I loved this movie! I loved the scene where (as I remember it) a capsule is circling the earth, and as it passes Australia, they show a group of aboriginal (sorry, is there a better word to use here?) people watching. I don’t want to go into detail and spoil it.
My junior year in high school there was a class that was two hours a day called American Civ. It was a combination of American history and American lit. They tried to integrate the two as much as possible. We got to see 5 or 6 movies that had some American historical content, but were more about culture than actual history. They were mostly old B&W films. Were they still in copywrite in the late 1960s?
Good Will Hunting is a great movie, but I’d use caution before showing it in class.
Here are some examples of what I mean:
There’s also a scene that I can’t find on YouTube, in which Skylar says to Will that she won’t sleep with him again until she gets to meet his friends.
“Well, it’s 3 in the morning; they’re probably still up,” Will says, and he starts calling one of them.
“Oh, my God. Men are shameless. If you’re not thinking with your wiener, you’re acting directly on its behalf.”
“Yeah, and on behalf of my wiener… can I get an advanced payment?”
There’s a lot of profanity in the film, too. Apparently, the F word is used about 100 times.
Anyway. It’s a great movie, but I wouldn’t show it in high school except to maybe seniors. And it’s not really about math, exactly.
No joke when I was in 4th grade when I was 10 or so (I forgot what grade 10 year olds are in but it was definitely 4th grade) my teacher as part of a “Fun Day” we all watched Raiders of the Lost Ark, including the ending. I feel if you were to ask him his justification would have been “It says it’s rated PG!”.
When I was in middle school VCRs were still pretty rare and there was one kid in class whose family had one. So apparently the teacher had just given on educating because he’d often wheel in a TV and play whatever movie that kid would bring in. One of them was in fact Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Have you looked at what parents complain about these days? One kid of one conservative parent in your class, and your whole life is going to turn into a shitshow of schoolboard meetings, lawyers, and apperances on the local news.
I saw the University of Texas Libraries website before I posted. I went to the law, itself and the Brandeis University website (link in my post), but I’ll quote here from the American Library Association. The ALA is the oldest and largest nonprofit association of its kind and is certainly an authority on copyright and fair use in classrooms. The excerpts are a little longer, which is why I didn’t use it the last time, but I think it’s worth reading. Bolding is mine:
When the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act was
enacted in 2002, librarians hoped that it would provide some clarity on copyright
exceptions for the digital delivery of content for distance education. In reality,
understanding what is permitted under the TEACH Act in combination with the DigitalMillennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and existing exceptions like fair use have become more confusing to many practitioners.
and
Librarians frequently are asked by teachers at all levels of education – from
kindergarten to college – about the permissibility of showing films in the classroom. For once, the Copyright Act actually provides a straightforward answer: the Act contains a specific exception for the performance of works such as films in the classroom. If librarians and instructors take advantage of existing law, they can engage in a range of classroom-based video and film performance activities (e.g,. the showing of a film) without having to secure any additional license or permissions.
17 U.S.C. § 110(1) permits “the performance or display of a work by instructors
or pupils in the course of face-to-face teaching activities of a nonprofit educational
institution, in a classroom or similar place devoted to instruction….” It applies to > showing of entire films, and also to those that involve less extensive clips from one or several sources.
So the Texas Universities website admins are apparently among those who, understandably, have been confused. Note that I’m addressing only in-classroom use. The use of movies in distance education is a different can of worms.
Really, it’s legal to show full-length movies in a classroom. There are certain caveats, e.g., the movie must have been legally obtained, but the millions of teachers who’ve shown full-length movies in their classrooms for instructional purposes have not been violating the law.
Your link to Brandeis didn’t work for me, for some reason, and I was too lazy to look at the actual amendment, but now that you pointed it out, I think you’re right. Although IANAIPL (intellectual property lawyer), it would seem that only paragraphs (1) and (2) of Section 110 apply specifically to in-classroom use, and they make no distinction between dramatic and non-dramatic works. Paragraph (4) and others make the distinction, but seem to be referring to other situations.
I’ll just note, however, that the studios that make those dramatic films are the ones most likely to file lawsuits if they suspect infringements, so UT may have been engaging in some CYA.
Swallow the cannibalism? You mean, not be offended by it or something else? They were, uh, very uptight about s-e-x. My mom waited to give me the talk till I was about 21. “I feel bad we never talked about it,” she said. I asked her what she wanted to know.
Jeez, my kid got to watch Night of the Living Dead in school.
I think the first three are all very good choices Apollo 13, Hidden Figures and The Martian. Let parents know beforehand and give them the ability to opt out, but these are all movies that a high schooler can go to without adult supervision, so it’s hard to imagine credible problems with the content.
The Boy Scouts used Apollo 13 in their NYLT youth leadership week-long course. I was involved with NYLT for many years, and my chief complaint, besides seeing it way too many times, is it’s pretty long at 2 hours and 20 minutes. I read that BSA had negotiated a license agreement to use in the course.
I just want to yell at all the Overprotective Parents and Spineless School Officials out there: “You are impeding your kids’ growth as human beings by sheltering them from anything you don’t approve of!”
I turned down teaching Sunday School when I found out a particular student would be in my class. His angry Helicopter Mom had raked every previous teacher over the coals (not only to TPTB, but also to every other parent) if they showed anything PG-rated in class. Not only a movie, but books, worksheets, language… she’d be actively looking for anything to yell about.
.
Tangent: I had a student* whose mother would drag administrators and teachers into long meetings where she’d threaten to sue the school if anything was “inappropriate”, or if her precious child got anything less than a C…
I know exactly what you mean. The last two weeks, our preacher has been talking about the Exodus from Egypt during her sermon, and the most recent lesson was about how the pursuing Egyptian Army was swallowed up by the Red Sea.
