A Parody of Pedagogy

I revisited the scene from the woefully over-rated film Donnie Darko in which Drew Barrymore, playing a high school English teacher, is going over "The Destructors" with her class. It's a short scene, but perfectly captures a Hollywood or at least public perception of teaching literature. Barrymore's question is absurd on its face; her mannerisms are even more of a parody. Slowly removing her glasses, pacing around the room, tapping the text on her hand, she tries to connote thoughtfulness and deep thinking without actually encouraging it in her students. I'm sorry, but asking, "What is Greene trying to communicate in this passage?", as if each paragraph of a story has some secret meaning waiting to be unlocked, isn't going to get you much more than silence and befuddlement, which is why she so quickly turns to the "cold call."