Teaching has rarely been reflected well in movies or television. Serious movies/ television dramas set at colleges almost have it right — but the action is almost invariably centered on the students from a students’ POV and not the teachers, so you rarely see things from an administrative/teaching staff POV. Typically, the younger you get with the grade levels, the more unreal the action is and the behavior of the students.
I ALWAYS have a big laugh/grimace at how early childhood development is portrayed – most movies like “Daddy Day Care”, “Kindergarten Cop”, just have it wrong, wrong, wrong! They always seem to show students as basically well-adjusted but often misguided middle class kids with no personal, behavioral or social problems to overcome that impact the learning environment.
Take the movie “Overboard” with Goldie Hawn, f’rinstance. I like the movie, but the scene with Goldie Hawn telling off the schoolteacher for not noticing her boys had poison oak after they cut up in her classroom all day was only HALF right, and misses the point. (Frankly it was poorly written, cheap-cop out; no child on the planet will sit up in class all day suffering from itchy poison oak and not complain to the teacher, and no right-thinking teacher would allow a kid to suffer with poison oak without medical treatment.) The teacher should have said: “Mrs. Proffitt, with all due respect, didn’t you notice all four of your sons had poison oak and needed medical attention BEFORE you sent them to school this morning?” – which would have reinforced the teacher’s (correct) point that MOST of the cutting up in school stemmed from poor parenting and disciplinary changes that needed to be made/reinforced at home.
Oh, and that rant against tests pigeonholing children was just stupid. Are there really people who feel that way?
) The list of laws they violated with that brewery in the garage, selling it door to door, etc. makes me cringe. Not to mention that their sanitation techniques were a bit…iffy.