The Hollywood Curriculum

"The Hollywood Curriculum is a sophisticated and thoughtful look at the portrayal of teachers in film and television in an exceptionally accessible way. Dalton draws on some of the most relevant and exciting theory to evaluate teacher films and demonstrates a masterful insight into the worlds of education and film studies. This book is a must-read for those interested in exploring the intersection of teaching, curriculum, film/television, and society, and is an outstanding contribution to the literature."-Alan S. Marcus, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Connecticut; Author of Celluloid Blackboard: Teaching History with Film and Teaching History with Film: Strategies for Secondary Social Studies --Book Jacket.

Kevin Costner: America's Teacher examines the role of Costner in educational settings domestically and abroad. Costner’s career over the past 35 years has seen ups and downs: his movies grossed 2 billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide and he has he won/been nominated for several Academy Awards but he also experienced critical and box office failures. Through the films in his oeuvre, Costner has been teaching audiences around the world about the United States--its history, people and culture. Some viewers and scholars recognize this as positive, others as problematic. This book serves as a place for teachers and scholars to explore ways in which Costner may be tapped for research and teaching purposes at all levels of education. It is organized around three large themes: Costner’s baseball films and their connection to Americana; Costner’s films through the more critical lenses of gender and new western scholarship; and Costner’s teaching of teachers, the pedagogical possibilities of his work.

Education in Popular Culture explores what makes schools, colleges, teachers and students an enduring focus for a wide range of contemporary media. What is it about the school experience that makes us wish to relive it again and again? The book provides an overview of education as it is represented in popular culture, together with a framework through which educators can interpret these representations in relation to their own professional values and development. The analyses are contextualised within contemporary, historical and ideological frameworks, and make connections between popular representations and professional and political discourses about education. Through its examination of film, television, popular lyrics and fiction, this book tackles educational themes that recur in popular culture, and demonstrates how they intersect with debates concerning teacher performance, the curriculum and young people’s behaviour and morality. Chapters explore how experiences of education are both reflected and constructed in ways that sometimes reinforce official and professional educational perspectives, and sometimes resist and oppose them. Education in Popular Culture will stimulate critical reflection on the popular myths and professional discourses that surround teachers and teaching. It will serve to deepen analyses of teaching and learning and their associated institutional and societal contexts in a creative and challenging way.

This volume examines the interface between the teachings of art and the art of teaching, and asserts the centrality of aesthetics for rethinking education. Many of the essays in this collection claim a direct connection between critical thinking, democratic dissensus, and anti-racist pedagogy with aesthetic experiences. They argue that aesthetics should be reconceptualized less as mere art appreciation or the cultivation of aesthetic judgment of taste, and more with the affective disruptions, phenomenological experiences, and the democratic politics of learning, thinking, and teaching. The first set of essays in the volume examines the unique pedagogies of the various arts including literature, poetry, film, and music. The second set addresses questions concerning the art of pedagogy and the relationship between aesthetic experience and teaching and learning. Demonstrating the flexibility and diversity of aesthetic expressions and experiences in education, the book deals with issues such as the connections between racism and affect, curatorship and teaching, aesthetic experience and the common, and studying and poetics. The book explores these topics through a variety of theoretical and philosophical lenses including contemporary post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, critical theory, and pragmatism.

Teachers, Teaching, and Media: Original Essays about Educators in Popular Culture is notable for its scope of previously underexamined genres and for the range of topical perspectives written in an accessible style but anchored in serious scholarship.

Debunking myths in U.S. history : will the real story of Pocahontas please rise? / Nancy Sardone -- The new world, gender roles, and issues of point-of-view / Anne Perry -- Pocahontas saves John Smith / Kristen Wobler -- Myth busters : the Salem witch trials / Brianna Scatorchia and Nancy Sardone -- The various roles of African Americans in the American Revolution / Paul J. Yoder, Katrina Yoder, and Aaron P. Johnson -- Contributions of African Americans during the Revolutionary War / Ryan Warriner -- John Henry vs. the machine / Kristal Curry -- Years a slave: using film to explore freedom and (in)humanity / Gregory and Amy Samuels -- Did he really create the Great Lakes? Tall tales and their place in history / Megan Cullen -- Portrayals of American slavery in film : a study of Gone with the wind, Roots, and Unchained memories / Dennis Urban -- Women and the wild, wild west / James Nunez -- The ox bow incident : a historiographical lesson in vigilantism and due process / Michael Lovorn -- Suffragettes parade for the vote / Michele Celani and Elizabeth Blackmon -- The iron jawed angels and the fight for women's suffrage / Wendy Rouse -- The economic and social effects of the Dust Bowl / Rebecca Bidwell -- "The greater good" : using Flags of our fathers for critical thinking and historical inquiry / Mark Percy -- Rosa's refusal : serendipity or sustained activism? / Eric Groce, Theresa Redmond, and Robin Groce -- Chicano power and youth resistance : walking out for civil rights / Tim Monreal -- Amish neighbors / Ronald Morris -- Exploring the lives of others in the social studies classroom : where dissent and technology intersect in contemporary America / Rory P. Tannebaum.

The twelve essays in A Critical Companion to Mel Gibson offer various interpretations of Mel Gibson’s work, treating this prolific but controversial figure not only as a filmmaker but as a historian, religious thinker, and social philosopher. From The Man Without a Face and Braveheart to The Passion of the Christ, Apocalypto, and Hacksaw Ridge, this interdisciplinary collection mines Gibson’s life and oeuvre for insight into existential problems, Aristotelian virtues, the politics of film, interreligious dialogue, adaptation issues, and much more.

In this fascinating collection, some of the foremost historians of education—including Barbara Beatty, Larry Cuban, Linda Eisenmann, Yoon Pak, John Rury, and Jonathan Zimmerman—debunk commonly held myths about American schooling. Each short, readable chapter focuses on one myth, explaining what the real history is and how it helped shape education today. Contributors take on a host of tall tales, including the supposed agrarian origins of summer vacation; exaggerated stories of declining student behavior and academic performance; persistent claims that some people are born to be teachers; idealistic notions that the 1954 Brown decision ended segregation in American schools; misleading beliefs that classrooms operate in ways designed to fit the industrial era; and more. 23 Myths About the History of American Schools will awaken the inner history nerd of everyone who ever asked, “How did we get this crazy school system?” It will affirm the truth that its readers are as entitled to think critically about schooling as anyone else. Contributors include Barbara Beatty, Larry Cuban, Linda Eisenmann, Yoon Pak, John Rury, and Jonathan Zimmerman.