Last year, education reformers had high hopes for a documentary
film called Waiting for “Superman.” With impeccable
liberal credentials — it was made by the same people behind Al
Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth — the film mercilessly
highlighted failures of the American public school system.
It also systematically demolished the argument that the
problem was underfunding and instead pointed the finger at
government bureaucracy and the control teachers’ unions have over
the system.
Hopes that the film would do Fahrenheit 9/11
numbers, though, were in vain. It pulled in about $6 million at the
box office. That’s good for a documentary, but far less than the
average horror flick or rom-com.
Then, shortly after the film’s release, the filmmakers got
a lesson in how little impact their documentary had. Its nominal
star, D.C.’s public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, was obliged
to step down. Her patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty, lost his bid for
re-election mainly because teachers unions spent massively to elect
his Democratic primary opponent, Vincent Gray.
The teachers unions did it solely to get the crusading
reformer Rhee fired and make an example of her to anyone else who
dared cross them. (Meanwhile, it took only two months for Gray’s
administration to become embroiled in a variety of corruption
scandals.)
But where thoughtful, sober-minded commentary failed,
savage mockery might succeed. Another film has hit the theaters and
this one may have a far more potent effect on the education
debate.
Bad
Teacher took in $32 million last weekend and
is certain to become a one of the summer’s biggest hits. That’s
very bad news for defenders of the educational status quo like
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. This
black comedy is the most scabrous portrayal of public education
ever put to celluloid.
Cameron Diaz stars as Elisabeth Halsey, a public middle
school teacher who literally does not care for students at all.
When we first see her, she’s just marking time until she can land a
rich husband and not have to work at all. When her fiancé calls off
their engagement she’s forced back into teaching and her dislike of
molding young minds curdles into outright loathing.
She doesn’t bother to teach the kids at all, regularly
shows up to class hungover, solicits bribes from parents in
exchange for good grades, embezzles money from school fundraisers
and tells the one go-getter in her class to give up her dreams of
becoming president in exchange for something more realistic, “like
a masseuse.”
“When I first started teaching, I thought
that I was doing it for all the right reasons: Shorter hours,
summers off, no accountability …” she explains.
The last part is key: No matter how big a train wreck
Halsey is, she is never in any danger of losing her job or even
being disciplined. When a rival teacher confronts the principal
with the (accurate) charge that Halsey is using drugs on school
property, he balks at probing the matter, fearful of what the
unions will do to him.
There is nothing that can be done about her, so the
authorities pretend not to notice. This, the film suggests, is
routine.
Later in the film (Spoiler alert!), Halsey does buckle
down and start teaching her students — but only because
she discovers that a big financial reward goes to the teacher whose
students do best on a statewide test and she wants the money to get
a boob job. (Merit pay, anyone?) Her methods include pelting her
students with basketballs until they give the correct
answers.
Even this turns out to be short-lived when she realizes
the students aren’t doing well enough, so she instead engages in an
elaborate scam to cheat the test. When her rival tries to expose
her fraud, Halsey has her — a teacher who actually does inspire
students — framed for drug possession and bounced out of the
school. And that’s the happy ending.
It is a tribute to the talents of the Diaz and the
filmmakers that they actually manage to get you rooting for this
horrible person. But the fact that the public is ready to accept
such a portrayal no doubt played a part as well.
Just a few years ago portraying a teacher in a major
studio film as anything other than an uplifting hero would have
been unthinkable. (One of Bad Teacher’s running gags is
that Halsey’s classes consist mainly of her showing such films like
Lean On Me or Dangerous Minds.) But the stench of
failure emanating from the nation’s public school system has become
impossible for even Hollywood liberals to ignore. Something has to
explain why the schools are so rotten.
Bad Teacher suggests the problem may
be the teachers themselves and the union-controlled system that
protects them at the expense of the students. Tens of millions of
people are likely to get that message this summer.
If I were American Federation of Teachers President Randi
Weingarten, I’d stay out of the multiplex for the next few
months.
