Teaching students to watch movies...

[Lindsey Dowling]

Students love to watch movies. Many teachers like to give movies for one reason or another. However, we need to view movies as another form of history. We need to teach our students how to “watch” historical movies just like we need to teach them how to use their textbooks, how to take notes and how to decide what information is relevant. Many Hollywood movies take important historical events or people and compact them so that they can make the most revenue. Many of these movies end up being biased with the directors, producers and writers often taking liberties with the original stories. It is important to teach the background information with the movie. Students will be able to relate to the movie characters but may find it difficult to connect with what historical event or person is being represented. We need to make sure that the students do not get lost in the fantasy of it all. We need to help them decipher the main themes and how these representations are influencing them today.

Movies also take a few class periods to watch. It might be more beneficial for me to review the film and only show the most relevant parts of the movie. I can incorporate them into my lessons. This way the students will get a break from lecturing but I won’t lose a whole day of class on irrelevant information. I think movies are a great way to bring history to life for students but it is hardly completely accurate so we should be careful when using it predominately for the subject content.