A Loyalty Test for the American Educator: From Ichabod Crane to Erin Gruwell

Steve Benton

Jump to Content

1 A Loyalty Test for the American Educator

From Ichabod Crane to Erin Gruwell

于Teachers, Teaching, and Media

著者：

Steve Benton

Steve Benton
Search for other papers by Steve Benton in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed

类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 1–12

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004398092_001

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

€42.00€35.00 excl. VAT

Add to Cart

找回访问令牌

Abstract

During the early years of the American Republic, an important strain of American popular culture helped establish the idea that there was something fundamentally un-American about those who put too high a value on intellectual community, book smarts, and cultural sophistication. Popular texts like Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1820) depicted schoolteachers in particular as arrogant, untrustworthy, undemocratic, and at some level, disloyal to fundamental American values.

Today, too many Americans have bought into the notion that schools are morally suspicious and ill-equipped to introduce students to complex ideological and intellectual issues. These suspicions of intellectual community are surprisingly—and ironically—reinforced in popular films that celebrate educator heroes. The formula for many of these films—such as Dead Poets Society (1989), Dangerous Minds (1995), and Freedom Writers (2007)—is to celebrate an educator-hero as an American icon while disparaging intellectual community more generally, a formula that they inherited from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women novels. These texts affirm the stereotype of most schoolteachers as arrogant, undemocratic, Ichabod-like tyrants while celebrating the rare alternative to the norm as the real American hero. At one level, such narratives celebrate the possibility that truly motivated educators can thrive in oppressive institutional environments, but on another level, they reinforce the dangerous belief that educational institutions and the intellectual communities they support are instinctively hostile to freedom and learning.

引用信息

Save
Cite
Email this content

Share Link

Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend
Email this content
or copy the link directly:

https://brill.edhh.ma/abstract/book/9789004398092/BP000011.xml
The link was not copied. Your current browser may not support copying via this button.

Link copied successfully

折叠
展开
回到页面顶端

Teachers, Teaching, and Media

Original Essays about Educators in Popular Culture

丛编： Transgressions: Cultural Studies and Education, 卷： 132

ISBN:: 9789004398092

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 27 May 2019

Subjects
- Education

Front Matter

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

1 A Loyalty Test for the American Educator

2 Schooling the State

3 Rethinking Student-Teacher Relationship Intimacy as Attachment

4 Mr. Miller Goes to War

5 In Loco Parentis Redux

6 What’s a Nice White Lady to Do?

7 The Dis-Education of Rock ‘n’ Roll

8 Promoted to Control?

9 The Insecure Teacher

10 Contrasting the Archetypal Sage with the Mentor Coach in Young Adult Literature

11 Saved by the Belles

12 “Good” Teacher on Her Own Terms

13 Liberatory Pedagogy in Action

14 Q the Teacher—TV Lessons from the 24th Century

15 Speechless to Speechless

Back Matter

Film Sources

Television Sources

统计数据

	全部期间	过去一年	过去30天
摘要浏览次数	189	46	9
全文浏览次数	9	0	0
PDF下载次数	6	1	0

African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
Art History	International Law	Philosophy
Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Biology	Languages and Linguistics	Social Sciences
Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

Subjects

AppBar-Authors 2025

AppBar-Open Access 2025

AppBar-Product Information 2025

AppBar-Company 2025

AppBar-Contact 2025

1 A Loyalty Test for the American Educator

From Ichabod Crane to Erin Gruwell

Abstract

引用信息

Share Link

Teachers, Teaching, and Media

Original Essays about Educators in Popular Culture

目录

统计数据

统计数据