Simpsons commentary on "modern" teachers

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Permalink Reply by Kelley Haskins on November 1, 2009 at 11:34am

Thanks for sharing. I just saw another one of the Simpsons "How the test was won". It exaggerated the feeling, emotions, and actions that students, teachers, and principles go through preparing for assessment testing day. Many of the situations made fun of in this episode are all too familiar in reality however, embellished and stretched a bit.

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Permalink Reply by Andrew Mile on November 1, 2009 at 12:24pm

I just watched the episode. I haven't watched the Simpsons in years and I remember it being funnier. The message if it can be called that is contradictory... Seemingly outdated methodology is ridiculed and the attitude of the character of Mrs Krabappal (something like that) seems to be the present summation of the bad teacher, burnt-out, anti-tech, aging, set in her ways etc... The new young teacher, Zack seems to be the modern model... tech-friendly, enthusiastic, against lexical knowledge, "hip" etc... However at the end it is the "old" teacher that is vindicated and the "new" that is discredited, though some of the things he shouts as he is hauled away drunk seem to ring true. It turns out that the "old, outdated" teacher has a sense on vocation, while the "new, hip" teacher does not. It maybe the SImpsons has become to deep for me, but I don't think they were able to put a coherent message together. In the end nothing changes... I dunno maybe that's the point... It could have been better... I'm curious what others found.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on November 1, 2009 at 1:14pm

Like Andrew, I haven't seen any Simpsons for a long time. I got to the point in the story where Bart is contemplating getting the new teacher drunk, so I didn't see the whole episode when the screen crashed and I had to start it over and didn't.

It seems that the sympathy was with the emotional impact on the old (beloved?) teacher, plus the fact that the old teacher made the parent feel inadequate, whereas the new teacher gave the parent an unearned boost. I will try later to see the whole thing, now that I know I didn't. I'm really not sure it is about the "tech savvy" new teacher, so much as just a new teacher. I didn't see the "tech savvy" teacher doing any teaching with the techie toys.

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Permalink Reply by Kev on November 1, 2009 at 4:07pm

He had them Twitter for homework among other things. I found the commentary quite interesting despite identifying with the character being lampooned. It certainly seemed to mirror some of the discussions we get into here regarding using technology just for the sake of using it or using it for an actual purpose.

As far as Mrs. Krabapple being shown as a good teacher, that was just lazy writing. She's always shown as a good person deep down but an awful teacher. They had to make her more sympathetic to push their point for this episode.

Still, quite interesting I thought. Also, the testing episode is pretty spot on. I saw it over the summer.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on November 1, 2009 at 6:17pm

Kev,

Yeah, I caught that "do twitter for homework" and first thought was what subject objective was it supposed to meet.

I don't watch the show enough to know much about Mrs. Krabapple, but her name suggests she just isn't quite there as far as being a good teacher. At least as far into it as I saw it, I wouldn't know if she was an "awful" teacher. She did what most teachers of my generation would do - to collect the toys to get the kids' attention. It doesn't matter what the toys are, electronic, cuddly, or whatever, if they are distracting the kids from the task at hand, you round them up and give them back later.

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