Film Class

We're joined this week by Lucy, Sean's colleague and KS4 lead for English. Listen we discuss the brilliance and terror of Imelda Staunton's Umbridge, confess our Hufflepuff shame, and discuss what makes Harry such a brilliant teacher. 

In this week's discussion of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, we are joined by self-professed gifologist (and staunch Gryffindor) Ele! We discuss Mad Eye's terrifying lessons, Dumbledore's decision to share politically sensitive information with students and, most importantly of all, the terrible hair decisions made by almost every adolescent character in this film.

We also touch on the fact this is the most superficially 'diverse' Harry Potter film due to the inclusion of Cho Chang and the Patil twins, and the gender stereotyping rampant amongst the pupils of Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. 

Education legend Ros Wilson joins us this week to discuss the controversial third Harry Potter novel and film. We meet several new teachers: Lupin (clearly the best Defence Against the Darks Arts teacher in the series), Trelawney (who Sean suggests is misunderstood...) and Hagrid, who, bless him, Ros decides just isn't a teacher. Mischief managed! 

This week we are lucky enough to be enjoyed by BBC Bitesize's own Mr Firth! He shares his analogy that the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart (Kenneth Branagh) typifies the toxic behaviours of your average EduTwitter celebrity. We discuss our Hogwarts houses (with Sean trying to overcome his Hufflepuff shame and overcompensating in the processs...) and the school's appalling safeguarding. Keeping an educational establishment open despite the manifest danger of a deadly hidden menace no-one knows how to mitigate or solve!? Thank god this kind of thing only happens in fiction...

In the first of our festive series on the Harry Potter films, we talk all things Hogwarts! Shain is a staunch member of Team Snape and his no nonsense approach to the classroom, while Sean is all for McGonagall's mastery of warm/strict. We discuss which subjects we'd like to teach and how they correlate to real life curricula, Dumbledore as an ideal headmaster (at least at this point...), and think about Hogwarts as an elitist space (albeit one we really, really wanted to go as kids). Mischief managed! 

We were both surprised by how much we enjoyed Freedom Writers, starring Hilary Swank as real-life English high school teacher Erin Gruwell. Although the film is much more nuanced than the similar Dangerous Minds, it does also make some very unrealistic expectations of what makes an excellent teacher. (No, we won't be taking on third jobs and buying hundreds of dollars worth of books ourselves).

We also talk the pitfalls of condescending pupils with 'relevant' lessons on rap or football, the big no-no of asking pupils to represent their race, and the depressingly common phenomenon of unsupportive male partners. 

In this special Halloween episode, we dissect the 90s teen cult classic The Faculty, directed by Robert Rodriguez. Featuring a panoply of stars (including Famke Janssen, Josh Hartnett, Clea Duvall, Piper Laurie, Salma Hayek, Elijah Wood and -bizarrely- Usher!). We recognise it as one of the first films in the 90s teen pop culture boom to frame high school as a terrible experience, especially in shitty football towns in the middle of nowhere. Our discussion leads us to think about the Columbine massacre, the need for a race-based version of the Bechdel test, and the forgotten struggles of dial up internet. We also discuss the absolutely bizarre way teens take drugs in this film which needs to be seen to be believed. Give us a follow and a like/review if you enjoy it! 

The film that made Matt Damon and Ben Affleck famous got us both feeling reflective: what is the purpose of education? Furthermore, what is the purpose of LIFE ITSELF (yes, we got that reflective). Robin Williams gives ones of his most poignant performances that led us to reflect on the important of pastoral care (while also breaking our OFSTED based ranking system). We also talk about the literal cost of education: Minnie Driver's character calculates her brain is worth $250,000; Sean does the same calculation with surprising results! 

We discuss Maïmuona Doucouré's controversial debut feature, Cuties (or Mignonnes), which led to calls to cancel Netflix after an uproar over marketing many felt was inappropriate and sexualised the child actors involved. We think about what a teacher could do in a situation like the one depicted; Amy, a Senegalese Muslim girl now living in the suburbs or Paris, falls in with the 'Cuties', a daring tween dance troupe. This led us to talking about TikTok, Cardi B's WAP, safeguarding, puberty, the dangers of the internet and the difficulties of parenting in 2020. 

We both LOVED this adaptation of the Willy Russell play. Rita is a working class Liverpudlian who decides she wants a literature degree through the Open University; Frank is a jaded university lecturer who can't stand his middle class students. The film made us think more about the purpose of education, and the ways gender and class intersect in the university.