American Education in Popular Media : From the Blackboard to the Silver Screen

American Education in Popular Media explores how popular media has represented schooling in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Terzian and Ryan examine prevalent portrayals of students and professional educators while addressing contested purposes of schooling in American society. "Jocks, freaks, and nerds. Cheerleaders and homecoming queens. Buffoonish teachers and dictatorial principals. If you went to an American school, you remember all of these character types. But your memories are shaped by powerful media images, dating back at least a century. Sevan Terzian and Patrick Ryan have brought together the best recent scholarship on depictions of school in literature, film, television, and music. These fine essays shed new light on our shared educational past, even as they remind us how often our mass media have distorted it."--Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of Education and History, New York University, USA "Make some popcorn, find your favorite chair, and ease into this delightful collection of essays charting the historical evolution of popular portrayals of American schooling. Whether in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post or through the celluloid splendor of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, American mass media have both reflected and shaped popular understandings public education in American life. The essays in this volume critically engage that process through a variety of theoretical lenses."--Benjamin Justice, Associate Professor of Education and History, Rutgers University, USA "Readers beware. This book will sneak up on you. Collecting chapters by relentlessly innovative, imaginative, and insightful scholars, editors Sevan Terzian and Patrick Ryan, no slouches themselves on the intellectual leadership front, have produced a no-holds-barred historical examination of American education in popular media. It helps us remember and rethink - after all, we all went to school. And it exposes in provocative detail the durable imprint of media on the education of the public."--Donald Warren, Professor Emeritus, Education History and Policy, Indiana University, USA Front Matter....Pages i-xii Popular Media Representations of American Schooling from the Past....Pages 1-12 The College Man in Popular Fiction: American Magazines and the Vision of the Middle-Class Man, 1890–1915....Pages 13-36 “A Touch of Risquity”: Teachers, Perception, and Popular Culture in the Progressive Era....Pages 37-57 “Spirit of Education”: The Gendered Vision of Compulsory Schooling in Mass Magazine Art, 1908–1938....Pages 59-84 Chalk It up to Experience: The Sacrificial Image of the Teacher in Popular Media, 1945–1959....Pages 85-105 Fears on Film: Representations of Juvenile Delinquency in Educational Media in Mid-Twentieth-Century America....Pages 107-128 Students without a Cause: Blackboard Jungle, High School Movies, and High School Life....Pages 129-151 The Importance of Teaching Ernest: The Fool Goes Back to School in Television and Film Comedies in the Late Twentieth Century....Pages 153-173 Prosaic, Perfunctory Pedagogy: Representations of Social Studies Teachers and Teaching in 1970s and 1980s Movies....Pages 175-194 Looking at the Man in the Principal’s Office....Pages 195-217 Back Matter....Pages 219-229 American Education in Popular Media explores how popular media has represented schooling in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Terzian and Ryan examine prevalent portrayals of students and professional educators while addressing contested purposes of schooling in American society. American Education in Popular Media examines how popular media including mass magazines, radio, film, and television have represented schooling in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Historical essays explore prevalent portrayals of students and professional educators while addressing contested purposes of schooling in American society. Terzian and Ryan highlight the educative and normative dimensions of popular media in outlining roles for teachers, students, and administrators at educational institutions ranging from elementary schools to universities "American Education in Popular Media explores how popular media including mass magazines, radio, film, and television have represented schooling in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Terzian and Ryan examine prevalent portrayals of students and professional educators while addressing contested purposes of schooling in American society"-- Provided by publisher