From the Wikipedia entry: Accepted is a 2006 comedy motion picture about a group of high school seniors who, after being rejected from all colleges to which they had applied, create their own college. ... At one point Bartleby [the main character] wants to end the charade before it begins, but is overcome with pity after realizing that everyone in the college is in the exact same position he is in having been rejected from every other college. Thus begins the first year of classes, founded on the revolutionary notion of students choosing what they want to learn and teaching the very same courses. ... Bartleby successfully argues his way to a one-year temporary accreditation. The students return to the new college and begin a full year of ad-hoc classes and partying.

It is amazing to see so many “progressive” educational ideas in what is a fairly plodding genre film. I say plodding because the educational theorizing is carried on the back of a fairly formulaic narrative framework of teenage comedy (with not much of the inventiveness of American Pie). That is not to say that it is not an enjoyable film - it’s 36% rating on RottenTomatoes probably underating it - IMDB is much closer with 6.2. What makes it particularly interesting is this strange blend of Dewey and Montessori applied to higher education. The idea of students learning what they want when they are ready for it being straight out of Montessori (which, of course, is never applied beyond primary school). The school as a laboratory preparing students for real life by engaging with practice would be Dewey. (Rousseau would probably find justification for some of its cooky ideas in Emile in it, too.)

Where it is educationally fairly radical is the point where students truly choose classes they want: doing nothing, mixing drinks, staring at girls, but also doing art. This is where many reform projects typically fall apart when taken mainstream. Students are encouraged to choose but only certain choices are accepted which takes away the motivating element of freedom. But the reform usually relies just on such motivation to work and without it, fails. In other words, if we give students a choice, we must be prepared to live with the choice they make (I have made this mistake many times in adult education). Where the film is inaccurate is the assumption that all of these free motivating choices (which it makes its best not to judge) also result in happy liberal middle-class learning (also the main characters are reliable middleclass, and their approach to their charges is in part missionary). This relies on a typical enlightenment idea of ennobling knowledge. Here the film is prohibited by the narrative structure to discuss the idea of undesirable (in that they are unexpected) consequences of the free choice offered to students.

It would be interesting, but beyond my commitment to this topic at the moment, to investigate how the images (frames) activated by this narrative are integrated by its audience.