School of ... forced knowledge?

For this class we had the opportunity to watch School of Rock. I saw this movie a number of years ago and upon this re-watching of this movie, it was a very different experience for me. At the time the movie came out, I was finishing up my student teaching and classroom integration rotations and now having been a teacher and beginning to critically examine what happens in the classroom, School of Rock was very different experience the second time around. The Character that Jack Black plays is Dewey Finn and he scams his way into becoming a substitute teacher and takes on this group of kids and molds them into what he thinks they should be and how they should act especially in the area of music.

I am a little bit of a fan of Jack Black. I did enjoy his sketch comedy work in the Tenacious D shorts presented on the HBO channel as well as the DVD concert I had viewed. It gave credibility to Jack Black that he could actually play guitar and run around on stage. I found his way of presenting humor through music and little comedy bits rather funny. His choices for movie roles have not maintained that credibility. I think the presentation of this character is as close to what he used to play than anything that he has done since leaving the small screen.



So, coming back to the character of Dewey Finn, what kind of value judgments does he put on this classroom of 4th graders with the selection of music? There were two pieces that really struck me with this movie after having teaching experience. The first piece is the fact that this person is just able to go into the classroom with no prior teaching experience and work with these children. The second is how he asks for this student’s opinion about music and completely disregards what they think and feel about music.

His opinion of teaching is anyone can go in and teach as essentially a glorified baby-sitter. This opinion was addressed in a very little dialogue at the beginning of the film between Jack Black’s character and his friend, who Jack Black pretended to be to get the substitute teaching job. They go back and forth for a little bit around the issue of teacher training. However, when Jack Black's character actually experiences the classroom, he doesn't know what to do. This issues of what a teacher does is not heavily addressed beyond this point, but it does bring to light how the job of teaching is viewed by some people outside the field of education. This also leads into how Jack Black's character's makes decisions about the school day is laid out.

As the movie progresses, Dewey Finn figures out how to survive in the classroom. Upon hearing the student's music abilities and training, he gives the class a project for starting a class band to win the local battle of the bands competition. While in the midst of getting the class organized around the project, Dewey asks the student what music they listen to at home. One by one, Dewey shots down the opinions of the students.

This complete disregard for the opinions of the students was so uncalled for in my opinion. My first thought was about the number one rule for teachers with questions, "don't ask a question that you don't want an answer to." The next reaction was how unrealistic this was an this instance in the movie. To show the students that their opinions are not valid, especially within an area such as music, very much devalues who the students are and what they are going to possibly be willing to learn in the classroom. Personally, I do not listen to the artists that the students were listing off, but I would never say that my opinion of what I enjoy listening to is better is not a pedagogical strategy I would use in the classroom.This would be the case no matter what kind of school setting that one works in.

Basically, at this point in the movie, Dewey leverages his power as the teacher in the classroom and presents only the material that he thinks is important for the students to learn about. The message is forced throughout the rest of the movie that popular music is not that important and one needs to know the "greats" in order to create really good music. However, it is never established who determines who the "greats" are.

At this point, I will leave you with what I think a possible direction for bridging between the "greats" as established in this movie and pop music. The first video is a fan made video for an artist named Girl Talk. He produced mash-ups using pop music and classic rock. This video has synced up the source samples videos and aligned those videos to the specific parts used by Girl Talk. The second video is from a project called Thru-You. Much like Girl Talk, this is a mash-up style video, but the sourced videos are all amateur videos from YouTube. Both of these videos show how a collage of pre-recorded sound can be organized into something cohesive and familiar, but yet new at the same time.