McGill profs told the Reporter about some of their favourite pop culture characterizations of their metier

McGill profs told the Reporter about some of their favourite pop-culture characterizations of their metier

David Covo

My favourite portrayals of teachers in the popular media include the grandfather in the old Kung Fu television series (Grasshopper, take the pebble from my hand...) and the Robin Williams character teaching English in the film Good Morning, Vietnam.

Brian Alters

Robin Williams - The perfect teacher?

There are many; however, the character Robin Williams played in the Dead Poets Society comes to mind first. He managed to get his students to truly enjoy the subject both in and out of class.

Peter Gibian

First, I admit that I am a sucker for any films or books that include major scenes in university classrooms. But one film that sticks with me is Quiz Show. It is an excellent, rich film — not so much for its examples of great teaching, but for what it suggests about intellectual excitement, about the various ways of knowing or of using intelligence, about structural transformations in the knowledge industry, and about challenges to the role of the intellectual in the age of mass media and mass culture. There are exciting classroom scenes too, following two generations of English professors (based on the Van Dorens at Columbia) in lectures, office hours, and in the witty repartee of seminar-like table-talk with colleagues and writers.

Richard Koestner

One of my favourite books is Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis which is about a hapless young English professor who inadvertantly does everything that one can do to ensure that he won't get tenure. I also like David Lodge's books about professors. I must say though, that there are no flattering portrayals of professors in these stories, but they sure are funny.

Wes Folkerth

Ben Stein - Worst-case scenario

Unfortunately, I'm afraid my favourite is the high school economics teacher Ben Stein plays in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Whenever I find a class is going badly, I think back to that scene. "Anyone? Anyone?"