can happen when a teacher tries to influence students’ lives too much, as I have spoken about before.  Having seen this movie when I was quite young, it probably instigated my theories about taking special care not to abuse authority or influence in the classroom.

Miss Jean Brodie (played by the wonderful, then young Maggie Smith, with a  thick Scottish brogue) :   Gayels!  Gayels!  (translate to Girls! Girls!)  Aye… am een me Prrrrime! Aye… am deedicated to you in my Prrrrime.   Give me a gayel at an imprrrressionable age, and she is my-en forrr life!

(The gayels gaze at her dreamily, inspired.)

As for School of Rock and Dead Poet’s, all I can say is :  Meh.  I don’t like or dislike them.  They are just there—both visually memorable:  one playing the Les Paul guitar with Pete Townsend-like enthusiasm and the other standing on the desk ripping up literature books.    I guess Stand and Deliver inspired math teachers everywhere and showed that even gang members in East LA can excel in Calculus.

Here’s to the teachers in film:  Cops and Detectives outnumber you by the millions on celluloid, but you folks have left your little indelible mark somehow. Kudos for that.

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