The question I ask myself is to answer the question of why television dramas about schools and education are more than entertainment. Discuss, using examples' and so this essay aims to analyze the number of programs and films broadcast regularly on TV that depict education, students, teachers, general learning, outcomes and assessment. Then, we can use this media perspective on education and the school environment to compare it to the current environment in real schools, allowing us to test whether the shows we see are purely entertainment or whether the show is a realistic interpretation of school life .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay This is because education as a theme and as a government department is contested as there are a number of different methods and roles involved when providing the nation's youth with an education and different media sources will focus on the parts of education that they believe will make for the most enjoyable programs. This instead of just providing real world examples or basing their shows on the sole fact that people may not find as captivating to watch as the shows they make that involve real plots exaggerated for effect. Types of Education Found in the Media Education itself has a number of roles in every society. Introduction to Educational Studies (2016) states that “Meighan and Harber” (2007:225) have outlined 11 significant “component theories”. These constituents are there to outline what they believed the purpose of education was and I can use this theory in my confrontation with media representations. The components that I think are least common in the media are "discipline and order", this is because television programs like "Waterloo Road" have chosen to portray a classroom as a place of open chaos, a wild land that needs a strong teacher or head to try to tame it so that learning can take place. This is evident in the first season of "Waterloo Road" when they welcome the new deputy principal played by "Jamie Glover" to help restore order and prevent the school from being closed down by the local council. For further information, GOV.UK (2015) The UK Education Minister's speech on the purpose of education states in his speech “Education is the engine of our economy, it is the foundation of our culture and it is essential preparation for adult life.' This means that education is there to prepare us for the transition to adult life and to ensure that we continue to build on the foundations of British culture and work to improve the economy we must believe the behavior of media representations. then school children in shows like "Little Britain" will never be able to cope with the rules and responsibilities of the workplace, which makes you wonder if they are to be believed, what state the country will be in twenty years, when the current generation of schoolchildren enters the real world. Another purpose of education is the social one in which children make lifelong friends and learn social norms that they will use for the rest of their lives. Social Skills and School | The Center for Development and Learning (2018) states that 'school is not just a place where children learn to read, write and math. It is also a place where they learn to get along with other people and develop social skills' Regulations often evolve and schools seem to struggle to keep up with the ever-changing times, especially when it comes totopics such as gender identity, racism or sexuality that are not explored in schools but are often depicted in television programs such as "Waterloo". Road' is the story of a character called Josh who comes to terms with his homosexuality. “Grange Hill” shows its age in the way the staff and other students react to racist comments made about Benny's character, which in a modern school would rightly be a big problem that needs attention. The reason they are shown on TV is because it is believed that it will shock the public not because this happens because we live in a more tolerant and welcoming society, but because the reactions on this issue from students and staff are usually not supportive for the good. of the plot and to add drama, but it raises a key point about how a school would react in this situation. How teachers and students are represented in The Independent media. (2018) TV programs such as Grange Hill and Waterloo Road drive aspiring teachers away from the profession, says school principal inspector [online] states that “television programs such as 'Grange Hill' and 'Waterloo Road' have helped create a crisis of teacher recruitment by putting would-be recruits out of the profession.' This shows that the media portrayal of teachers on TV is harming schools by discouraging teachers who would work in education by teaching children in already understaffed schools. For example, television programs such as "Grange Hill" and "Waterloo Road", already mentioned, portray most students as possibly violent, unwilling or unable to learn and therefore difficult for struggling staff to teach as they will compare real life children with those on TV and will not want to spend their lives in that environment and have a different profession. Even the name of the TV show "Waterloo Road" is named after the battle of Waterloo which involves a daily struggle between teachers and students for power in the classroom and this is done specifically to lead the viewers into a particular way of thinking. Compared to the teachers of these TVs, the programs are represented with a dominant discourse on all media platforms. They are portrayed in 2 particular ways. First, the most common representation is that of people who are lazy, indifferent and uninterested in their work or in the children they are responsible for caring for and educating. And in comparison, they are sometimes shown as caring and loving with a great investment in children, but they have to fight against the status quo and other teachers to fulfill their role. This is shown in the movie “Mona Lisa Smile” where the good teacher played by Julia Roberts is shown as a sort of rebel who comes and disrupts the norm. He does this by showing care and understanding for his students as people and seeks to evolve his teaching methods beyond the traditional teacher-centered behaviorist method where children will learn using lectures and repeated practice of taught methods for use in tests and other methods. of evaluation. He instead preferred to use a child-centered connectivism approach where children can be more creative in learning and directing their own paths. This is also shown in the 1939 film "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", which shows that in the 60 years between the two films the standard media perception of a good teacher has not changed, even though the topic of education has evolved many times. The way teaching is portrayed is very rigid and authoritarian when in reality you can be a caring teacher and follow the rules andcurrent school curriculum and you never have