Headscratchers / School of Rock

• Why is the battle of the bands during the day and not at night?
  • Well why not? Maybe the venue had another event scheduled for the night, and the battle of the bands was arranged for the day. It seems as though it's a proper contest, possibly for television or leading to something else - so in that event it might make more sense to have during the day.
• Shouldn't one of the parents have called the school and complained about Dewey if they are that fed up about his teaching style?
  • Well the timeline of Dewey's teaching is only about three weeks. I doubt they would pay that much attention to what their kids are being taught at first. Or maybe they accept that things might be a bit unsure with a substitute joining and needing some time to figure things out. Or more simply, they were waiting until parents night to voice any concerns.
• How long was Dewey on the floor for? It seems like he didn't wake up until the next morning.
  • He at least woke up in his own bed, albeit in the same state of undress and position - it's likely that his antics caused the gig to end early, and a band member dragged him home, dropped him on the mattress and left him to sleep it off.
• What is a kid like Freddy doing in a school like this?
  • Well we know nothing about his level of intelligence, so we can assume he is a gifted child or has rich parents who want him to do well.
  • Freddy seems to show signs of ADD/ADHD, and the ability to hyperfocus and apply himself when he's interested in something. His parents may have enrolled him in prep school expecting better discipline might make him apply himself (which, of course, doesn't work).
  • Nothing we actually see of Freddy suggests he's any less intelligent than his classmates, just that he's a troublemaker who finds actual schoolwork boring. To put it simply, there's always kids like that no matter how posh and exclusive the school. Presumably, he is intelligent enough to have got into the school, his parents could afford the fees (or he qualified for some form of scholarship), but he's just currently unconcerned about his grades.
• What was the point of showing Ms. Mullins reprimanding that girl in her office? The whole scene just seems out of place.
  • It's to show how her job has made her unapproachable. She's not trying to upset the girl and clearly wants to have a better rapport with her students but she's just not good at it. This ties into her later complaints about how she used to be fun, but you can't be fun when you're principal at a prep school.
• Why is Dewey still sleeping at Ned's if he got kicked out?
  • It was the next day. Ned was probably giving him a few days to find a new place.
  • It's also Ned's place and Ned has no backbone. It's hard to force someone to leave if they really don't want to go.
• I know we can always blame the idiot ball but how did Dewey's mentioning of slapping kids in the face not bring up immediate red flags?
  • Ms Mullins is very stressed out and relieved that she found a substitute so quickly, so she might have just ignored it. In the early 2000s, there may have been some holdovers from when that wasn't considered as bad a thing to do, so maybe she assumed he'd had to teach at a rougher school where that kind of force was needed. She handles it very well, saying "we don't use corporal punishment" and telling him to send anyone that needs to be disciplined to her.
  • She probably also thought he was simply joking; a somewhat tasteless joke, but a joke all the same. Think of it this way: all she really knew for certain about "Ned" at that point was that he came highly recommended by a teacher at another school that is presumably as prestigious as Horace Green given she's apparently an acquaintance of a teacher there - that recommendation wouldn't exist if the guy was truly serious about "smacking kids in the head" (which implies a Dope Slap rather than a slap in the face - still not something a teacher should be doing but more acceptable at that time than slapping a child in the face).
• With the effort Dewey spent teaching them fake math lessons, couldn't he have actually had them look at a math or English or science or social studies work book and at least assigned them a little homework just as a cover story?
  • If Dewey was that smart, he wouldn't have resorted to identity theft in the first place.
  • What we see/hear of Dewey's fake lessons are way below the teaching standard for dealing with 10-year-old kids, especially in an exclusive prep school. One of the kids even has to correct him during his "math lesson". He can't even write a convincing math equation on the board when Mullins interrupts their band practice. One of the main points of the ruse is that Dewey literally cannot teach the kids anything academically that isn't music related and, after telling the kids not to tell their parents about the whole rock band thing, he probably thought they would all be smart/conscientious enough to make their own excuses to the parents regarding coverups and homework assignments.
• How was Dewey able to push past a police officer, Ned, Patty, and Ms. Mullins to get out the door and run down the hall, with guitars in hand?
• Parents are storming Roz's office the day after parent-teacher night and that action takes them all the way to the Battle of the Bands. The problem is what are the odds that none of them have day jobs. In my experience, the richer the parent, the less likely that they'll be available during the school day.
  • Maybe they all took the day off.
  • And if your child has suddenly run off and gone missing, you're going to call your work and say there's a family emergency. And some of the parents don't seem to have their partners with them, so maybe not all of them had the day off.
• Dewey asks Ms Mullins about being paid in cash, she brushes the question off. OK. So presumably, Ned's bank account was part of the information that came from the school that recommended him to Horace Green. At some point before Patty blew the lid on Dewey's identity fraud, wouldn't Ned have checked his bank balance and gone "Horace Green? What the - I've never worked there. Why is my account showing a credit from them? This must be a mistake."
  • That was what happened in the movie. Ned received a cheque from Horace Green in the mail made out to him which is what confused him, leading to him preparing to call the school and Dewey having to tell Ned what was going on.
  • For a company to direct deposit a pay cheque, the employee has to provide that information, it's not automatic. Dewey/Ned is paid by cheque, and doesn't receive his first pay for a couple of weeks.
• How did nobody ask to see Dewey/Ned's ID on his first day?

