Plays, books and films about education

Any more? Add your favs in the comments section

Still from Educating Rita

Educating Rita by Willy Russell (play)
A classic play about an enthusiastic naive working class student and her cynical professer.

Oleanna by David Mamet (play)
Another female student and her male lecturer. This is ultimately a play about gender, power and its abuses. Sharp pros which reads like its running on a treadmill, I can’t wait to see it onstage sometime.

Etre et Avoir (film)
Slow-burning, detailed and moving. This is a year in the life of a French rural primary school and documents the school teacher and the lives of his young students.

Entre les Murs (film)
Another Frenchie which is, frankly, the oppositie of Etre et Avoir. Written and fronted by a teacher who produced this work based on his own teaching life, this film is made up of real students rather than actors. It details the teachers’ battle to keep order around attempts to instill grammar into his students.

The Wire, series 4 (tv series)

Powerful and painful, this indicment of bad school policy and a failing school systems offers hope in its classroom experiments, intelligent kids and a few teachers who treat the kids as humans.

The Wire

An Education (film)
A colourful and good-looking film set in 1960s London which follows the female protagonist as she negotiates her role as independent woman and asks what is a good education for anyway? Based on a true story, which gives it an extra omph.

Dead Poets Society (film)
A classic of course, but a bit too earnest. Still, it might encourage you to pick up Walt Whitman and have a read, so I’m up for it. You will, of course, cry during THAT part. Ah, why am I so hard? I’d watch it any day.

Mallory Towers (childrens books)
Yes, I was one of those kids who thought midnight feasts and boarding school would be the epitome of excitement. And yes, Enid Blyton is not exactly known for her views on racial harmony or class consciousness, but, tally ho girls, anyone for a spot of Lacrosse?

Sister Act (film)
Getting a little too nostalgic here now, but this is a fun film (go, Whoopie, go) and worth checking out as a who’s who’s to 90s hip hop.