American Education in Popular Media

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

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2. Popular Media Representations of American Schooling from the Past

   • Sevan G. Terzian, Patrick A. Ryan

   Pages 1-12

3. The College Man in Popular Fiction: American Magazines and the Vision of the Middle-Class Man, 1890–1915

   • Daniel A. Clark

   Pages 13-36

4. “A Touch of Risquity”: Teachers, Perception, and Popular Culture in the Progressive Era

   • Michelle Morgan

   Pages 37-57

5. “Spirit of Education”: The Gendered Vision of Compulsory Schooling in Mass Magazine Art, 1908–1938

   • Heather A. Weaver

   Pages 59-84

6. Chalk It up to Experience: The Sacrificial Image of the Teacher in Popular Media, 1945–1959

   • Patrick A. Ryan

   Pages 85-105

7. Fears on Film: Representations of Juvenile Delinquency in Educational Media in Mid-Twentieth-Century America

   • Amy Martinelli

   Pages 107-128

8. Students without a Cause: Blackboard Jungle, High School Movies, and High School Life

   • Daniel Perlstein, Leah Faw

   Pages 129-151

9. The Importance of Teaching Ernest: The Fool Goes Back to School in Television and Film Comedies in the Late Twentieth Century

   • Andrew L. Grunzke

   Pages 153-173

10. Prosaic, Perfunctory Pedagogy: Representations of Social Studies Teachers and Teaching in 1970s and 1980s Movies

    • Robert L. Dahlgren

    Pages 175-194

11. Looking at the Man in the Principal’s Office

    • Kate Rousmaniere

    Pages 195-217

12. Back Matter

    Pages 219-229

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American Education in Popular Media explores how popular media has represented schooling in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Terzian and Ryan examine prevalent portrayals of students and professional educators while addressing contested purposes of schooling in American society.

• Popular media
• radio
• television
• film
• mass magazines
• American schools
• teachers
• students
• principals
• United States history
• twentieth century
• culture
• education
• media
• perception
• school
• schooling
• society

"Jocks, freaks, and nerds. Cheerleaders and homecoming queens. Buffoonish teachers and dictatorial principals. If you went to an American school, you remember all of these character types. But your memories are shaped by powerful media images, dating back at least a century. Sevan Terzian and Patrick Ryan have brought together the best recent scholarship on depictions of school in literature, film, television, and music. These fine essays shed new light on our shared educational past, even as they remind us how often our mass media have distorted it." - Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of Education and History, New York University, USA

"Make some popcorn, find your favorite chair, and ease into this delightful collection of essays charting the historical evolution of popular portrayals of American schooling. Whether in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post or through the celluloid splendor of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, American mass media have both reflected and shaped popular understandings public education in American life. The essays in this volume critically engage that process through a variety of theoretical lenses." - Benjamin Justice, Associate Professor of Education and History, Rutgers University, USA

"Readers beware. This book will sneak up on you. Collecting chapters by relentlessly innovative, imaginative, and insightful scholars, editors Sevan Terzian and Patrick Ryan, no slouches themselves on the intellectual leadership front, have produceda no-holds-barred historical examination of American education in popular media. It helps us remember and rethink after all, we all went to school. And it exposes in provocative detail the durable imprint of media on the education of the public." - Donald Warren, Professor Emeritus, Education History and Policy, Indiana University, USA

Amy C. Martinelli, University of Florida, USA Andrew L. Grunzke, Mercer University, USA Daniel A. Clark, Indiana State University, USA Daniel Perlstein, University of California, Berkeley, USA Heather A. Weaver, University of Sydney, Australia Kate Rousmaniere, Miami University, USA Michelle M. K. Morgan, Missouri State University, USA Robert L. Dahlgren, State University of New York at Fredonia, USA Leah Faw, University of California, Berkeley, USA

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