Why I hate Boston Public (and keep watching it anyway)

Multicultural Education, Spring 2003 by Warren, John T

"Somewhere between home, heaven, and hell, there's high school."

- www.fox.com /bostonpublic

Introduction

(transgression doesn't make you radical)

I hate Boston Public.1

I feel better just saying that. I feel like I should hate Boston Public. As a teacher, I should look at this show and hate it more and more with each passing episode-I should find that the ways educators are presented undermine the educational enterprise. And I do. Yet I also find myself, every Monday night, sitting in front of the television waiting for eight o'clock, waiting for that introductory music, waiting for the latest installment of teacherly craziness.

I hate so many things about this show. I should write about each of these problematic situations:

A teacher sleeps with a student in the school (who is legal-she's 18, she is not his student, and they are both consenting adults) and is fired for his transgression. Additionally, another teacher who knew about the affair and failed to inform school officials is also fired. The logic of the administration is that this teacher failed to protect students who were being taken advantage of by another teacher.

Now, besides the problematic nature of dictating personal relationships and the implications of gender and how this mature and capable woman is presented as unable to negotiate her own body, the show makes matters worse by simultaneously running another storyline about a teacher who fires a gun in class, sending his students scrambling under desks for protection. This gun-carrying teacher, who also started a "suicide" club, who got a student working in a morgue (a student who later brought body parts to school), and who had two students solve an argument by having them fight, fist to fist, during class, has never been suspended, much less fired.

The politics of who can cross what line is not clear in this school. Oh, and the young 18-year-old woman who pursued and slept with the teacher was not only free from punishment of any kind, she was even given her own senior English class to teach, even though she lacks the proper credentials.

A student play deals with "homosexual" issues and the school protects the play and allows it to be produced. In the mix, a young student who we,the audience, has gotten to know is found kissing another boy. The next several episodes deal with this student's professed "bisexual" identity.

The problem, for me arises when this student, the one the producers/writers wanted to frame as queer, is the same student who locked his mother in the basement, chopped off her hand, tried to kill the assistant principal by dropping a planter on his head, and then is seen making moves on the principal's daughter, who is, of course, of another race - a racial crossing that creates yet another site of transgression. All these complications work to frame this queer body as abnormal, as a body that is psychologically unstable and potentially dangerous, as a body that seeks to cross lines without a purpose or sense of direction. And did I mention that the hand-less mother of this young man was given her own class at the school, also absent the proper credentials, and becomes known to the school as the "hook lady"-at least until the Vice Principal, whom she is dating, fires her for striking a student?

A white teacher decides to approach the "N-word" with his students. The Black principal threatens to fire him unless he stops, the students keep pushing him to continue the conversation about language and its impact, and the faculty all take sides.

The potential of such an issue in classrooms is exactly the kind of dialogue that educators should desire-the potential of talking about how language has affects that go beyond the specifics of the speaker-yet the show ends with the Black principal taking over the class, the white instructor denied access to the class conversation, and implications of power and cultural representation lost as the next episode moves on to the next crisis, ignoring that such a racially-charged conversation ever occurred.

Oh, and to get the class talking, the white instructor began the class by purchasing copies of a new book by Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Teachers who really care are apparently willing to pay $22.00 per copy for their class of 35 ($770.00 before tax).

Finally, a well-meaning lawyer (played by sexy Jeri Ryan) decides one day to be a teacher. She quits the law firm (at which she is a huge success), pops into the school, and is immediately given a classroom, even though she has no teaching experience or expertise. After the first several months, she is shown to be a dedicated and successful teacher. Students, faculty, and administration, after some initial friction, seem to feel she's now one of the group.

Message: anyone can be a teacher, anyone can be a success in education if they just want it, if they are willing to give up everything for their students.

I hate these messages-the ways teachers and students are portrayed. I hate that the images and ideals that are being foregrounded and promoted here only serve to make me wonder why anyone in their right mind would be a teacher. I hate that meaningful issues like sexuality, race, language, and potential sexual abuse are given lip service, but never critically engaged. I hate that the show tries to paint itself as radical, yet never really allows these moments to truly radicalize our, the viewers, conservative ideals.