Depictions of School on old TV Shows

How come everyone is always walking out the door, in lovely weather, with a small group of other students?


It seems like the biggest cliche, because the settings always seem the same:

- always leaving school, never arriving at school
- almost always walking down a decent size staircase. Where are all those super-common, flat, single-story schools?
-almost always have park-like, shaded walkways, more like a college campus than a public high school
-nobody ever walks alone
-nobody ever stands around, either. constant movement.
-almost everything interesting happens outside the school, not inside.


Did every show use the same school to film at?

 

Not in Blackboard Jungle or Lean On Me...oh, but I guess those are movies.

 

I think this kind of thing happens for both dramatic and cinematic reasons. One of the important rules about filmmaking is you need to start most scenes closer to the end, so as not to bore audiences. If the kids are just minor characters in the film, why show them arriving at school? The real action takes place when they go home, when they're out on adventures, having fights, playing with their friends, stuff like that. Showing everyday lessons or the drudgery of schoolwork isn't entertaining enough to fill screen time (though even that has been done on occasion).

I think the visual look of schools were chosen because they wanted something interesting to look at. Stairways are interesting both vertically and horizontally, so there's a lot of motion that makes the shot more dynamic. Same thing with groups of people, rather than individuals walking alone. As to the exterior school buildings, I think they generally chose schools that were local to LA, and a lot of them really are two stories, like the buildings used for Grease or Room 222. (Even three of my old schools back in Florida were 2-story buildings, and now that I think of it, one high school was three stories).

I think you're taking a lot of this stuff too literally, and you're not seeing these things objectively in terms of how it's telling the story. There's thousand broad cliches that filmmakers have been using for almost 100 years, some of which are pretty silly (like people crawling around in air conditioning shafts), but in a lot of ways I think it's just part and parcel to the way it's always been done. Call it "movie shorthand." Most of it, I can kind of shrug and say, "I've seen that before, but let's see where the story goes."

 

Not in the Little Rascals...ah, Miss Crabtree...

 

Yeah, now days schools are very, very different. The one near where I live now is a beautiful facility. The kids have no clue how good they have it now.

My grade school was single story, no big stairway entrance, very bland looking, utilitarian, built in the late 1950's, no trees on the grounds, huge asphalt "playground" with nothing but some painted strips to play games on and a painted divider for the boys/girls sides.

No AC and the heating sucked in the winter. We didn't even have a lunch room for the first 5 years I went, we sat on the floor in the gym to eat our bag lunch. They finally built a second smaller gym with foldout tables & benches for lunch use. Overcrowding was a big issue back then, they combined 2 grades in one room with one teacher and even brought in mobile rooms. Those were even colder in the winter.

The principle had a heavy wood paddle and he could and did use it on you.

Heck, my 6th grade teacher literally threw me down the hall when I stood up to him and his heavy handed ways.

One day I finally had enough when he hit me pretty hard with a yardstick..... I stood up to him and denounced his constant slapping of kids heads and hitting us with yardsticks. Everyone cheered for me when I laughed and told him to his face how small a man he was to beat up on kids, that's when he dragged me out of the room and threw me down the hallway.

It's a different world now. Wow.


Sorry, bad flash back. Carry on.

 

My elementary school sat on about four square blocks, was built in 1925, and had lots of trees, shaded areas, fenced-in crosswalks, had a large patio, and was actually kind of picturesque. Same with the high school -- same era, same deal, though it later became much more crowded and jammed with portable "temporary" buildings (which went on for more than 20 years). The elementary school didn't have air conditioning all the years my sister and I went there, and this was in central Florida, where it's frequently 90 degrees and 90% humidity during almost 1/3 of the year. The high school was mostly air conditioned, but there were still a few classes that had nothing but open windows and fans.

If a teacher had thrown me down the hallway, I'd hit the floor and scream bloody murder that I was paralyzed and wait for the ambulance to arrive. I'd figure at the least, maybe we could get some cash out of the deal.

 

Chicago...old brick buildings, multiple floors.
Smyrna, Tennessee (25 mi. from Nashville), both the Junior High, and the High School were both single story buildings, with a lot of " modern " glass ( 1972-1972).

Interestingly...both Chicago schools still look the same, and are both still fully functional.
Meanwhile, the Tennessee schools have been refurbished several times.

Rufus T. Hitch Elementary School ( Terry Kath preceded me as a student )

 

Ok, these pics are from 10 years ago, put them together and that's pretty much the front with a bit of the middle missing. It looks like the same dump it was 40 years earlier when I went there, man those rusty, beat up bike racks are from when I was there 40 years earlier! How cheap can you get?

 

You didn't mention any examples.

