See: Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, The Substitute

You have chosen...poorly.

Hollywood teaches: Teachers are the most noble human beings and it is they alone who can lift children out of lives of poverty and crime and force them to realize their potential. It sounds like a good concept, but to make it work Hollywood has to transform every inner city high school into Class of Nuke'Em High. Low riders bounce in parking lots, violent rap music blasts from stereos, and every kid is either a gang member or being menaced by gang members. Gang members especially like to gun down kids with good grades and dreams of escaping the ghetto for a productive life.

By listening to the kids and challenging them, the noble teacher can inspire them to abandon lives of crime, stand up to gangs, and go to MIT and become a mathematician. Also, substitute teachers are usually gun-toting mercenaries willing to shoot their way through a drug ring and inspire the kids to excel.

The reality: American high schools are boring prisons for teenagers and the teachers are humorless tenured shits who would just as soon crush a kid's dreams as inspire them to sharpen a pencil. High schoolers can expect to watch a video vaguely related to their subject and then do busy work out of a book while their teacher text messages her therapist.



See: Crimson Tide, Hunt for Red October, The Abyss

Submarines may be a day at the beach in real life, but in the movies they are inevitably trapped in a nightmare scenario.

Hollywood teaches: U-boats were known in the German Navy as "Iron Coffins." Hollywood accepts this premise and assumes modern submarines are iron coffins with doomsday payloads, half-crazy captains, and an unfortunate habit of running into things underwater. Submarines always have cause to test the limits of their deep-dive capability and always lose contact with someone important, placing the entire planet in jeopardy of nuclear holocaust.

The reality: Imagine a ship with no windows and especially cramped conditions. Welcome to life as a modern submariner, enjoy the stay.

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