What will education look like in the future?
April 11, 2013 12:53 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for movies and TV shows that have futuristic depictions of education. Can you help me find them?

The first scene that comes to mind is the the kids training with the light saber training droids in Star Wars. What other examples can you think of or link to? Descriptions from novels might help as well, but I'm mostly looking for visuals that I can share.
posted by madred to Education (14 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Serenity has some scenes of River in the classroom.

Wall-E has some preschoolers learning the alphabet.
posted by spunweb at 12:55 PM on April 11, 2013


There are multiple episodes/scenes in Star Treks: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine that do this. I'm sure others can name more but the one that comes to mind is "Rascals."
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:56 PM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


The Ender's Game movie isn't quite out yet, but the novels have a lot of time in classrooms, battle studies and educational game rooms.
posted by jacalata at 1:02 PM on April 11, 2013


The second Eleventh Doctor episode of Doctor Who starts in a 33th Century classroom, but doesn't stay there very long. Great visuals, though, with robotic instructors that look like versions of old fortune-telling booths.

The Twilight Zone's "Examination Day" is about dystopic future education.

The Jetsons had frequent scenes at the Little Dipper school (Leroy) and Orbit High School (Judy).
posted by Shepherd at 1:03 PM on April 11, 2013


In The 5th element (luc besson), the heroin catches up on centuries of knowledge/information/history by looking at a screen at high speed.
posted by PardonMyFrench at 1:03 PM on April 11, 2013


I especially like Captain Picard Day in school on Star Trek: Next Generation.
posted by jetlagaddict at 1:09 PM on April 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


No one has brought up The Jetsons? Well no one supplied a link.
posted by brookeb at 1:19 PM on April 11, 2013


Toward the Terra is full of scenes like this. The comic in particular has fantastic visuals of the educational space station, but the TV series and film work too. You also get a contrast between the learning environments of the elites being indoctrinated by computers and the rebel psychic kids.

They Were Eleven is about the practical final exam of a group of students on a spaceship. No classroom scenes per se, but lots of discussion of how education works in different societies.
posted by thetortoise at 1:38 PM on April 11, 2013


Dare I say Battle Royale? It's dystopian, but it's school, so...
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 1:42 PM on April 11, 2013


Well, it depends on how optimistic you are about the future. A counterexample to Star Trek would be the current show "Revolution" (or similarly "Falling Skies"), which has a pretty remedial version of the one-room schoolhouse for the ragtag bunch of kids...
posted by acm at 1:49 PM on April 11, 2013


An early scene in Serenity features a futuristic outdoor classroom with everyone sitting at, essentially, integrated iPad desks. And Earth 2 has that whole cyber-augmented tutor character named Yale (totally creepy subplot, I recommend it!).
posted by katya.lysander at 2:23 PM on April 11, 2013


Two favorite awful but great movies:

Soldier features some scenes of the children selected at birth to become emotionless killing machines being educated in the ways of the new world order. (Hard to believe that the script was by the guy who wrote the original drafts of Blade Runner, but I still do love this terrible movie.)

Equilibrium has some 1984-esque scenes of Christian Bale's kid in school. This one might be less useful, it's been a while since I've seen it.
posted by emcat8 at 10:43 PM on April 11, 2013


The 2009 Star Trek showed a young Spock in a Vulcan primary school.
posted by evoque at 5:19 AM on April 12, 2013


If you graduate from Galaxy High maybe you can go to Space Academy.
posted by Rob Rockets at 8:47 AM on April 12, 2013


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