![]() Consequently, the only test he gives his students is the battle of the bands, a real-world event with real-world consequences. He wants to get what he loves into their hearts. He’s not content with merely getting what he knows into their heads. Every young humanities teacher ought to watch School of Rock and think, “Right, so do pretty much everything this guy does, but with Socrates and Augustine, not Styx and Aerosmith.”ĭewey loves rock and roll so much, he not only wants his students to know about it, he wants them to do it, to be it. School of Rock confidently and plausibly illustrates two principles upon which every effective education is predicated: first, that the teacher is the curriculum, and second, that good teachers not only pass on their knowledge but their priorities and affections. Say what you want, it’s actually far more realistic than most movies about school. They’re sort of impressed, and Dewey is sort of fired. Dewey’s rock class ultimately enters a local battle of the bands competition, which they lose, but all the parents are there to see it. All of this is done secretly, of course, because if parents knew their children were learning to do something other than get high standardized test scores, they’d be furious. Accordingly, he lectures them on rock history, plays them recordings of rock, personally performs rock for them, and shows them how to write and perform rock music on their own. Dewey does have an encyclopedic knowledge of rock and roll, though, and after discovering his students know nothing of rock, he is outraged, and decides he must teach them the one thing he actually knows-which is how to rock. Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, an unemployed guitarist who steals his roommate’s identity and begins teaching fourth grade in a snobby private school, despite the fact most of his students are a good deal smarter than he is. When it comes to education, one can never have too few theories or too many observations. When asked for his “theory of education,” though, the same fellow might offer nothing but hollow platitudes about “finding yourself.”ĭespite appearances, Richard Linklater’s School of Rock really isn’t a movie “about education.” Sure, there’s a teacher, a classroom, a class, a principal, and a series of highly effective lessons, but it’s no more a movie “about education” than The Shining is a movie “about the hospitality industry.” As Linklater never sets out to give us his theory of education, he’s able to make some compelling, common-sense observations about education. Similarly, if you get a fellow thinking about the piano lessons he took when he was younger, he’ll smile, tell of how he whined about practicing, reminisce about a recital in an old church that came off surprisingly well, and perhaps inadvertently make a few profound comments the importance of discipline and ceremony. ![]() ![]() The movies with the most to say about education aren’t about education per se. Likewise, most movies that are “about teachers” and reflect only the easiest and most fashionable beliefs about education. Movies about iconic lines of work-cops, soldiers, lawyers, doctors-don’t have a reputation for being very accurate. ![]()
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