Necessary myth of the movie teacher

Catholic New Times, Nov 16, 2003 by Michael Reist

As the industrial revolution spawned the pastoral myth as an antidote to the harsh realities of factory toil and urban stress, so did the advent of assembly line education in the twentieth century spawn its own sustaining myth--the myth of the great teacher. Hollywood is one of the places where our twentieth-century myths get told, and few have been better told than the myth of the great teacher. Beginning with the British Good Bye, Mr. Chips in 1939 and continuing to the just-released School of Rock teacher movies have become a perennial and life-affirming genre.

Myths, it must be remembered, are not lies. Myths are stories we tell to sustain ourselves. They are full of truth--truths about ourselves--about what we want to be true, what we feel could be true. Myths are stories of what's possible. The myth of the great teacher is a story we never tire of hearing because we need it to come true. We need to know that there are people who have achieved a greater degree of humanity than we have. We need to see the next step. Great teacher movies are seldom about smart teachers who know a lot (although they often happen to); they are about people who have become more human--and managed to do this in one of the most artificial and inhuman environments--the modern factory school.

Schools are places that depend upon conformity and adherence to rules (written and unwritten) of all kinds. What we hungered for in school, and what we continue to hunger for in our memory of it, is the existence of individuals who stayed human in the face of all the regimentation.

Like all great myths--the myth of the great teacher does, in fact, get incarnated in particular individuals. Most of us have known at least one good teacher. Some of us have known great teachers. People who have been exposed to great teachers will often become teachers. We imitate what we love. All teacher movies are love stories.

Teacher movies are about those teachers we had, think we had or would like to have had. Teacher movies are, indirectly, about the kind of people we would like to become. The pastoral myth of the industrial revolution was about the enduring purity of nature and how this natural world was still accessible to all. The humble shepherd and the weaver in her cottage became emblems of the natural person uncorrupted by technology and all of its alienating side-effects.

Similarly, the teacher who breaks away from institutional expectations, from automatic behaviour, the teacher who moves beyond the rigid dictates of his or her role and becomes an authentic person, is the modern model of the person uncorrupted by institutional life. This is the person who reminds us that apart from all our schooling, there are still such things as love of learning and love of young people.

It is interesting that almost all teacher movies are set in high school. Adolescence, it could be argued, is the most traumatic life passage. It is the time when our identity is most tenuous, most in flux. It is a time when we are desperate for role models who can show us how to be adults. At no other time is the good teacher more needed, the teacher who has achieved what the teenager is so desperately and clumsily searching for--selfhood.

An essential ingredient of the great teacher movie is the way in which the teacher is not just some fully-cooked guru. The movie teacher is still in process, still in flux. The great movie teacher is still trying to figure things out. This is usually portrayed as a conflict with the students. The teacher begins by refusing to give up his or her agenda in the face of rigid opposition. What causes the breakthrough every time is a change of heart in the teacher--a coming over to the side of the student.

Ivan Illich called students the most oppressed members of society. They have no power, no voice, no control over even the most mundane aspects of their lives at school. They must be silent, obey authority and not question the agenda. The great teacher is the one who sees this problem. The change of heart that occurs for the great teacher is the feeling of empathy. I know what it's like to be young. I know what it's like not to be listened to. I know what it's like to feel confused and powerless. And I am going to stay with you and love you and help you come over to the adult world. When a teacher has had this change of heart, the students intuitively know it and respond in kind--with love.

The supporting role in all great teacher movies is the school building itself, which is often taking one of two forms: a hopelessly dilapidated inner-city hell hole rotting from the outside in or an ivy-covered prep school rotting from the inside out. Trauma victims are mysteriously drawn to re-visit again and again the site of their traumatic experience. In the teacher movie, we get a chance to re-visit the locale of our trauma. This is where we experienced bullying, failure, social exclusion and all the other myriad tortures of the initiation ritual called school. But this time we know the story will have a happy ending. Someone will redeem the situation by his or her influence. Someone will redeem the experience of fear with love, the great teacher.