ABSTRACT
In the 1986 film Hoosiers, an early scene portrays basketball coach Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman, in his role as a civics teacher at the fictional Hickory High School. He is dressed in the 1950s male teacher uniform of shirt and tie, and as a student gives an oral report to the class, Dale leans back in his desk chair with a bemused air, a well-traveled man whose teaching job in civics is to bring an appreciation of some of the outside world to Hickory, Indiana. After school, however, his teaching shifts to the basketball court, where he creates his own world and assimilates his players into a hoops culture that is just a bit foreign to them.
