Name: Laura Coall
Student Number: 40931614
Course: EDUC 4019. Professional Issues in Education
Tutor: Serene Choi
Tutorial Time: Monday, 1pm
Assignment Title: Film Review: Hating Alison Ashley
Date Submitted: Friday, 9th December, 2005
Critical Analysis of the film using some of the tools of analysis introduced in just schooling
The film, Hating Alison Ashley is based on Robin Klein’s book. It tells the story of fourteen year old Erika Yurken, growing up in Barringa East, a low socio-economic area in Melbourne’s outer suburbs. Bordering Barringa East is wealthy suburb Barringa Heights, a posh, upper class area whose students go to local grammar schools. This film deals with Erika, at Barringa East State High School, but believing she’s destined for greater things, trying to come to terms with perfect Barringa Heights resident and new girl at Barringa East State School, Alison Ashley. Hating Alison Ashley also explores the influence family has on teenagers and their self esteem, as well as stereotyping various types of teachers.
The film opens with a poignant scene of Barringa Heights children. The audience sees them in white, dancing ballet on perfectly manicured lawns, playing tennis on a private tennis court with a cook standing eagerly by with cold lemonade, teenage girls in Kyle Grammar School uniforms, perfectly clean and crisp. The transition to life at Barringa East State School is abrupt and sudden, cleverly contrasting with the clean image of Barringa Heights. The first person we are introduced to is Barry Hollis, the 9C bad boy. Within the first two minutes of the film we see him tying a classmate up, painting graffiti a wall, smoking a cigarette and then setting that same wall on fire. Lunchtime at Barringa East is chaos at the best: lockers are moved out into the courtyard, there is rubbish everywhere, fights, paint throwing, bullying, swearing, smoking, drinking, pornography and disorder. There are no teachers on duty, they seek instead to take refuge in the staff room.
The 9C classroom environment itself is distracting. The building is falling down, there is constant noise outside of car horns and lawnmowers, describe school.
The audience is introduced to three main teachers: Miss Nigella Belmont, History and Geography; Mr. Jeff Kennard, Physical Education; and Miss Lattimore, Art. The audience also has a small insight into the teaching styles of two other staff members: Mr. Cheal the librarian, and Mrs Orlando, the sick bay attendant. We see each teacher with different stress management techniques, depending largely on their personalities.
Miss Nigella Belmont
Miss Belmont is 9C’s History and Geography teacher. Our first impressions are of a strong, middle aged, dominant woman. She commands authority and attention from her class the moment she walks into the room. She almost immediately gets the class’ attention, even Barry Hollis, with a loud “QUIET!!” We see her throughout the movie hitting various students with either her hand or a newspaper to either stop them talking, pay attention, or sit up straight.
Her style of teaching is very teacher focussed; however she expects high achievement from all her students. We see one incident when she’s handing back assignments she set on Greenland. She is very dissatisfied with her students work “I spent hours going through your assignments on Greenland, and afterwards, I felt… dirty… like a part of my life had been stolen forever… so now… I’m going to steal a part of yours.” She then proceeds to tell each student, in front of the entire class, what they did wrong, ripping them up and throwing them in the bin: “Ah, James Adams… What can I say about half a page of grammatically confused drivel, written in red pen that confuses Greenland with Queensland? I know,” (She throws it into the bin).
We don’t actually see Miss Belmont’s actual teaching style in action at all throughout the movie. Although 9C is a low-streamed class, the fact that assignments are written in red pen and a student did confuse Queensland and Greenland may suggest that she didn’t do a good job teaching them in the first place, her focus is instead on maintaining a quiet classroom environment.
As well as this, while on the school camp, we see much leadership training, where their learning is largely self directed, from writing their own drama, to river crossings.
However, despite her strictness, Miss Belmont established instant rapport with Erica. Her first discourse with Erica: “Girl with one eyebrow, what’s your name? … Ah, Erika, that means ‘Great Heroine’.” Erica is nicknamed Erk, Yuk or Gherkin by her classmates and family- hardly nicknames of one who believes she is destined for the stage. Erica sees in Miss Belmont a welcome retreat from her life, to her, Miss Belmont represents feminine power and authority at its best, as the women in her life seem to hold no power or control at all: her mother works at the local Dancing Leprechaun pub, and Valjoy, her sister, seeks continual attention from the men in her life. Jedda, her sister, escapes reality by pretending she’s a horse. “Miss Belmont made me feel so special… I was in heaven.” However, she doesn’t put up with Erica’s hypochondria for long, “What’s the problem? Lost your voice? And they say that miracles can’t happen! Well, that’ll teach you to lock tonsils with Barry Hollis.”
