There’s only one teaching-related show worth the bother of turning the telly on right now, and it’s certainly not Teachers (sorry Alan). It’s Rule The School, which not even Children’s BBC seem to be making much of a noise about – it doesn’t even seem to have a page on the CBBC site. They’re showing it at 5 on Thursday afternoons and at 7.40 on Friday mornings, denying it the Sunday late morning slot which could make all the difference to its popularity.
The premise is simple: bunch of kids get to run a school where the pupils are actual real teachers and the lessons are in ‘cool’ things such as text messaging and dancing like Justin Timberlake. Maybe the familiar roles helps the reality TV format work well, because the kids very quickly settle down into being harsh (minor indiscretions can lead to detentions involving listening to Scooter at top volume) and the adult pupils get down to acting like kids right away.
Like all the best reality TV, the programme works because you quickly start relating to the participants as real people, but you also start seeing them as archetypes. Of course, some of the archetypes you’re forced to invent on the fly. Archetype invention is great fun in itself but what drives my enjoyment of the show is still mostly like (the dance ‘teacher’ is ridiculously cool and already the best teacher in the world and he’s only 12 or something) and detest (the beardy ginger ‘pupil’ thinks he’s smart but he’s a plank).