The Hollywood Curriculum: Teachers in the Movies

This book analyzes 116 films distributed throughout the United States over nearly 75 years, to construct a theory, grounded in cultural studies and critical pedagogy, of curriculum in the movies. The portrayal of teachers in popular motion pictures is based on individual, rather than collective, action and relies on codes established by stock characters and predictable plots, precluding meaningful struggle. These conventions ensure the ultimate outcome of the screen narratives and almost always leave the educational institutions – which represent the larger status quo – intact and powerful. In addition to an expanded list of films informing the analysis, this revised edition features two new chapters: one on gay teachers in recent films and another on principals in the movies. To interrogate «the Hollywood curriculum» is to ask what it means as a culture to be responsive to films at both social and personal levels, and to engage these films as both entertaining and potentially transforming.