In Honor of the Oscars: The Best (and Worst) Education Movies of All Time

This year's crop of Academy Award nominees for Best Picture didn't include any films set in schools, but that doesn't mean filmmakers always avoid educational settings. From an unscientific poll of the GOOD editorial team, here are some of

In the 1997 flick 187, Samuel Jackson portrays science teacher Trevor Garfield who hightails it from New York City to Los Angeles after surviving a brutal attack by a gangster student. Guess what he finds in LA? Yep, students in gangs with na

When you drop out of school for the guy who ends up being too good to be true, make sure you have a caring teacher like Miss Stubbs from 2009's An Education in your corner. Miss Stubbs helps heartbroken dropout Jenny Mellor get back on th

In the 1995 comedy Billy Madison, Adam Sandler plays 27-year-old Billy Madison, a neer-do-well scion to a hotel chain. His father confesses that he bribed all Billy's teachers into giving his son good grades, so before he'll turn over

If there's one movie that expertly promotes the stereotype of the white teacher going to the hood and saving children of color, it's 1995's Dangerous Minds. From Michelle Pfieffer's portrayal of Marine-turned-teacher LouAnne J

The 1993 cult classic comedy Dazed and Confused portrays the last day of high school in a small Texas town in 1976. The bored seniors haze the incoming freshman, smoke weed, drink and try to hook up with each other. It's rated 98 percent

Thanks to the 1989 Academy Award nominated drama Dead Poets Society, a whole generation knows what carpe diem means. Indeed, Robin Williams portrays prep school English professor John Keating who unorthodoxically encourages his stude

1960's era parochial schools and the Catholic sex abuse scandal are central to 2008's Academy Award nominated Doubt.  Meryl Streep's Sister Aloysius Beauvier crosses swords with Philip Seymour Hoffman's Father Brendan Fly

The never-ending battle between teens and teachers is expertly portrayed in 1982's Fast Times at Ridgemont High. What would cinema be without Sean Penn's famous portrayal of stoned surfer dude Jeff Spicoli facing off against uptight h

Did your high school adventures include skipping school, cruising in a Ferarri, attending a baseball game and posing as the "Sausage King of Chicago"? If they didn't, that's because you're not Ferris Bueller. The 1986 John Hughes

Given that auto shop classes have gone the way of the manual typewriter, would a modern era Danny Zuko even be able to get a job after graduation? Still, 1978's Grease is a fun escape into the fantasy of the 1950's American high schoo

1989's Lean on Me stars Morgan Freeman as the bat-wielding principal of Paterson, New Jersey's Eastside High. Although some might find the film inspiring, film critic Roger Ebert sums it's problems up best when he says, "But

What happens when a group of New York City students are fed up with the run down classrooms in their high school, the dismissal of effective teachers and police brutality? In 1999's Light it Up, the students take hostages and stage a prot

With the national education conversation dominated by talk of dropout rates and kids reading below grade level, it's easy to forget about the needs of gifted students. 1991's Littl