The first TV show that I think of as depicting inner city schools is "Boston Public". The individual episodes often played right into the stereotypes of city schools, with the show's tag line of "Every day is a fight". I remember at least one episode where a student was arrested and handcuffed by the police right in the school. It depicted the 'best teachers' as the ones who got emotionally involved in their students' lives, rather than those who actually taught! In addition, it depicted the students as ignorant and the teachers as rude (one episode had a history teacher tell the students to clean up the parking lot since they would be janitors anyway because they didn't know about the history lesson). Overall, there was nothing about this show that tried to get at the root of the challenges city schools face.
A more current TV show, "The Wire", also depicted inner city life and schools in Baltimore. The school aspects may have been more realistic as one of the show's writers, Ed Burns taught seventh grade in a Baltimore public school. While the show has been lauded as a more realistic depiction of city life, it still focuses on some 'stereotypical' aspects of the inner city with the first season revolving around a drug ring.
In general, considering that some people get most of their impressions of city life from the media, TV (like movies) is not depicting an all around view of the situation. However, just like the movies, TV shows are intended to entertain and make money, and are fictional, so what else can we expect?
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4 comments:
I remember Boston Public. The creators of that show took every stereotype possible and dragged it out to the extreme. Good example. I didn't even think to tie it into my media examples.
If it isn't stereotypical enough to keep it interesting, they won't make money. Unfortunately I think portraying a true Urban school is too difficult especially because there is such a range of Urban schools and the students that are in them. Obviously we didn't see the "bad" schools this week. I was pretty impressed with the one's we did!
The media has always portrayed a negative view of the urban city life. It is ashamed because it is showing our students that it is alright to be emotionally distraught and handcuffed and a superhero teacher will come and save the day. Sometimes it does not work like that. Stereotypes are horrible, but this is how society thinks. We need to show the world, the truth and stop exaggerating these lies of the urban setting.
I don't like how it is done either the media just likes to exploit anyone and everyone to make a quick buck. But, when they do it to children and adolescents it down right wrong. They are the only ones that are getting hurt by all this stereo typing be done. Think about it if all you see are the very bad things depicts urban schools why would you want to go teach in those types of schools and now the children suffer because there are much fewer teachers who want to be in urban schools teaching there. It would be much better if they did would show the truth I agree.
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