Carry on Teachers

Amazon.co.uk: Carry on Teachers!: Representations of the Teaching Profession in Screen Culture: Books: Sue Ellismore
Carry on Teachers!: Representations of the Teaching Profession in Screen Culture (Paperback)
by Sue Ellismore (Author)


Carry_on_Teachers - Google Documenten
Review by Geoff Barton

Carry on Teachers! Susan Ellsmore, Trentham Books, £16.99
I imagine no one became a teacher because of Grange Hill. Whilst it might have kick-started the career of Todd Carty (formerly EastEnders, twice, and now The Bill) and persuaded the viewing millions that school caretakers had more class control than most teachers, it did little to enhance the reputation of a profession battered by negative media images, low self-esteem, and disastrous industrial action.
That was the 1980s. Now, as Sociology teacher and author Susan Ellsmore tells us, “education has become a sexy subject”. Her book is a survey of the main media representations of the teaching profession, from Goodbye Mr Chips (1939) through Carry on Teacher (1959), To Sir, With Love, 1967, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Clockwise (1986), Dead Poets Society (1989) to Lenny Henry in Hope & Glory (1999). Oh yes, and then there’s Teachers (2001 onwards).

Review of Susan Ellsmore, carry on, teachers! Representations of the teaching profession in screen culture - USQ ePrints

There is a strong and continuing tradition of cinematic representations of the work of educators, some of it memorable and inspiring. The most recent of these viewed by the reviewers was Julie Walters’ superlative performance in the television film Ahead of the Class (ITV, 2005). Walters portrayed Dame Marie Stubbs, who came out of retirement to lead St George’s Roman Catholic Secondary School in London, at whose gates a previous headteacher had been murdered and which was threatened with closure by the English Office for Standards in Education. Partly by dint of her powerful personality and partly through the enforcement of what some might see as traditional behaviour such as courtesy and punctuality, she succeeded in taking the school from having been threatened with closure to being lauded as a national example of good pedagogical practice.