American Education in Popular Media

Amy C. Martinelli, University of Florida, USAAndrew L. Grunzke, Mercer University, USADaniel A. Clark, Indiana State University, USADaniel Perlstein, University of California, Berkeley, USAHeather A. Weaver, University of Sydney, AustraliaKate Rousmaniere, Miami University, USAMichelle M. K. Morgan, Missouri State University, USARobert L. Dahlgren, State University of New York at Fredonia, USALeah Faw, University of California, Berkeley, USA

"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

• 1. Popular Media Representations of American Schooling from the Past; Sevan G. Terzian and Patrick A. Ryan 2. The College Man in Popular Fiction: American Magazines and the Vision of the Middle-Class Man, 1890-1915; Daniel A. Clark 3. "A Touch of Risquity": Teachers, Perception, and Popular Culture in the Progressive Era; Michelle Morgan 4. "Spirit of Education": The Gendered Vision of Compulsory Schooling in Mass Magazine Art, 1908-1938; Heather A. Weaver 5. Chalk It Up To Experience: The Sacrificial Image of the Teacher in Popular Media, 1945-1959; Patrick A. Ryan 6. Fears on Film: Representations of Juvenile Delinquency in Educational Media in Mid-Twentieth Century America; Amy Martinelli 7. Students Without a Cause: Blackboard Jungle, High School Movies, and High School Life; Daniel Perlstein and Leah Faw 8. The Importance of Teaching Ernest: The Fool Goes Back to School in Television and Film Comedies in the Late Twentieth Century; Andrew L. Grunzke 9. Prosaic, Perfunctory Pedagogy: Representations of Social Studies Teachers and Teaching in 1970s and 1980s Movies; Robert L. Dahlgren 10. Looking at the Man in the Principal's Office; Kate Rousmaniere