Nineteen Fifty-Six Vol. 4 Issue 1

The Media's
Representation
of Education
Ta'Kyla Bates and Jeffrey Kelly
From “Lean on Me” and
“Freedom Writers” to “Grown-
Ish” and “Abbott Elementary,”
the portrayal of education in media
has achieved particular triumphs
and pitfalls over the years while
highlighting a meaningful and
impactful part of people’s lives.
However, while examining the
industry’s portrayal of the classroom,
certain negative connotations of
marginalized groups throughout
coverage seem to persist.
Robert Bulman, a sociology professor
at Saint Mary’s College of California,
whose areas of interest include the
sociology of education, culture,
inequality, culture and film, watched
about 185 movies for his research
into how pop culture represents
education for his book, “Hollywood
Goes to High School: Cinema, Schools
and American Culture.” From his
research, Bulman said he found that
films that focused on suburban white
students allowed them to express
themselves and learn from their
mistakes. Whereas in instances where
lower-income students, in particular
urban public schools, are portrayed in
films, which were usually nonwhite,
education was represented as an
opportunity that if they didn’t take
it, they’d be failures.
“The sociological argument I make
is that these two contrasting images
of what high school contrast sharply
depending upon the race and the
social class of the student,” he said.
Bulman argued that these conflicting
images contribute to Americans’
conflicted views of adolescence, race,
class and education and represent a
“kind of white middle-class fantasy
about how schools should work.”
“I argue that the typical white middleclass
moviegoer assumes that there
are problems in urban education that
lower-income nonwhite students
don’t kind of believe in an education
enough and that these films are kind
of a way of getting the students on
screen at least to suddenly see the
world through their middle-class
adult heroes, so they’re kind of savior
complexes,” he said.
Sarina Williams, a senior majoring in
creative media, shared a similar view
regarding Hollywood’s white savior
archetype and how people of color
are stereotyped. During a course
on representation she’d taken in
creative media, Williams delved into
Hollywood’s history with the issue.
“They have Black people play
these characters that are kind of
disadvantaged, and it’s almost like,
you know, this white person is here to
save them and get them out of their
situations,” Williams said.
Bulman said Hollywood doesn’t do
anyone any favors by dismissing the
structural context in which urban
education takes place, allowing the
average moviegoer to walk away from
those films and think inequality can
be solved simply by finding passionate
teachers to mold students and help
them apply themselves.
“I think that the urban school films
kind of feeds a narrative in this
country, that the problem in urban
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