Yes, it should and there is a wealth of vital and engaging media on WWII. I have no issue with the movie as a fictional piece of entertainment (or for the WOW, EXPLOSIONS!!! effect), I do take issue with choosing it to teach impressionable fifth graders who can be so distracted by the theatricality of it, they miss the message *because * of the fact that there are so many better choices. There is so much actual footage, why the need for dramatizing it? The real thing is just as engaging…and accurate!
Is it your contention that the argument that PH lacks historical context and contains many historical inaccuracies is wrong? Do you take issue with authority of those who say that? I’m not a film or WWII expert, therefore I’m going to have to rely on those who do to explain the inaccuracies. That being said, Hollywood movies are not generally made for accuracy; they are made to entertain, which is fine.
OK, specific examples: the situation room scene: bullshit dramatization. Surely, the attack was discussed in the situation room by FDR and his cabinet, but this depiction was dramatized to entertain you.
Why don’t you actually watch the movie before jumping down my throat?
What’s the message?
In what way was the dramatization bullshit? By that I mean: presumably, by calling it bullshit, you seem to believe that the movie scene had some material differences from reality, differences that fifth graders’ educations would be adversely affected by seeing uncorrected. What were they?
There’s no love lost between those two armies of emotionless automatons.
Also, people mistakenly have pointed out that the circa 1970 Kidd class destroyers seen blowing up in Pearl Harbor are a filming error. This was not a mistake. The ships were part of the USS Nimitz battlegroup and got left behind when the Nimitz and her escorts returned to 1980 after traveled through a time storm to December 6, 1941. These events were shown in the equally historically accurate Pearl Harbor film, The Final Countdown.
The teacher should have shown them this.
Wait, your panties are in a wad because the teacher showed CLIPS from the movie?! You complain about the romance, but then admit the teacher didn’t show that.
Your complaint seems to be that the “Hollywood-isation” of the event will detract from its serious study. In other words, by teaching a real event where real people lost their lives via a corny romance/action movie, it needlessly trivialises the event itself – it’s the background, not the focus. Am I close?
I don’t think you’re giving these children enough credit. If they’re learning about the event already, they’ll pick up on the background because it’s exciting to see things you know about come to life in a movie – you feel like an “insider” who has a richer appreciation than the average person watching the same scenes. I’m not a teacher, but I imagine the quickest way to get to a child’s brain is through their ego.
Beyond that, dramatising creates empathy. I remember doing “empathy studies” in history, where the point was to imagine what it was like to experience the event first-hand. The dramatisation is exactly what gives the event its “life” – war is not just a real-life game of Risk, and dramatisation brings that home. This is what real footage lacks.
Of course, this is all moot, since only isolated scenes were shown, but I still don’t think that even screening the film as a whole is negligent or lazy teaching per se.
Yes, I would say you hit it right on the nose.
Fair enough. I think it would also be fair to say that MBPH would capture a child’s attention far better than Tora! Tora! Tora! and the vividness of the attack scene does provide a powerful commentary on the incomparable horror of the event (in much the same way the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan did).
Initially, I was not aware that only specific scenes of the movie were shown. What I am most unhappy about is that there didn’t seem to be further exploration into the facts behind the depictions that appealed to the children. If there were, it was overshadowed by the wow factor of the movie itself. Perhaps, that could have been avoided with a scholarly selection of historical representation (i.e., my daughter viewed FDR’s actual Pearl Harbor address on youtube, for cripe’s sake). There are numerous factual documentaries and a great deal of actual footage available that is just as, if not more, compelling.
Perhaps if you take this on its own, it’s not that bad, but combine it with the introduction of political ideology via the cow poster, it’s disappointing to me to say the least.
I can’t believe that you care about the cow politics poster. It’s amusing to 5th graders and they get a good general idea.
I take it you didn’t read the other thread. Or maybe you did and missed the part wherein I complained that the teacher failed to address my daughter’s apparent understanding from the poster that the Canadian government disallows private ownership of cattle by cattle ranchers.
Yeah, it’s a real hoot, isn’t it? :rolleyes:
The facts about WWII. I don’t know the curriculum specifically, but this is a social studies class, not a film class. As such, I would expect factual representation of the curriculum.
Really? Do you need me to spell out what ‘dramatization’ means? I don’t think you do. Is the intent of the movie to educate or to entertain? By fulfilling it’s intent, it’s expected that the filmmaker will take liberties with the facts to make the story more entertaining. I don’t think you can dispute that’s precisely what the filmmaker did. I believe they refer to it as ‘artistic license.’
Well, actually I rather believe that the fifth graders’ education would be better served by choosing more scholarly and fact-based media on WWII and Pearl Harbor. I’ve said this repeatedly. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand.
It’s grade 5.
Trust me, she’ll get the full textbook with all the details and have to write the ten-page essay in high school. At her age, what they want to students to do is grok that WWII involved a lot of countries and the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor as part of their offensive and it caused a lot of casualties which is why the war is Important.
When I was in her grade, we never studied the World Wars at all. We were still in the ‘post pictures of turkeys and pilgrims and maize at Thanksgiving’ stage.
As for the people in the thread that are objecting to movies being shown at all in schools: my Grade 9 English class had a Comedy unit. As part of it, I had my introductions to Ferris Bueller and Monty Python. 
The problem with Pearl Harbor is that it’s not just the individual inaccuracies (most of which are unimportant to an 11 year old), but the overall zeitgeist of the film, which is basically the Battlefield: 1942 approach to WWII. It’s like a WWII computer game on a big screen. And it’s a bad movie, too.