How Teachers Are Portrayed in the Movies

Ever wonder why the U.S. lags so far behind other countries in terms of education? Why we have lower math and science scores, fewer graduates who can read and write well? Why students who are placed into honors programs in high school then flunk out of universities? The answer is quite clear: movies and television.

In television's Lost, the nerdy Ben who was in charge of The Others becomes, in an alternate life, a teacher. Mr. Bates is a power-hungry typical nerd in Freaky Friday. In Clueless, Mr. Hall and Miss Geist are so stupid and nerdy that they can't even find each other in the same school without help from the students. And Ben Stein's teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off is the boring and nerdy example.

So what would have happened if Judging Amy's Amy were a teacher? Chief Brody in Jaws? Howard Beale in Network?

In real life, teachers are obviously well-educated. They are required to have a Master's degree, usually also a Doctorate. That ends up being equivalent to the amount of time doctors spend in college and medical school. After that, K-12 teachers must continue their education. States and districts have different requirements, but the typical requirement is about one class each year. Upon retirement, it is likely that a teacher would have earned that Doctorate three times over. And that doesn't even include all the in-service days that teachers have to attend. Even though they have received so many years of education, teachers are usually portrayed as nerds in movies and television.

Teachers are such nerds that anyone can do their job, as well, according to movies and television. Kindergarten Cop's Detective Kimble is told he's a great teacher just by shaking a kid to get him to stop eating other people's lunches and using a whistle to keep the students in line. Similarly, Dewey Finn from School of Rock steps into a friend's job and gets results out of the students that no regular, nerdy teacher could.

Is it perhaps because of this huge amount of education that teachers are nerds in movies and television? It doesn't seem so. How are doctors typically portrayed? How are lawyers typically portrayed?

The reason movies and television treat teachers as nerds must be because of the attitude of most Americans toward teachers and education in general. The portrayal is accepted because it is already believed, just as the rich kid must be the football star and the journalist must be obnoxious.

You can tell the culture affects the image of the nerdy teacher by looking at how teachers are treated in other countries. Many U.S. teachers, for instance, jump at the chance to teach in Japan, partly due to the fact that teachers are revered there because of their knowledge and education.

Ok, so maybe the teacher-as-nerd depiction isn't the cause of everything from lower scores to global warming. But it does tell us something interesting about our thinking regarding education.