to fight the system that much or at all because it is obviously enhanced to a dramatic effect. Furthermore, this shows how much these movies ignore realistic teaching methods and good teachers for entertainment purposes and a funnier comedy or funnier story for their dramatic piece. To summarize, it depends on the school the child attends, which section of learning theory they will use to educate as it depends on factors such as the local board, whether it is a private or state school and whether it is a religious school, but I find that teachers, no matter the school, or inept or unprofessional like those found on your television. Furthermore, a typology of education involving teachers is that some, if not most, are described as unprofessional and it is clear that teaching was not their first choice in terms of career. I find a good example of a teacher with unprofessional behavior comes from the BBC show "Bad Education". In this show the secondary school history teacher played by comedian Jack Whitehall plays a character who cares for his students, however his antics are there for comedic effect and used specifically for the entertainment of the viewer, for another point he is lazy and has worse behavior than his students that would not be tolerated in a real work environment and he adamantly refuses to take his role as an educator seriously. Equality, important is how school leaders are portrayed in the media with shows that prefer to choose between a spineless or well-intentioned leader who is fighting a pointless power battle against the students of the school. Like “Jack Rimmer” played by Jason Merrells who fights to keep his school open. Or they are shown as neoconservatives and traditionalists who rule over students as undisputed rulers of the school's microcosm awaiting a challenge from a new teacher. An example of this would be Mrs. Appleyard in the movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock” which Den of Geek (2018) 13 Most Fearsome Film Teachers [Online] in their review of media portrayals of teachers described the character as “hardcore principal who he leaves" the students tremble as he passes'. We know from the film that his behavior leads to a student taking his own life, which should never happen in a real school and this type of behavior would only exist in the media due to the ever-increasing amount of actions meant to support students who may suffer of depression. Students in the media are represented in different ways. It usually depends on the school where the show/movie is set. For example, children in inner-city state schools are usually depicted as disinterested, indifferent, hostile and rowdy requiring that a teacher, who is usually the traditional hero of the story in these stories, comes in and brings order and restores or instills love of learning in children. Alternatively, students will reside in a traditional environment where Victorian-era teaching is still used, where children will regurgitate information without creativity or independence, where passing exams is all that matters. This is where they will wait for a new teacher to join and shake up the system by teaching free and independent thinking to unlock their hidden potential with a constructivist theoretical approach to teaching students and enabling them to learn from each other and discover new things through 'self-learning. guided learning in which they are free to express themselves. However, inall these different contexts there are dominant discourses that are associated and applied to students across different TV programs in different countries. For example, there is the bully and the victim and in some cases the roles are not represented by the students as a teacher or staff member could also be a bully or a victim. this discourse is often shown in the media and they all have similarities: the bully is usually larger than his victim and is often shown to enjoy taking part in verbal or physical abuse of the victim who tends to be smaller, weaker and often with more academic ability then the bully. On rare occasions the student bully will be helped by a teacher or encouraged by the staff member; an example of this would be Professor Snape and Malfoy and although the circumstances may be extremely unrealistic for students in schools, this does happen. An example of this occurs in the Daily Mail (2015), a teacher who encouraged pupils to bully a 13-year-old girl by writing "ugly", "annoying" and "untrue" on a blackboard until she cried and wanted to go back to The Class [online] discusses a situation where a teacher in America lost her job after being encouraged by students to choose a girl from her class. Referring to the question, I find that although exaggerated for entertainment value, I have found that the portrayal of students and teachers is more than just entertainment as it singles out people in the crowd to focus on an individual's story. This, in my opinion, allows for a more direct look at the problems facing school age children and what can be done differently by school staff and those who set policy for schools to improve conditions for both staff and pupils. students, whose intern should help remove some of the problems the aforementioned stereotypes in schools that the media will focus on. What media representations of education say about society BERA (2017) states that “social theory here refers to the use of theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze social action, social meanings and large-scale social structures” . This is clearly prevalent in the media portrayal of school society as each student will belong to a specific clique or group and each of these groups will position themselves differently in the social pyramid based on their apparent "beauty" or popularity. So why in TV shows and movies are the groups arranged like a pyramid with your popular "jocks" at the top who are sporty and your smaller "nerds" at the bottom with the lowest social status. Furthermore, schools will be a microcosm of society as a whole. This shows that in reality social groups and cliques are not so obvious and that the nation is not equal in terms of possibilities and capabilities. However, in my experience, I have not found these groups in school to be so clear and obvious as they are an exaggeration in school and lack the fluidity of real school age children's groups. Equally important is the fact that, if some shows like 'Waterloo Road' are to be taken literally, the state of the nation's youth provides a grim prediction of the future. What it conveys is the next generation of violent, ignorant and lazy workers, policemen and politicians, as it demonstrates that society is too soft in allowing children to grow up too early, as demonstrated by the increase in teenage pregnancies, gang activity and of drug use. in some schools in the country. So, I found TV shows in this context to be more than just entertainment, but an important look at the problems in this country that needed to be.