Abstract
The chapter presents two very different definitions of education. One is Cremin’s comprehensive definition of education as the transfer or acquisition of knowledge, values, and skills. The other is Lamm’s description of three contradictory approaches to instruction: socialization, acculturation, or individuation. Both definitions help distinguish education movies from “coming of age” movies. The definitions are also used to analyze two films not usually considered “educational”:
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The Oscar-winning, boxing movie Million Dollar Baby, and
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Finding Forrester, the story of a young Black inner-city, basketball-playing, literary genius who transfers to a fancy Manhattan prep school. His recluse mentor helps him succeed in the White world, while the mentor takes some life lessons from his protégé.
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- 1.
In this I follow Altman’s (1984) semantic rather than syntactic definition of film genres. For me, it is a particular kind of process which defines education, not some list of characteristics by which to identify an education movie, like set in a school with a professional educator teaching specific curricular material.
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My synopsis of the movie is based on the one which appeared in Sight and Sound, 11(3), 2001, p. 50.
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The idea of innate talent will surface in sports films as being “a natural.” There, as here, the challenge for educators will be what role they have to play for advanced, precocious students. See the movie Race in Chap. 4. For a taste of the debate over whether there is such a thing as (natural) talent , see “The 10,000-Hour Rule ” in Gladwell (2008).
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These three strategies resonate with the three offered by Fenstermacher and Soltis (2009) in their Approaches to Teaching.
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On the other hand, Dewey abhorred conceptualizing tensions in education as irresolvable opposites. Thus the opening sentences of his Experience and Education (1938): “Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites. It is given to formulating its beliefs in terms of Either-Ors, between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.”
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Based on the synopsis in Sight and Sound 15(3), 2005, p. 67.
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In one fight, Maggie’s nose is broken. Dunn resets it, painfully, packing her nose with a powerful coagulant as the bell for the next round is about to ring. “Inhale!” he shouts at her to get the drug into her bloodstream. But she does not. He shouts again but she still does not inhale. Then Dunn realizes that due to Maggie’s humble origins, she does not know what the word “inhale” means. “Breathe in!” he shouts, and she does. A good teacher adapts the material to the level of the learners.
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After an interracial fight in training camp, the football coach in Remember the Titans reprimands the offenders in the following way: “You got anger. That’s good. You’re gonna need it, son. You got aggression. That’s even better. You’re gonna need that, too. But any six-year-old child can throw a fit. Football is about controlling that anger. Harnessing that aggression into a team effort to achieve perfection!”
- 9.
For a discussion of the problematic use of “growth” as a key goal of education in John Dewey’s thought, see pp. 26–27 in Noddings (2016).
References
Altman, R. (1984). A semantic/syntactic approach to film genre. Cinema Journal, 23(3), 6–17.
Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives: Cognitive domain. New York: Longman.
Bulman, R. (2005). Hollywood goes to high school. New York: Worth.
Cremin, L. (1970). American education: The colonial experience 1607–1783. New York: Harper.
Cremin, L. (1980). American education: The national experience 1783–1876. New York: Harper.
Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/ExperienceAndEducation
Fenstermacher, G., & Soltis, J. (2009). Approaches to teaching. New York: Teachers College Press.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success. New York: Little Brown.
Lamm, Z. (1976). Conflicting theories of instruction. Berkeley, CA: McCutchan.
Noddings, N. (2016). Philosophy of education. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Resnick, D. (2000). Film images of private schools. Journal of Educational Thought, 34(1), 73–91.
Rotenstreich, N. (1983). The right to educate. In S. Fox (Ed.), Philosophy for education (pp. 99–120). Jerusalem: Van Leer.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Frank Murray for his helpful comments on this chapter.
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Resnick, D. (2018). Defining “Education Movies” in Educational Terms. In: Representing Education in Film. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59929-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59929-2_2
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