John Hughes [RIP], "High School Harrys", the Tragedy of American Schooling and our Wider Priorities

Scene 29. INT. BASEMENT - DAY

Vernon and Carl are sitting and talking.

VERNON
What did you want to be when you
were young?

CARL
When I was a kid, I wanted to be
John Lennon...

VERNON
Carl don't be a goof! I'm trying
to make a serious point here...I've
been teaching, for twenty two years,
and each year...these kids get more
and more arrogant.

CARL
Aw bull s#!+, man. Come on Vern,
the kids haven't changed, you have!
You took a teaching position, 'cause
you thought it'd be fun, right?
Thought you could have summer
vacations off...and then you found
out it was actually work...and that
really bummed you out.

VERNON
These kids turned on me...they think
I'm a big f#%*in' joke...

CARL
Come on...listen Vern, if you were
sixteen, what would you think of
you, huh?

VERNON
Hey...Carl, you think I give one
rat's @$$ what these kids think of
me?

CARL
Yes I do...

VERNON
You think about this...when you get
old, these kids; when I get old,
they're gonna be runnin' the country.

CARL
Yeah?

VERNON
Now this is the thought that wakes
me up in the middle of the night...
That when I get older, these kids
are gonna take care of me...

CARL
I wouldn't count on it...

- The Breakfast Club, © 1985, written and directed by John Hughes [emphases added]

Like so many others of my generation, upon hearing about the recent passing of John Hughes, I thought back immediately to his unique work, foremost in my mind being the seminal film cited above. Twenty-four years ago, that film touched a raw nerve among students, parents and school staff. Little wonder that, so many years later, the film is considered by many of my generation as "our version of The Graduate." Back then it served, however briefly, as a sort of psychic pressure valve in our seemingly perfect, Lilliputian, Reagan-era suburban existence, and that well-resourced high school setting in Illinois could've doubled for any proud, genteel public school in America. I recalled how classmates and many of our teachers would see the film multiple weekends in a row in the first semester of that school year, almost as a reassuring solace away from the true emotional meat-grinder that was -- and continues to be -- our public school system. The film spoke truth to power in many ways.

Although the film is mostly remembered for the fine performances given by the core cast that portrayed five students sharing a Saturday detention hall, the one key adult role has, with time, proven to be just as poignant and socially relevant. Specifically, the role of Principal Vernon, played brilliantly by the late Paul Gleason, was a spot-on depiction of so many frustrated, burned out, resentful and subsequently outright oppressive administrators/staff who litter the national landscape of our increasingly debilitated public schools. Often they are precisely what Hughes depicted them as above -- hard working yet increasingly disillusioned, irate and sometimes, yes, paranoid folk who tend to feel like they are "herding cats" (to quote a respected former teacher I know who taught for over 30 years and recently retired) for 10 hours a day rather than teaching or motivating. With each year their coarseness grows, and they become the very caricatures they themselves ridiculed in their own teen years. In the process, they alienate already confused, distracted and hyper-hormonal kids, many of whom lack stable family lives, and the rinse-and-repeat cycle continues through generations.

A good friend who dealt with many public school administrators while officiating high school sports and substitute teaching keenly labeled this particular contingent as the "High School Harrys". You know the type: The blowhards who are self-perceived masters of their own domains while annoying just about everyone else and tormenting kids who they think they're guiding towards "success" in life. The "Glory Days" types who tend to subconsciously attempt to relive their B.M/W.O.C. statuses of yesteryear by channeling their own "Great Santini"-like parents and past mentors in hammering so-called discipline into their pupils. The recyclers of trite, numbing adolescent stereotypes such as those Hughes caricatured and effectively punctured in said film. For every great, inspiring teacher, coach or administrator, there might be three to five "Harrys", serving as ongoing testaments to the accurate claim that "high school actually never ends."

Yet, that said, and with some perspective, can one ultimately blame them? With crowded classrooms, shrinking district and state education budgets, rising competition for attention spans from media, and constricting, rushed federal performance standards under skewed, increasingly irrelevant curricula (packed with odd, opaque Foundation-funded textbooks and excessive standardized testing), it's a wonder that any public school instructor or administrator makes it through even one school year. As seasoned instructors and now visionary authors such as John Taylor Gatto, Sir Ken Robinson, Grace Llewellyn and others have attested, the conveyor belt-like settings and mandates of our schools -- operating for the most part under what were originally decades-old Prussian imported paradigms for mass conformity more so than instruction, per se -- tend to crush genuine curiosity and creativity in their pupils and staff while aiming at churning out future corporate-compliant producers and consumers. Such has certainly been the educational fate of the so-called -- and increasingly dissipating -- American middle-class since the 19th Century, although it's not necessarily limited to the middle-class.

Little to no emphasis is placed on harnessing genuine critical thought in our K through 12 public schools. Music, philosophy, viable history and civics (which doesn't omit critical monetary aspects of our nation's past and present), comparative literature, early stage foreign language instruction, and innovation-sparking approaches to the natural sciences and mathematics are skipped over for standardized test-fodder material. Additionally, mature social discourse, self-reflection and cognitive empathy -- the very kind Hughes demonstrated with the dialogue of said film, after bearing his soul by writing it -- are rendered irrelevant. Aside from sports, little to nothing is initiatory; no genuine rights of passage, forcing some segments of our youth to just resort to gang life. Just clock in, clock out, get your diploma and get out there and be "productive." Contribute to the GDP, as well as to your future 401(k)s. No wonder drop-out rates are so high, binge drinking and prescription meds are both on the rise (among both kids and adults), and the disenthralled "Harrys" of the world continue to multiply with age and experience.

