Running Head: THE BREAKFAST CLUB: PRINCIPAL EFFECTIVENESS 1

The Breakfast Club: Principal Effectiveness and

Educational Criticism

Allison Kray

College of Southern Nevada

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The Breakfast Club: Principal Effectiveness and

Educational Criticism

The breakfast club is a popular movie in the late 80s and 90s. Even today, the movie

strikes relevance and popularity. The movie is about five high school students attending

detention on a Saturday with the supervision of the vice principal, Mr. Venon. Mr Venon assigns

the students to an essay discussing who they think they are. With a lack of supervision

throughout the day, the students build relationships by participating in activities that are

permitted and discuss their secrets and struggles. By the end of the movie, they decide to write

the essay. A student, Brian writes to Mr.Vernon, in summary, that “it is essentially crazy for you

to assign a paper about who we think we are because you will still see us as what you see us”.

Mr. Vernon is fairly ineffective in having the student learn from their mistake, obey the

rules and improve their behavior. Essentially throughout the day, Mr. Vernon is very inactive in

the detention room and is clueless to the actions the students took throughout the day. For

example, the students smoked marijuana and left the room many times during detention. Mr.

Vernon did a great job on stating the rules and giving them an assignment, but did very little to

enforce those rules and be a resource to the students. His intention to assign the essay to write

about “who you think you are” was good, but did little to change any behavior. I believe

changing the essay prompt to be “evaluate what caused your bad behavior and how as a teacher

can I help you” would be more effective. This prompt will acknowledge the responsibility as

authority to understand a student and be a resource to help them become a better human being. I

also believe a change of perception of the students would be effective, too. Mr. Vernon holds his

views about the students firmly. He believes they are bad students, should not be respected and
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punished. Rather, if he was more compassionate and tried to understand the student’s actions, the

student would respond better to his authority.

Regardless of the vice principles ineffectiveness, the students did develop socially and

morally with their peers. In the detention room, the student revealed their deepest secrets. One

being that a student had a gun in his locker and had thoughts of suicide. Another student talked

about his broken and abusive household and how that affects him. Throughout the movie, the

students developed a deeper relationship with each other and became concerned about their

issues outside of school. The day in detention allowed them to develop social skills, built a

deeper understanding and removed the barriers of the stereotypes and preconceptional ideas.

As a future teacher, this movie holds many lessons. It gives the importance of having

students develop socially together and allows students to be free to be who they are. But it also

addresses the common issue of teachers looking down on students and being entitled. It is

important as a teacher, to always be invested in understanding the student’s behavior and

character. It is a constant role as a teacher to learn more about a student’s condition and how they

respond to situations. This movie shows the ineffectiveness of being a passive, entitled teacher

who believes they know the fate of a student. Holding a view and stereotype to a student only

gets students less motivated to change and hopeless to their conditions outside of school.