How Education Is Represented In The Media

The media undoubtedly has a large impact on reinforcing people’s stereotypes, if not shaping them, regarding education in various urban, suburban, and rural school settings. We can generalize some of the stereotypes specific to the different school environments and try to find some examples of actual films, songs, TV shows, and news stories that perpetuate these stereotypes.

Suburban Schools:

Suburban schools are usually portrayed as a places comprised of many different cliques, composed of varying groups of the “in” and the “out kids”. More often than not real issues that pertain to all schools such as violence or teen pregnancy are completely omitted and serious issues such as underage drinking and drug use are glorified.

Urban Schools:

Urban schools are indefinitely portrayed as failing schools comprised of bad teachers and worse students. Compared to suburban school life, which is presented as being entirely devoid of serious violence, urban school life is represented as revolving around it. Students must cope with broken homes and the constant threat of violence. Interestingly in a suburban paradigm drug use might be represented as the carefree passing of time with friends smoking marijuana. In contradiction to this an urban environmental representation might show the “streets” side covering the dealers and gangs that procure and sell the drugs.


Rural Schools:

Depending on how “rural” we want to get, a one room school house in the mountains, or a small town in the middle of Pennsylvania, revolving around a sports program, we find some variations on the portrayal of education in this type of setting. A general stereotype that is applied to anything rural is a romanticizing of life as being at is most simple. The inhabitants of the rural community are simple people who are shown to have a greater understanding or appreciation of life because of their simple existence.

Examples

Suburban:

Film: Mean Girls

Fits perfectly into the mold of suburban school life where the most popular girls rule the school.

Music: “Rip her to shreds”

This is taken from the Mean Girls soundtrack. The song future supports the plot of the movie about a caddy girl and the call from the less popular girl to take her down.

Television: 90210

This again follows the mold showing the interactions of different groups of students. The major concerns of the students center on sex and fitting in.

News: Suburban Schools Reject Metal Detectors

This story tells about the resistance of parents and students to install metal detectors in their Washington DC school. This is very interesting because here is something that doesn’t fit the Hollywood version of suburban school life, needing metal detectors.

Urban:

Film: Dangerous Minds

This film tells the story of an outsider coming in to reach the students. It is perfectly aligned with the stereotypical urban school myth.

Music: “Gangsta’s Paradise”

This song is taken from the dangerous minds soundtrack. The song supports the idea of how central violence and gangs are to the lives of students in an urban school.

News: FIFTY YEARS LATER
Desegregating urban schools

This article talks about all the problems that are associated with urban schools. The article talks about an effort to study the lives of the students outside of school to account for their poor performance. It does seem as if blame is being placed on the students rather then considering the educational practices in relation to the needs of the students.

Rural:

Film: Songcatcher

I have not seen this film but from reading the synopsis it appears to enforce the stereotype of the simple life. The musicologist is able to find preserved folk songs, handed down over time, which we could possibly say are symbols that represent the larger theme of life in its simpler, better form as having been preserved.

Music: “Down in a willow garden”

This song is taken from the “Songcatcher” soundtrack. Fitting with the simple life is stereotypically a closeness and inevitably, a greater understanding and appreciation for nature.

News: Rural Schools

This article outlines how public policy is wrong in the eyes of the author when it dictates closing smaller rural schools and consolidating them into larger schools.