State “end of course” tests are coming up next week (with a full quarter yet to go in the course, of course), and while we’re doing intensive test prep until them, I figure that on the test days, my students will have their full quota of stress already, so I’m planning on spending those class periods showing them a movie. But it is still algebra class, so it’d need to be a math-related movie. And I’ll give them a choice from a few options.
So far, I’m thinking that Apollo 13, Hidden Figures, and The Martian would all be good choices. I also thought of Good Will Hunting and A Beautiful Mind… but it’s been ages since I saw the former, and I’ve never seen the latter, so I’m not sure if there’s anything in either inappropriate to be showing in high school.
Alternately, does anyone have any other suggestions?
Personally I am not too censorious about language, but you should know most of those films have language that at least one parent will probably object to. Also some very mild sexual suggestion in places.
Of those, Hidden Figures is 100% safe and also a very good movie. Apollo 13 and The Martian I think can be rationalized. The others are good films but I don’t think the cost/benefit is worth trying to show them in school. Neither is really about math or problem-solving… Good Will Hunting is about a math genius learning to use his talents, and A Beautiful Mind is about a math genius overcoming some very difficult personal challenges.
There are actual math movies, animated movies about changing scale from very small to huge, about turning a sphere inside out, that sort of thing. If that appeals to you, i can look up the details. I’ve seen them shown at summer math camps.
That might feel more like work to your kids, though,
A school librarian once told me that many teachers don’t realze that they’re violating copyright law when they show movies. If you’ll notice, at the beginning of a DVD, it will say something like “Licensed for home use only.” So it’s ok to watch it at home but showing it to groups…? You can probably get them licensed for viewing with a group but I’m not sure whom you’d contact.
For many years, I couldn’t think of what to get my parents for Christmas. I often ended up getting them a DVD of a movie…every single frickin’ time, there would be something in the way of bad language or scenes that were problematic. I remember sitting with them to watch Fried Green Tomatoes and realizing, ‘Oh wait, this has the scene with the women using mirrors to look at their vaginas…’
I remember in Apollo 13 that scene where Kevin Bacon is “docking” the beer bottle in the glass, highly suggestive of sex. Hidden Figures highlights the racial discrimination and we’ve got BLM issues and controversy…would students grab on to those issues and ignore the math? I’m trying to remember the other movies you ask about.
In a related copyright story…for awhile, Mrs. L met at a coffee shop that had a group with people who (like her) wanted to learn to play guitar. Anybody could suggest a popular song, call out the chords for others etc. Then one night about ten years ago, a fellow from ASCAP showed up. He informed them that all these songs had copyrights and that they had to stop playing them or start paying him. He wanted $1000. The coffee shop owner said they couldn’t play there any more because he didn’t want to be sued. Mrs. L said the PTB at ASCAP were looking at meetup.com groups, craigslist, etc. to find people playing without paying.
The song is in the public domain in the United States and the European Union. Warner Chappell Music had previously claimed copyright on the song in the US and collected licensing fees for its use; in 2015 the copyright claim was declared invalid and Warner Chappell agreed to pay back $14 million in licensing fees.
Although this is probably technically true, in actual practice, school use of copyrighted materials has historically been treated quite liberally. Teachers often copy whole chapters from books, and do other things that strain the definition of “fair use.”
However, after doing a little Googling, I find that there is something called the TEACH Act, an amendment to the Copyright Act, regarding use of copyright materials in the classroom.
The TEACH Act amendment to the Copyright Act, codified at § 110(2), permits the performance of a reasonable and limited portion of films in an online classroom. Under the TEACH Act, there is the express limitation on quantity, and an entire film will rarely constitute a reasonable and limited portion. Using the TEACH Act Checklist will help instructors to comply with the requirements when showing films in online classes.
Looking at the checklist, one finds that it is acceptable to show “Entire performances of nondramatic literary and musical works,” but only “Reasonable and limited parts of a dramatic literary, musical, or audiovisual work.”
Which corroborates your librarian’s statement WRT most Hollywood movies.
October Sky, perhaps? True story of boys from a small coal mining town who get into rocketry, with the main character eventually ending up working for NASA.
I loved October Sky, though I haven’t seen it since it came out. IMDB indicates that there’s a small amount of sexual content, and a fair amount of (relatively mild) profanity.
I’m pretty sure that it would. Worse, it’d probably feel like work and they wouldn’t recognize it as math, either.
And @What_Exit and @Dewey_Finn , Moneyball and October Sky are both good suggestions.
I’m not too worried about profanity, as long as it’s not excessive. I mean, if you’re stranded alone on a waterless, lifeless planet with no way to get home, “I’m pretty much fucked” qualifies as appropriate language. Sexual content is iffy, though, if it’s anything more than just hints.
A pleasant, funny and highly rated Australian movie about a radio telescope, located in remote small-town Australia, used to track and communicate with Apollo 11 for the first moon landing.
Their computer gets wiped during a power failure, and there’s a certain amount of technical info as they resort to manual calculations of the position of the spacecraft.
That looks like a really good movie, with a bonus in that likely the students have not seen it yet, so it will hold their attention. I want to see it now.
I forgot about the section involving pentagrams in the Donald Duck movie! It may be wise to fast forward through that part so you don’t frighten any parents. It is very interesting, though.
Edit: I’m willing to bet you could find some mathematically inclined Mythbusters episodes that are school appropriate.
US copyright law provides an exemption for the display or performance of copyrighted material in the classroom or its online analog (section 110, the “face to face teaching” exception and the TEACH Act).
Section 110 (1) allows instructors and students can perform or display a copyrighted work during face-to-face teaching at a nonprofit educational institution in a classroom or other place normally devoted to instruction. There are no restrictions on the type or length of work and the copyright owner’s permission is not necessary.
(Bolding mine.)
In my district, R rated movies required parental permission, and they had to be closely aligned to the course content. Movies rated G, PG, or PG-13 were fine. You should check your own district’s policy beforehand.
