Customer Reviews

The Hollywood Curriculum (Counterpoints)

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This book offers a shallow and cursory examination of teachers in Hollywood, but it would better serve as an outline for further discussion. I was disappointed at how little was actually "said" in this book, and the author is very repetitive.

This for-academics-only book has a fantastic concept but doesn't deliver. The idea of covering all the Hollywood movies made about teaching is great, but that's not what the author does. She focuses on six or seven of the same films over and over again while discussing academic theory.

The few films she focuses on range from popular (Stand and Deliver) to somewhat obscure (Teachers) to outdated (Blackboard Jungle, To Sir With Love). She treats them all like they were in the theater yesterday instead of putting them into social or historical context. The author also discusses Charlie Chaplin(?) while ignoring some of the greatest movies on the subject ever made. She spends a little extra time on a movie called Conrack (?) and analyzes The Miracle Worker, which is a very odd choice to represent how Hollywood treats teachers.

The author claims to have watched all the films but she completely misses the point on some of them. For example, she only mentions Goodbye Mr. Chips in one sentence in the book even though it was made into two films (she doesn't say which one she saw) and one of the few that won or was nominated for Academy Awards. Those should have had an entire chapter written about them! (This would be like writing a book on sports films and only mentioning Rocky in one sentence). Then she claims the point of the movie was "the lesson of friendship that his boys teach" the educator. Umm...no, that wasn't the point of the films nor the book.

She goes into detail about that well-known musical about education The King and I (!?!) in three or four spots but doesn't even mention The Paper Chase, one of the great modern films about a teacher's impact on students and the education process. Based on her thinking the musical version of Lost Horizon should be analyzed because it had a song-and-dance guy teaching a class of students with the song "Question Me An Answer."

With such odd selections and obvious omissions, you have to wonder if she really watched these all the way through or just skimmed them? Or maybe she only selected films that support her points instead of truly doing an overview as the title suggests.

She tosses in a bunch of theoretical academic mumbo-jumbo that makes the "book" actually just a very long research paper (about 100 pages with lots of empty space). Someone needs to cover this theme adequately in a book but this isn't it. In the end this has a few points that are valid but they could have been made in a very short journal article. It's hard to believe this book is coming out with a 2010 second edition because this is terrible.

The Hollywood Curriculum presents a good overview of the topic of teachers in movies. This book also makes some good points about how film is not only a reflection of society but can also be a shaper of society. Those who like Vygotsky would agree.

However, readers must keep in mind that the author has a distinct agenda, a "critical" or Marxist philosophy. As usual when encountering such views, I'm never sure what is recommended (work as a group and overthrow something?) and, personally, I'm not ready to pick up a pitchfork and join a crowd to destroy the school system, then, probably, the American government. I don't, therefore, think that rebellious, misbehaving students are right (another point by the author); as an educator, I believe there are complex reasons for rebellion and there are other ways to get such students' attention, even in a rule-by-the-rich, consumer society.