• What type of School hires someone without a background check? For all they knew, Dewey could have been a legitimate sexual predator.
  • He was pretending to be his roommate, Ned Schneebly. Presumably they did do a background check on Ned or he was in some sort of database after already passing a background check. And they called the number on file and reached who they thought was Ned. The only odd thing is that they didn't ask to see a valid ID before giving him access to the kids.
  • Ms Mullins is extremely stressed out and they called Ned from a phone number on his resume or whatever, so that was probably good enough for her, and she was just relieved they could bring someone in that day.
  • If you call someone named Ned and someone named Ned shows up in the middle of the day, that's going to be good enough. Dewey gave off a lot of red flags, and that's what makes this hard to believe, but letting the dude walk in, sign some forms, and get to work is itself believable. How likely is it for someone to commit identity theft in order to be a substitute teacher?

• They should have been disqualified for lying about their illness to get into battle of the bands.
  • Well the judge was being a Jerkass for denying them an audition just because one of the children ran off and had to be found.

• Shouldn't Mullins have been suspicious that someone on the phone was asking all those questions?
  • Dewey first said that Ned wasn't there, so she assumed he was asking questions to pass on the information to Ned.
  • On a similar note, when Dewey answered the original phone call from Ms Mullins he was speaking in his voice until "Ned" came back and he put on a fake deep voice with a bit of an accent to pretend to be Ned. Assuming he kept the same voice for the rest of the call, you'd think Mullins would have noticed that "Ned" sounds nothing like he did on the phone...but he does sound an awful lot like the person who answered the first phone call?

• You'd think that a school with such a "strict code of conduct" would at least have the decency to do a background check/ check credentials of the suspicious person that was hired.
  • They would have...on Ned Schneebly. As mentioned above, the bigger mistake was that somehow nobody checked Dewey's ID on his first day or that there was a photo of Ned anywhere when they did the background check that could have confirmed they weren't the same person.

• How did no one notice the children out playing all day?
  • When they went to the audition? Some of the children stayed behind to help cover it up with a pre-recorded video.
  • And that likely would not have been an all day thing. Maybe a couple of hours at most.

• If Dewey can hear the classical music through the floor, shouldn't the whole school be able to hear their rock music? Granted, they soundproofed the room, but there was only so much they could do.
  • Someone did hear the music, and Dewey had to improvise a musical math lesson.

• The kids are smart. Would they really have believed the whole class project story?
  • Freddy in particular still views the whole thing as "a three week vacation" after the jig is up, so they possibly wouldn't voice any concerns.
• Shouldn't the parents be suspicious that their kids suddenly don't have any homework when a new substitute arrives?
  • They were suspicious. That's why they were asking at parents' night.
• Are parents forbidden from contacting the teachers/principal at this school? It seems that most of what the parents were upset about at parent's night are things that they would have called the teacher/principal to complain about.
  • Prestigious schools are usually attended by the children of upper middle class or outright wealthy parents. Meaning the parents are likely white collar workers with all sorts of responsibilities while their kids are at school, and don't want to keep the stress going into the evening by making calls or arranging meetings when there's a parents' night in literally a couple of weeks when they can air all their grievances.
• Any of the parents or staff could have seen the posters Dewey put up and immediately become suspicious.
  • Mullins mentions that she's never been to the part of town where the bar Dewey takes her is. Dewey/Ned's apartment looks like it's in an inner city area, it may be fair to assume that not many Horace Green teachers/parents live in that part of town. Or even if they did, they just aren't paying attention to telephone pole posters.
  • And the parents might not have even seen Dewey until parents' night. So by then the posters might have been taken down (he's found his band after all).
  • As someone who's taught at a private school, I rarely had contact with parents unless they had immediate, serious concerns (my daughter doesn't get a B), and even then only at big functions. I never ran into them outside of school, and I lived in a small enough town that I did meet someone who was the neighbor of one of the students I didn't teach (different grade). For upscale New Yorkers not to recognize an almost-broke Dewey is the most believable part of the film to me.