Movies vs. reality

Every August, thousands of the freshest-faced college graduates in the country begin their first real teaching jobs. Their faces glow with an idealism that 12 weeks of student teaching couldn't destroy. They sit smugly through the opening week's meetings, looking at the weary veterans with looks that say, "You are old and tired and out of ideas, and you no longer know how to relate to today's youth, and you are practically irrelevant. It is I who will light the raging fire of eagerness and unquenchable curiosity in today's misunderstood youth. It is I, a 22-year-old wunderkind, who will inspire the students to crave knowledge, to become lifelong learners, to want to change the world. So please, let's say we end these useless meetings, show me to my new classroom, then get out of the way while I show you how to get 150 kids on the fast track for Harvard."

These opening week meetings end Friday, of course. Monday the kids come. And by the next Friday these formerly fresh-faced newbies head to the nearest happy hour only after drying their tears and updating their resumes, which they will use to try to procure one of those soul-crushing cubicle gigs they looked at with so much disdain while discussing what's wrong with education over a four-pack of wine coolers in the dorm for four years.

The score of this annual first-week contest never changes: America's Angst-Ridden High School Kids - 1, Idealistic New Teachers - 0.

I don't blame the new teachers or the college education programs for this short-lived idealism. I blame Hollywood. Nothing is more responsible for creating unrealistic expectations about teaching in America's high schools than the movie business. You've seen these movies and you know how they usually end. An entire high school or even community rises up to support the maligned, misunderstood teacher, and they carry him off into the sunset – or at least the library – on their shoulders, with huzzahs resounding through the halls and palm leaves being waved by the adoring disciples.

As my mom used to say when I'd try to put something over on her, "Soooooooome shit."

Let me explain the difference between life in the movies and life in a real high school. You've probably been manipulated to tears by that saccharine shitfest called Mr. Holland's Opus, or, as it's called in my living room, Mr. Holland's A Puss. After pissing and moaning for 30 years because he is a music teacher instead of a real composer, he is sent off into retirement by an auditorium full of appreciative, tearful students. That's a movie, folks. In real life, the tribute to poor old Mr. Holland would amount to this student monologue next September: "Hey, whatever happened to that miserable old bastard who taught music? He retired? 'Bout fucking time. All he ever did was bitch and whine about being here. Hey, did you see Ashley Conner's tits this year? Them hogans grew two sizes this summer ..." And Mr. Holland, instead of living out his remaining years relishing the memory of the heartwarming sendoff, will sit at his kitchen table and wonder why his beloved goddamn union didn't fight for a better pension system.

Then there's Dead Poet's Society, in which Robin Williams plays an madly inspirational teacher who adheres to the educational philosophy of: "It's all about me, really." You've seen it, right? After encouraging a student to disobey the expressed wishes of his rich, powerful father, said student kills self after said father gets pretty damn pissed that said son, who is discovering not only his acting chops but his heretofore latent homosexuality, acted in a play. Williams' character, the beloved Mr. Keating, is railroaded out of the school as a scapegoat for the kid's death. As a final tribute to the individualism that Mr. Rebel instilled in his students, most of them defiantly stand on their desks during the middle of class while a droopy-eyed Mr. Keating leaves the school in shame. That's the movies, folks. In real life, these kids would have turned on Keating with relish, not only drumming him off of the campus but probably suing him for the mental anguish he caused them. (I'm talking about the anguish caused by the boy's suicide and not the anguish caused by Robin Williams' consistently unfunny stand-up routines, in which shouting nonsensical inanities are deemed comedy genius because he says – nay, SHOUTS – them in five alternating voices. "Oh, there's the gay guy accent ... and there's the French one ... here comes the redneck, followed by the Pakistani and bringing up the rear is John Wayne, which can be referenced by a full eight percent of the population. The man's a comedic Einstein, and it's all improvised!" C'mon, don't life. You've either said it or heard it.)

Do you remember Lean on Me, the true story (uh huh) starring Morgan Freeman as a bat-wielding principal who turns around a troubled New Jersey school through the threat of violence? At the end of the movie, a mob of angry townspeople (hey, these movies are nothing but one big cliche, so I get to use some in this week's column) show up at the jail to demand his release and reinstatement as principal. Keep in mind that this loose cannon actually chained the school's fire doors, which was what got his batshit crazy ass locked up in the first place. Yet the parents demanded his return to their school, which is very believable, as all parents want their children to attend a school in which the principal is a threat to bash in a child's head for excessive tardiness to class. That's the movies, folks. In real life, some kid would have wrapped that Louisville Slugger around Mr. Principal's ego-bloated noggin by third period, and even the loopiest parents would have demanded that nutcase's ouster after his first day of policing the school Barry Bonds style, not to mention his efforts to turn the high school into a re-creation of a Great White concert.

Finally, we have The Breakfast Club. Remember the scene where the thug stereotype played by Judd Nelson (page 137 in the Encyclopedia of the Mystifyingly Untalented Yet Somewhat Successful Actors) crawls up through the ceiling tiles to escape confinement, only to come crashing through the ceiling a few doors down? Well, that's the movies folks. In real life ... wait, that same damn thing happened in our school just last week. A teacher walked into a ladies' staff restroom after school and caught a kid banging his girlfriend (or at least some skanky chick who doesn't mind getting nailed in a bathroom). The teacher went to the intercom to call for a vice-principal, and the girl ran out and got away, but the boy stayed in the restroom. By the time the V.P. got downstairs and looked in the restroom, the kid was gone. As they searched the halls for the classy restroom rutter, they heard a crash from a nearby room, and sure enough the bozo had fallen through the ceiling.

So to all you wannabe teachers who think that life in a high school will be like they portray it in the movies, well, take heed. Even one of the greatest high school movies of all time, Mark Harmon's Summer School, is a cart of crap. In the movies, the shorts-wearing, surfer dude slacker teacher has to teach summer school, and he somehow inspires his brain-dead charges to want to learn. In real life, this can happen, too. That's not the part of the movie that's fake. There's another part of the plotline that is just too far-fetched to believe. In real life, no one wants to bang Kirstie Alley that bad.

Ned Bitters teaches high school and dreams of one day seeing one of his former students on stage at a strip club. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.