Cultural Images of Teachers

Our group looked at how teachers are portrayed in Hollywood via movies about or involving teachers.  Interestingly enough, the overall image in the movies is quite different from what the other two groups saw in Society and Marketing.  In the movies, as depicted below by my specific collage of movies about teachers, teachers more often teach high school and are male.  They are depicted as tough, dedicated, and inspirational on the serious end.  In the comedies, they are often depicted as silly and easily fooled.

This is very different from how teachers are depicted in Society and Marketing, as summarized by the other two groups.  In both of those groups, teachers mostly teach elementary school, are young, white and female.  They are also not "tough" as I suppose there aren't as many dangerous and troubled children in elementary school as there are in high school. 

I wasn't surprised to see that depiction in Marketing because students, well really parents, usually buy things for teachers during elementary school much more often than during high school.  So, the market is more geared towards elementary school teachers, who probably are more often young and female.  However, the depiction in Society through Google searches also seemed to focus on young, white, female elementary school teachers.  I'm sorry to see that society in general holds on to this stereotype and surprised that it is so different from Hollywood's version. 

I think that Hollywood's version of teachers is so different because they want to entertain and, in order to do that, they have to have conflict.  I suppose a movie about conflict in elementary school isn't as interesting to movie-goers as is a troubled, gang-ridden high school.  Of course, there is the exception in "Kindergarten Cop" which, as a comedy, depicts a male uncomfortable (and rather bumbling) in the stereotypical female role of a Kindergarten teacher.