Hat's Off: School Through A Lens

A look at portrayals of school life in cinema

SO WHAT is it then? A jungle? A meat factory? A playground? No, I'm not attempting to conduct an assessment of your current psychological state by holding up images of randomly arranged ink blots. Although, an ink stain is as good a place as any to start where the topic of education is concerned. With the exception of a few splotches from our parents, the vast majority of us begin our schooling as blank sheets of paper ready to be educated, influenced and drawn all over. That, and we've all had to deal with the dire ramifications of a burst pen in our school bag.  

Personal experiences of the education system vary greatly. Some individuals reach for the rose-tinted glasses while reminiscing of twelve times tables and requesting for permission to go to the toilet. The very phrase "An bhfuil cead agam dul amach go dtí an leithreas más é do thoil é" gets them all giddy with excitement. 

Alternatively, the concept of institutionalised learning can leave many others cold. The way we are treated and educated during our formative years has a colossal impact on the people we become later in life - long after 'big school' enters distant memory territory.

Either viewpoint can become more skewed or, indeed, gain clarity with the passing of time. For aeons, humans have made attempts at deconstructing the school environment - from academia to art. The latter has generally been more successful in this regard, particularly in the field of film. If a picture can paint a thousand words, surely a film is comparable to the back catalogue of an entire library.

In Pink Floyd's seminal 1982 film The Wall, the main protagonist's flashbacks to his childhood recall a conveyer belt view of the British education system. Here the children are homogeneous beings who are mocked and chastised should they dare display any artistic inclinations. They are simply "another brick in the wall". Their misery culminates in becoming overly familiar with an industrial-sized meat grinder. This damning indictment of schooling was largely influenced by Roger Waters' time in an English boarding school in the mid twentieth century. In the boy's fragile mind, it takes a frenzied riot to break down the wall of oppression created by a suffocating school system that forbids freedom of expression. The idea that curriculum and creativity are akin to oil and water has long been bandied about. This situation has certainly improved in schools in the last thirty years but 'art' in any form still stands on a much lower rung of the educational ladder than more traditional subjects such as maths and science.

Three years after the release of The Wall, John Hughes' The Breakfast Club redefined the genre of American high school based films. Five living, breathing stereotypes find themselves unexpectedly in each other's company in a Saturday session of detention. The group are labelled "a brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse" and, for all intents and purposes, their personalities are presumed to delve no deeper. Each student possesses rather misplaced preconceptions regarding their companions. As their day together unfolds they begin to talk and, more importantly, listen to each other. Although coming from five radically diverse social groupings, the gang come to release they are much more alike that previously assumed and bond over shared interests and fears.

The issue of cliques is also examined in Tina Fey's insightful dissection of social schooling, 2004's Mean Girls. The film's central character finds it difficult to adjust to life in an American high school following her family's move from the African bush. The previously home-schooled Cady isn't emotionally or mentally prepared for the unwritten social rules that she must quickly learn to abide by in the complex world of twentieth first century teenage girls. She soon discovers that life in second level education is not entirely unlike life in the jungle - in fact, it's a lot less straightforward. A hierarchy exists in both settings but psychological warfare is evidently more prevalent in the former. Over time, Cady is forced to become au fait with concepts such as 'social suicide', miscommunication, back-stabbing and, ultimately, reconciliation. The film's exploration of the pressures placed on adolescents, particularly young women, as a result of skewed societal norms is really quite fascinating.

In school, as in life, we often pre-judge our contemporaries, superiors and, indeed, subordinates. The favour is, more often than not, returned. Perhaps there are more lessons to be learned from our celluloid syllabus, and each other, than first impressions would lead us to believe. 


This article was also published in Student Independent News, NUI Galway's student newspaper.