At the school camp at the end of the year, we see that Miss Belmont still hasn’t changed in her temperament. She is dressed in army clothes, and carries a metal detector. She is incredibly firm with her rules… “three rules, harmony, and blind obedience… And please remember the camp is surrounded by many excellent places to hide bodies.”
Despite the presence of a male teacher, she is the one in control of the various situations that arise. She locks Barry Hollis in the shed, stealing his cigarettes, and even he defers to her by the end of the camp. She is physically strong, able to wrestle with Barry Hollis, however we see that she is able to bring out Barry’s gentle and submissive side: “you know there’s no need for this, they’ll destroy your health Miss Belmont.”
The only time we see Miss Belmont adoring one of her students is in a very special scene where we see Alison Ashley walking down a filthy corridor of the school, light shining behind her from the glass doors, with the teachers gazing adoringly at her and thrusting trophies and A+ assignments into her hands.
Jeff Kennard
Jeff Kennard is Barringa East’s Physical Education teacher. The audience’s first impressions of him are a physically fit, oversexed and overworked middle aged man. His appearance is disturbing; he wears blue bike shorts with short tight football shorts over the top, with a bum-bag over his groin, a tight white shirt and a blonde moustache. When he walks, he leads with his pelvis, with a swagger of self-confident assurance, “I put the fizz in physical education… we will rip through this district like a fart.”
However despite his confidence in himself and in his sports teams, we learn from dialogue and from his classes at school camp, that he is incredibly inept at what he does. We continually see him in a position of weakness, even after trying to seduce Miss Belmont, we see him falling over a chair. Slapstick humour accompanies him wherever he goes. We see him limping back from the bushwalk, falling into rivers, tripping over, and being trampled on. He is usually the butt of Barry Hollis’ jokes: the most memorable is when Barry steals his clothes after a midnight rendezvous with Miss Belmont, and the entire class sees. Mr Kennard is unable to enforce any sort of authority over the class, perhaps due to the fact that he tries to befriend them and finds the things they do humorous, for example, when Barry Hollis lights a fire in the girls’ toilets early in the morning, and the girls run out half naked to the sound of applauding and cheering from the boys in the class… and Mr Kennard.
His relationship with Miss Belmont is a strange one- they are obviously sleeping together. Despite his initial advances, she seems to be the sexual predator. In front of the children however, she belittles him and shows him disrespect, “Get up, Jeffrey.”
Miss Lattimore
Miss Lattimore is the art teacher. She is overly cool, calm and collected. We first see her when she’s doing tai chi in the playground while on duty at lunchtime, oblivious to the noise and chaos around her. She’s a new age guru, young, with long blonde hair, and it seems she is able to relate to the students. Her manner has a calming and reassuring effect on the students- at the camp, we see them happily sitting in a circle discussing ideas, and meditating together. She is able to diffuse situations between students easily, never by imposing her own will, but by enlisting the help of the rest of the students to take her side, while making it look like she’s taking the particular disagreeing student’s side by giving them a chance to share their ideas.
It seems that she is one who would play favourites though. She is amused with Barry Hollis’ pranks and doesn’t do anything to stop his fight with Erika. She exchanges a look with Miss Belmont when this happens,
COMPARISON: Barringa East and Kyle Grammar school.
Later on in the film Alison Ashley and Erica compare their perceived experiences at Barringa East with Kyle Grammar. Secretly, Erica has always wanted to attend that school, but is jealous that Alison Ashley has already been enrolled and accepted there, her time at Barringa East is merely fill in time before the end of the term. She calls it a school for ‘snobs,’ and “All you do there is learn how to throw dinner parties.”
Alison: It did have the highest scores in year 12 in the country.
Dodgy family life for Erica
Contrast happy supportive though weird family (Erica) with non supportive uncommitted parents (Alison)
Evaluation of the situation and its implications in terms of democratic schooling and social justice, from a range of actors’ perspectives
In regards to teaching practice, consider:
- curriculum
- pedagogy
- assessment
- teacher/student relationships (look at last assignment…)
- school/community relationships
Make recommendations for reconstructed teaching practices within the school illustrated by drawing on literature on social justice and democratic schooling and EQ’s professional standards for teachers: guidelines for professional practice, and BTR’s Professional standards for graduates that:
- Improves the quality of students’ experiences of schooling
- Is more socially just
- Democratic
- Empowers students in terms of politics and lifestyle
- Provides greater political and critical awareness
MR Kennard: male teachers strategy vs miss Belmont for power and control- Barry hollis respects miss Belmont, even says, “theres no need for this.”
Bibliography
Gale, T., & Densmore, K. (2002). Just Schooling: Explorations in the Cultural Politics of Teaching. Buckingham:Open University Press
Pigford, T (2001). Improving Teacher-Student relationships: What’s up with that? The Clearing House, 74 (6) 337-340 | 
