Public High School Depicted Negatively

Main Description

Public education is in no ways perfect in the United States, but the way Hollywood typically depicts public high schools greatly exaggerates the legitimate difficulties facing public education. Teachers are often portrayed as bored, lazy, and uninterested in educating their students while principals, deans, and counselors are often depicted as not having children's best interest in mind. This feeds into conservative criticisms of the public education system and provides a distorted view of what public education is actually like in most of the country.

Conservative Trope Examples

Varsity Blues (1999) | Public High School Teachers Depicted Negatively
The football players high school teacher is also a stripper who does a dance to the song "hot for teacher."
Staff Aside
There is a conflict in the movie from his coach and Dad around Mox prioritizing education over football and getting an academic scholarship to Brown. So, they at least depict that favorably, but they still had to make a teacher moonlight as a stripper.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) | Public High School Teachers Depicted Negatively
Monotone voiced teacher Ben Stein calls out Bueller three times while the students look completely and utterly bored. Later, he bores the students more with a quirky lecture style, "In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work."
Staff Aside
It's an iconic funny scene. Which also perpetuates an anti-teacher, anti-intellectual mindset through comedy. We all know it's a joke but some students may use this as an excuse to mock teachers rather than learn. Conservatives benefit from a less educated voter base. The smarter they are the less likely they'll vote for today's Republican party.

Additional Tropes: Iconic Scenes with Conservative Biases
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
The premise of the movie is that high school sucks and friends play hooky following Ferris Bueller's lead. The principal, his secretary and an economics teacher (Ben Stein) are also lampooned.
Back to the Future (1985)
High school principal Mr. Strickland is depicted as overly strict and lacking compassion calling Marty McFly a slacker for having multiple tardies and saying he will never amount to anything.
Staff Aside
Real life high school principals would be much more diplomatic and caring in their approach.
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Vice-Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason) is an angry, overly-strict educator who forbids a group of misfits serving a Saturday detention from talking or even moving from their seats. He's portrayed as having a deep disdain against the teens for making him show up to school on a Saturday and makes them write a long essay exploring their beliefs about themselves, but doesn't offer any of them guidance and instead leaves them to their own devices only to check on them occasionally to ridicule them about one thing or another.
Staff Aside
The vast majority of principals, vice-principals and educators in general strive to be good role models for their students and help them learn from mistakes that resulted in detention so they will hopefully not find themselves in that position again. When movies portray them in a negative light it reinforces the conservative belief that educators are in their profession for reasons other than teaching our youth.