"How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics."
--Henry David Thoreau
In Hollywood Goes to High School by Robert C. Bulman, chapter 4 focuses specifically on the difference between how urban schools and suburban schools are filmed. Both reflect a middle-class fantasy, but different middle-class fantasies. Within films about urban schools, the middle-class fantasy includes the rectification of problems by a middle-class hero, however within films about suburban schools the idea of expressing their individuality is enforced. In suburban school films there is an expectation of nonconformity, which is said to foster social acceptance. There is a contradictory in American culture between individuality and conformity. The difference between urban school films and suburban school films is that in suburban schools the students' achievements are measured by how those achievements compare to those of the other students. Rather than teacher-heroes that are evident throughout urban school films, within suburban ones, the heroes are students that are able to express their individuality as well as their independence. Symbolically, the ideals of small-town America lead to the requirement of conformity in order to be accepted. This sense of belonging that nearly every American longs for, end up challenging the idea of free expression and individualism. The contradictions discussed here are evident throughout high school films. The middle-class culture focuses directly on individualism which is completely opposite of the ideas seen throughout urban school films where, rather than individualism, the focus remains more on a teacher-hero that brings a class together and creates a class structure that is less about the individual and more about the class as a whole.
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