Why Shoot the Teacher

The subject of "why shoot the teacher?" is a burning one,as much today as it was yesterday:the teacher,fresh from his training college ,who takes his first class ,in a dead-and-alive hole (or ,worse,in the wrong side of the town).The young man (or woman)understands that all that he learned in college ,all the highest theories can't help him with his thankless job.His pupils are not the ones he was expecting.Any teacher,when he began,has been through all this. Bud Cort ,famous for his part of Harold in "Harold and Maude " is ideally cast as the young schoolteacher:his youthful looks ,his naive face and his resilience work wonders.For, in this part of Canada,mother nature is not really on his side.

I liked this way more than I thought I would. It's about a guy (Bud Cort from Harold & Maude) who comes out on a long train ride to the middle of nowhere in Canada during the Depression to teach in a tiny one room schoolhouse. There's a door in the floor that leads to a little bedroom underneath the school for him to live in after schools gets out & the kids go home. It's a small poor community with about 10 kids in grades 2-9 that are all taught together in the schoolhouse. This movie is interesting because it shows how these poor families lived, barely surviving in the long freezing winters & springs of rural Canada. The kids actually spent their recess time hunting gophers in the wide open praires because for every gopher tail they sent to the Canadian government they got back .10 cents! The gophers damaged valuable wheat crops. The teacher made $20 a month, paid in Promissory Notes! Since the teacher arrived broke & wasn't making actual money (the Promissory Notes weren't any good until after the school year was over) the community provided him with used clothes, blankets, food & water. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It has some funny scenes of the clueless teacher from the city slowly figuring how & what to teach these isolated kids with no supplies or books & how to get along with the families. Survival was definitely tough for the teacher. He didn't know anyone & he's in the middle of nowhere in freezing blizzards without a paycheck or money. He begs the one school board member in charge of his paycheck for some money & the guy asks him what he needs money for? Teacher says clothes. School board guy says we gave you used clothes & anyway what do you need clothes for? You're not going anywhere. True. Teacher says food. School guy says we bring you food. Which they did regularly everyday! I highly recommend this.

This movie allowed the viewer to gain some insight into life in the prairies. It is used in many classrooms as a tool which discusses information on the 1930s. The movie also contains some humour, even if it was corny.

However the movie lacks strong does not expand on certain issues. For instance, it would have been interesting to know how many persons came out West during the depression. Or how this migration affected the prairies. Providing these details would have made the movie more informative to watch.

VG

I think that overall, this movie was good. It seemed a bit short, and it lacked a few details linking parts of the story, which made it a bit difficult to follow. The graphics were slightly poor, but due to the technology of the time, I had to take into account the fact that it was made nearly three decades ago. I also think that it was a fairly accurate depiction of life in the Prairies during the 1930s, based on what we've learned in class about the era. I could easily link the time period to the movie through the actions, speech, and style of the actors and actresses in the story, as well as the cars featured and the houses' decor.

In terms of style, I noticed that the people living in U.S. and the Praires during the 30s differed quite a bit. Some of the clothes and hairstyles that the women wore were similar, but the people of the Prairies were "country folk," and dressed more appropriately for their lifestyles. Alice, for example,(played by Samantha Eggar), wore the sleek, wavy, side-parted bob that many women of the era chose to sport. However, the difference in economic status was apparent in her attire. The aprons and plain skirts she wore had less appeal than the more elegant blouses and dresses that other women preferred.

In conclusion, the movie was pretty effective in getting its message out to the audience. Bud Cort proved his acting skills alongside his pupils, and many important issues were discussed with respect to the conditions of the schools at the time, and Mr. Brown's personal experiences with Prairie weather. The movie was humorous, with a bit of drama, and still maintained a fair amount of accuracy in portraying life in the 1930s.

-A. W.

The film WHY SHOOT THE TEACHER? stars American Bud Cort, star of many Robert Altman classics, and British actress Samantha Eggar. Other than that, the film is truly Canadian. The story, based on the autobiography of Max Braithwaite, is a humourous, entertaining slice of life in the Canadian Dust Bowl. It's as good as any other film to clearly show the extent that the Great Depression had in rural communities. The production, cast, props, etc., make this an excellent period piece of the 1930s. Many of the co-stars are amateurs but this only emphasizes the realism of the picture. Overall, if you need to show someone a video about the Great Depression, and you don't have access to THE GRAPES OF WRATH, then WHY SHOOT THE TEACHER? will be a worthy substitute.