Anonymous, "Jack Black on Teaching ", contributed by Prerna Srigyan, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 5 February 2023, accessed 19 April 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/jack-black-teaching
Critical Commentary
This meme is a mashup of two frames from the famous coming-of-age American movie School of Rock (2003) with Jack Black in a leading role as Dewey Finn, a guitarist fired from a rock band who poses as a substitute music teacher at a private prep school. During the course of the movie, Dewey becomes invested in preparing students for a battle of the bands. This dialogue, originally attributed to George Bernard Shaw's play Man and Superman (1903), and popularized by this movie, has become something of a proverb for those who dismiss teaching as a second-rate profession. It shows how ideals of meritocracy undermine the intellectual and cultural work that teachers do.