I was substituting today for a high school biology class, and the discussion of “biology in the movies” came up. I asked the students what happened to the aliens at the end of War of the Worlds and not a single person knew! “Uh… they all, like, died, or something…” Then I asked them how the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were made, and nobody knew that either! What is our educational system coming to?
Sounds like you’re not living up to your nick!
So, did you venture to educate them at least?
Yes, our nation’s children are clearly not watching enough movies! The government needs to start purchasing portable DVD players for our kids to maintain pop culture parity!
I admit to having hoped, when I was still in high school, that my fellow students were simply too doped out of their gourd to care about attaining any sort of knowledge. Getting out into the real world, it seems that regardless of your daily pot intake, most people still just don’t care about attaining any sort of knowledge. Just look at the number of people who don’t believe in evolution in the US. Living in Japan, while evolution isn’t an issue, there are any number of equally patently false ideas that are commonly accepted as fact. 97% of everyone, anywhere in the world is pretty much willing to just go with the flow. As a teacher, I would hope that you could stress as much as possible the importance of critical thinking and the scientific method much more than simply teaching facts.