But I recall "Leave It To Beaver" had countless moments in the classroom and at the lockers. Beaver and his classmates were often standing around talking in the hall or sitting in the classroom. I recall an episode where Beaver was the first one to school where he was sitting in the class room alone, when his teacher arrived, they started talking.

"The Andy Griffith Show" likewise had a number of episodes where the action was in the classroom, with Miss Krump, or Opie and class mates, or other characters including Ernest T. Bass! ;-)

But other than "Room 222" I don't recall many shows that I've watched showing the school at all. They only talked about going to school or what happened there. Oh yeah, but even though I never watched it much, I recall "Welcome Back Kotter" took place almost entirely in the classroom... no?

But now that I think about it, in "The Bob Newhart Show" Bob's wife Emily was a teacher and there were some episodes that focused almost entirely on the classroom. There was an episode of "Cheers" that Sam was after a teacher, and much of the episode took place in the classroom or in the hall.

Got examples?

 

This is the only shot I could find of my elementary school in Indiana, when it was brand new in the 1930's. When I went there 40 years later the oak trees were huge and also shaded and quite picturesque. I remember marble details in the hallways. Also no A/C, but while I remember it being hot in the Summer, I also have fond memories of the windows being open and the breeze blowing in. It had quite a nice auditorium (where The Jackson 5 performed for us one time), as well as a good sized gymnasium. It also had a huge playground in the back, with basketball courts, swings and monkey bars, and two full sized baseball diamonds. Great spot to fly a kite. Looking for a photo, I see they just built a new modern school in the playground area, but voted to preserve the original building and have found another use for it, (I was a Patrol-boy on that front street corner!).



One of my Sunday Schools:

 

Yes my Junior High School/Middle School was this bland style as well, sounds like that's what Jose Jones was looking for!

 

The Junior High School my older brothers went to was kinda rough. The teachers had large wooden paddles hanging prominently in the rooms like your principle. The wood-shop teacher made his own, with a baseball-bat style handle, and he drilled a bunch of holes through the paddle area so he could swing it faster! Police patrolled the hallways.

 

I went to the same school my Mother did...NO AC! it was boiling hot come June...My son was 4th generation in the same school system, but he went to a newer school...I remember one teacher was so strict she used to hit our hands with a wooden ruler if we were unruly! LOL! boy, have times changed...

 

Oh yeah!

I was so used to getting hit on my hands with a wooden ruler it simply did not phase me anymore.

I remember distinctly one time a teacher did it and I slowly turned my head, looked up at him and winked, not being phased at all by the pain of it. Must have freaked him out, he never did it again.

 

Yes, that is the super-common, post-WWII, suburban school type. My son attends an elementary school that looks very similar.

What I was noticing wasn't so much the total number of stories in the school, but that they (TV) loved the staircase-at-the-front-door kind of shot....as opposed to just a flat entrance. I've seen that on any number of shows from the Brady Bunch to Beverly Hills 90210.

 

My old school had a strict "No Snowballs Allowed" rule.

One time in 2nd grade, while waiting outside for the bell to ring (so we could go inside and start the day) I saw a couple kids a grade older than me throwing snowballs at this small, 3rd floor window and decided that looked like fun....unfortunately, the principal walked outside at that exact moment and busted 3 of us. We were taken to this secretive 'room' at the end of a dark hall next to the principal's office and paddled with one of those heavy wooded paddles.....AND had to write 50x, "I Will Not Throw Snowballs"........and I never did again there.

 

Grange Hill: the only school kids in Britain that never swore.

After 45 years, the most realistic depiction of British school life remains Kes. A depressing thought, but true.

 

Shawshank reminds me of my old grammar school !


The principle actually had a big-a$$ speaker like this right outside his office window overlooking our playground:

 

Well, these days,the lunatics are running the asylum.

 

I always thought it was odd that every school depicted in TV and film was completed enclosed/indoors (i.e., you never had to go outdoors to go between classrooms or offices), when none of the schools where I grew up (southern California) were like that. I guess it's more common back east where they get snow on a regular basis?

 

LOL! our ruler master whacker was a Women...she had a quick flick of the wrist....mean machine!

 

Not much as far as TV shows, but my high school days were pretty well summed up in "Dazed and Confused" and "Fast Times At Ridgemont High"- and we had our fair share of the Spicoli and Wooderson dudes...

 

What I always notice is that unless it's a movie/TV show that is directly concerned with school events, it always seems that classes are less than two minutes long. The scene always opens with the teacher seemingly starting a lecture and making one particular salient point, then the bell rings and class is over.

 

Dazed And Confused is the most accurate depiction of my Class of 1976 past, that I have ever seen.

The fact that it got the Criterion treatment made perfect sense to me.
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