My original intention was to destroy the genre by just snarking all over crap like Freedom Writers. But along the way, two things happened: first, I never actually got around to watching Freedom Writers (I just couldn't muster the strength to sit through it); and second, I ran across movies that while flawed were great looks at my profession. For instance, the first movie I watched--Teachers--had a kind of weak plot but priceless moments I still think about. And Clerks isn't exactly a teacher movie but I think we can adopt it (same also for two flicks I didn't look at but highly recommend: Office Space and Waiting ...).
I also cannot say enough good things about Chalk, which is so dead on that it's not even funny (in a manner of speaking). I remember this film being blurbed in Entertainment Weekly a couple of months before its release and rushing to the Netflix queue the second it came out on DVD. Not only did it not disappoint, it was better than I thought it would be, and I said so in the entry. Oh, an awesome moment regarding Chalk? David Gonzales, the executive producer left a nice comment on that post. That was really cool.
But the film that I got the most out of in this brief exploration of the teacher movie is what happens to already be my favorite film of all time: The Breakfast Club. I don't think I'd intended to use it for Teacher Movie Theater, to be honest--I was just watching it one day and came to the realization that this would work well for my blog. That's because as I was watching, I had a revelation that, oddly, took me nearly 15 years and probably nearly 100 viewings to get to: I saw the Shermer High School Saturday from Mr. Vernon's point of view:
Carl and Vernon have a pretty standard conversation about "kids these days" and how they don't respect anything. Carl calls bullshit on that sentiment, saying that Vernon has changed just as much as he thinks the kids have. There's not much more than that, but I think you can start to sympathize with him a little here because Carl is actually a former student of his; not only that, but there's a picture of him in the beginning of the movie as one of Shermer High School's Men of the Year. Not that a janitor is a terrible job, but it all symbolizes the fact that Vernon, on some level feels he's failed the students he's supposed to watch over.
Now, I'm not writing this post to quote myself. I mean, I'm not that much of a whore. But I wanted to bring up what I had said because I still see something in the point I made a little more than four years ago whenever I have to read the latest post about how the school system is a failure or how teachers are abusing children or whatever sheet they pulled off of Teacher Basher Mad Libs that particular day. Because while we all know that Mr. Richard Vernon is a prick--that's his role in The Breakfast Club--we also get enough of an inkling that there's more to him to not completely hate him. And if you translate that to real life, you come to what should be an easy realization (but often in punditry and blogging is not): people are deeper than what is shown on screen.
And knowing those people challenges us to think beyond that surface and present a counter-argument to Teacher Basher Mad Libs that's not simply a defensive reaction. Personally, I think that if you can get that perspective, and if you also can laugh at yourself a little, you walk away with a little more than if you were just fired up and spouted off some vitriol in response. And trust me, I've done that plenty of times over the years and while it kind of feels good at first there are times when I have regretted what I said (especially in comments--but I actually never delete my comments because if I said it, I said it). I try to correct my behavior later, possibly by being a little more balanced (though it doesn't always work). But I don't think I've ever stopped laughing at myself.
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