Unfortunately, some would be tempted to blame the above on class issues. They'd say:

No wonder The One Percent [to quote filmmaker Jamie Johnson] in this country and those who ardently aspire to join it practically fistfight to get their kids into the Choates, Kents, Brownings, Le Lycée Francaises, et al. from Manhattan to La Jolla to Pacific Heights to Kenilworth. These parents start such hardcore competition for the sake of their children from the pre-school years. Without excessively isolating their children from the rest of society, they do so nonetheless due partly to wanting to avoid the kind of people and environments that could damage their children's self esteem during such pivotal stages of development.

Yet private schools have their share of problems as well. They have their versions of "Harrys", too, albeit better paid ones who retain more graduate degrees. No, this is a wider problem that's reflective of our society's priorities as a whole. We are collectively losing the plot.

In a key scene of the film, the character of Allison, obviously conveying the sensibility of Hughes himself (who scoffed at the role of schools in nurturing creativity), concludes: "It's unavoidable, it just happens....When you grow up, your heart dies." She was the quirky "basketcase" of the film, and Hughes was more filmmaker than social critic, but both nailed something that I and some astute friends are starting to realize when we step away from our Blackberries, conference calls, staff meetings and general daily routines:

That we ourselves, now in our late 30s and early 40s, are slipping. We are relegating much of our innate creativity and idealism to the mental equivalent of Vernon's closet, where he threw Bender into for solitary confinement. We are racing to remain "relevant" to those we admire and wish to emulate socially, despite dissipating returns, just like Claire and Andrew did with respect to their circle of friends in the film. We are growing increasingly cynical, what with the stakes for acceptance having risen from mere peer cliques and student clubs to those of our very subsistence - and that's during "good" economic times. With the current pandemic economic crisis that's challenging our preconceived notions of "success" -- the very success we're presumably entitled to for following the school and corporate syllabuses prescribed to us since adolescence -- those conditioned anxieties are just exacerbating.

Hell, some of us are even turning into our own versions of "Harrys".

It need not be that way.

You and I are not our degrees, our careers, our cars, home values, class designations, political affiliations or net worths. I sense Hughes might've agreed.

Comments

[HalfBakedSushi]

Wonderful analysis, but I think one thing missing here is the role of parents in education. For the most part, people are aware and sadly accepting of the limitations of the public education system. However, the gap can be bridged by having relatively engaged parents who encourage thought at home; who are proponents of reading books and magazines, essays and poetry; who buy telescopes and then sit up later at night gazing through them at the stars

It's a self-feeding cycle. Parents who are involved in their kids lives nurture thinkers who then become shining stars to quickly burning out teachers. Those shining stars are often enough reason for teachers to hang on to their own passion and pass that passion back to the students who have the ability to inspire their parents to become more involved in their lives.

[TequilaMockingbird]

Hear Hear.. Wonderful Commentary­..
I grew up in the 80's and somehow had this idea that school was more or less the same today as it was then.....I was wrong.. dead wrong for all of the reasons you discuss and more.. and it was ruining my child.

Last year I had just had it with Public School and Public School had just had it with my very bright child who in their opinion needed medication in order to sit down and shut up... to make our Long ,painful and at times embarrassing story (watching a grown woman(admin) argue with my 10 year old about the word 'poop' and why it was permissible in the school's books, library and classrooms but a 'level 3' infraction when used to describe the lunch room burritos) short.. I will just say.. Support Charter Schools in your Community.­. My Son is now attending a Charter Montessori School and I have seen a ray of light at the end of the Public School tunnel.. but best of all My Son is learning critical thinking skills and exploring his Cosmic Task.

[abbeysbooks]

Yes the educational system is about obedience. So is it any wonder the political discourse is hysterical and unfactual as it is? The screaming hoards at the town halls are very young children engaging in what they think is being an involved voter in America but which is really just the first attempt to use some language in a disagreement. You know how little kids are on the playground. No one to facilitate the discussion and guide them, just raw brutal yelling and screaming uncivilized behavior. And the ultimate I'm going to tell the teacher, principal, superintendent, daddy or whatever.

And the teachers who remain in it are no better.

[Shawn de Montaigne]

Brilliant. (And I'm sorry that the first comment to this post was offered by an idiot who had nothing substantive to say. Guess he's a willingly bred-and-m­anufacture­d cog you alluded to above, yes?)

I rarely see such good writing on this website. Usually it's T&A, inflammatory bile, propaganda, and unedited blather. So--thanks.

I too was deeply affected by The Breakfast Club; so much so that the girl I was dating at the time grew angry at me for wanting to watch it time and again. But even then I knew ... I knew it was a classic, and a profoundly rebellious look, not at teen angst as the critics and the larger public were sure to view it (which both did, inevitably), but as a stinging indictment of our "education" system, one bent on not education but indoctrination and producing cogs. Which it does, and with astounding efficiency.

I have taught and tutored in and on the periphery of said system for over 25 years now. I know what I'm talking about.

Thank you for this article. Perhaps there is hope for The Huffington Post after all. I was about to give up on it altogether.

thepiertoforever.blogspot.com.

[BlackJAC]

Technically the Paul Gleason photo presented here is from NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE rather than THE BREAKFAST CLUB, where reprised the role and wore the exact same shirt from the first time around.

[Pye Ian - Huffpost Blogger]

Naaah, I used a production still from "The Breakfast Club", not the reprised role of 8 years ago. He had more gray hairs, wrinkles and a lighter jacket in the latter. You're thinkin' this:

http://www.flixster.com/photos/paul-gleason-paul-gleason-as-richard-vernon-in-not-another-teen-movie-10721186

Trust me, I've seen Hughes's opus over 20 times.

P.S. Next time, please read the article and keep your comment accurate and relevant to it.


P.P.S. Shawn, thanks for your thoughts above.