Originally published by AMERICANSCAPEGOAT.COM
July 18, 2014
An anonymous source close to the Scapegoat has come forward with information that threatens to expose a global conspiracy which appears intent on shielding the American sheeple from the knowledge that most teacher movies are subpar entertainments that offer little in the way of artistic merit. The source stumbled upon this wide-reaching conspiracy while attempting to Google a list of the worst teacher movies of all time. The result of the search revealed this! While the intent of the Google search was quite clear, Google mocks the freedom lover by offering intentionally misleading results through the introduction of a preposition that changes the entire direction of the search. Worst teacher in movies? One would be tempted to pause to wonder where they found the gall if one wasn’t so alarmed by the discovery of this covert attack on our freedom.Google, already known as a global leader in the suppression of free inquiry, is not the only search engine standing as an obstacle in the path of knowledge seekers. Yahoo and Bing also fail to offer front page listings of “worst teacher movie” search results on their mighty search engines. Yahoo pushes the insult even further by prominently featuring the 2014 television series Bad Teacher, which isn’t even a movie. While the 2011 film of the same name may very well land a spot on a worst teacher movie list, its inclusion would fall far short of warranting a front page search listing when its sole reason for appearing is dependent upon the forced addition of the preposition in.
Not surprisingly, the tables suddenly turn when ones searches for a list of the “best teacher movies.” The web abounds with such lists. I decided to sneak a peek at the top site on Google’s search page to see what these conspirators were working so hard to get us all to see. The top list, which was compiled by an IMDB list-making addict, confronted me with a one-two punch of mediocrity, claiming that Dead Poets Society and Mr. Holland’s Opus were the best teacher movies of all time. Believing that I must have clicked on a listing of the most saccharine and patronizing teacher movies of all time, I refreshed the webpage. The same horror appeared before my eyes.
I will admit that I understand the widespread public fondness for Dead Poets Society up to a certain point. I remember watching the abomination on VHS with my parents when I was in middle school. As previously stated, the film was overly saccharine and patronizing, but it did have a much higher production value than most teacher movies. The appeal of this film is somewhat akin to the misplaced reverence that people have for Downton Abbey. It may be a load of cliché-ridden tripe, but it’s just too pretty to make it easy for us to admit how bad it really is. Mr. Holland’s Opus, on the other hand, is an indefensible choice.
The Scapegoat would like to do his part in investigating this conspiracy by examining the lists of films that Google holds up as being the finest big screen realizations of our noble profession. The Scapegoat will offer itself as a living martyr and sacrifice some of the all that time off that teachers are rumored to have in excess supply for the purpose of reviewing some of the so-called best teacher films of all time. Naturally, you may expect the evaluations to be guided by a holistic rubric that will ensure that the assessments are authentic measurements of the merits of the filmmakers’ work.