Monday, August 25, 2008

Worst and Best Teachers in Movies

Worst

Best

5 comments:

philip said...

Best: Laurence Fishburn as Morpheus in The Matrix. Just enough coddling and just enough prodding to help Neo reach his full potential. :)

Worst: Laurence Fishburn as Morpheus in the next two movies...sellout.

Anonymous said...

I guess they mean the best classroom teacher in a formal learning institution... or something.

My vote is Kurtz (Marlon Brando) in Apocalypse Now teaching Willard (Sheen). It is concrete experiential learning, with the option of apprenticeship, in a social constructivist community context that challenges the hegemony of formal institutions, their destructive power over the individuals and communities they come into contact with, and allows Willard the open-ended opportunities for revelatory and emancipatory experience. While at the same time offering a reflective critique of lived experience with himself as the model, in the context of colonialist romantic ideals.

[pre-coffee thoughts, anyway]

Richard said...

Louanne Johnson (Michelle Pfeiffer) in Dangerous Minds.

I have to disagree with this choice. As an ex-Marine, she uses discipline to get the students attention and then saves them through her get tough approach. Not that there is anything implicitly wrong with this, but I would hope there is more to teaching inner city children than this. It follows the uncritical deification of Joe Clark in Lean on Me -- following conservative discourses of schools at jungles that need only toughness and discipline to succeed. Maybe if teachers actually believe in their students, have high expectations for them, give them curriculum that relates to their lives and cares about them in genuine ways, we could start to address all of the barriers outside school. But movies like this tend to ignore all of those issues and place the blame for failure squarely on the should of children. I also finding it troublig that there are so many films like this in which a white savior comes in to save minority children. I'm much more inspired by the true story of Escalante in Stand and Deliver.

Anonymous said...

Richard said:
I also finding it troubling that there are so many films like this in which a white savior comes in to save minority children. I'm much more inspired by the true story of Escalante in Stand and Deliver.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Does it diminish what Mrs. Johnson accomplished b/c she had less melatonin than her students?

Unknown said...

Mel Gibson in "The Man Without a Face" Because of his way to approach the problems and explain them in a way that some get the clear message in his mind.
and
worst is Miss Trunchbull in 'Matilda' because she always screw the students with her huge body and torture them in nail box, Even we can find best teacher as miss honey in the same movie and i love this movie.

Nuaman
Social Media Marketing - 595300629.251244