Teacher Movies. Stop Them, Please.

THIS GUY HERE states the obvious: quit watching the stupid feel-good teacher movies they make every fucking year:

By focusing so narrowly on the inspirational teacher-overlooked student dynamic, the genre of movie teaching implicitly sends the message: All kids need is somebody to believe in them.  Think of Gabourey Sidibe’s character in Precious.  Or the “Dungeon Kids” in Take the Lead.  Almost every teacher movie follows the same dramatic arc: previously overlooked children have their potential unleashed only through the benevolent intervention of a charismatic adult.

This is largely hokum.  Kids need food, shelter, loving and stable families, health care, and a decent education in order to best fulfill their potential.  To pretend otherwise is to watch these movies as a sort of absolution of guilt, a vicarious purging of our responsibility to our fellow citizens and community members.  Poverty, crime, the collapse of family life, moral norms: one really good teacher— even one really good Harvard-educated teacher—can’t bear the burden of all of this.  As tempting as it is, you can’t expiate an entire community’s responsibility onto the people who teach your children (or your neighbors’ children) for most of the working day.         

Of course, yours truly already knows this.