So what movies did they show you in health class? I mean, not videos specifically designed for health class, but entertainment movies that your health class repurposed?
Repurposed films for other classes are OK too (except, obviously, film class, and movie versions of books you are reading for English class, and foreign films or English films subbed into a foreign language for language class).
Health - for the intimacy and sexuality we watched The Blue Lagoon. For socializing, cliques, and peer pressure we watched The Breakfast Club.
I remember we watched a TV movie called Kate’s Secret. It starred Meredith Baxter as a women with bulimia. Ed Asner was in it too.
I am trying to think of others…I remember one about suicide and the other about living with AIDs, but I don’t remember if they were actual movies or a “health class movie.”
One of the Karen Carpenter movies, complete with the health teacher frantically trying to fast forward through the sex scene. It was supposed to teach us that anorexia is bad.
And The Band Played On, a very good film about the history of AIDS in America.
We also watched The Breakfast Club.
Not Health class, but our English teacher in 10th grade showed us Boyz N Da Hood, in an attempt to create discussion about the differences between living in an upper class town, and living in 'da hood.
In health class we watched Silence of the Heart starring Charlie Sheen during the suicide unit. Apparently Carlos was really bummed he got a C and wanted to drive off a cliff but his best friend’s parents (who did drive off a cliff a few weeks ago) talk him out of it.
We also watched some other TV movie about a woman with AIDS, but I can’t remember the title.
When talking about the whole idea of sex (more in general terms), we looked at the episode of My So Called Life where Angela considers having sex with Jordan Catalano.
In Health Class we watched The Broken Cord, which (I think) was a TV movie about Jimmy Smits adopting a child with FAS. Pretty sure it was not a comedy, but I remember it getting a lot of laughs.
I went to school in the late 80s, early 90s. Back then in health class we watched a lot of movies with an anti-drug message. Can’t remember the name, but one of them was animated film starring all the Saturday morning cartoon characters from that era (the Muppet Babies, Alf, Garfield, Smurfs, Looney Tunes, etc.).
Another was a made-for-TV flick that starred a young Helen Hunt. Can’t remember exactly what happens, but it was about a group of high school students who fall prey to a drug dealer. At the very end a teacher lights a fire in the gym and all the students, of course, get in line to burn their stashes.
And also we watched The Ryan White Story whenever the subject of AIDS was taught.
We watched a ton of movies in history class. Off the top of my head, I can remember “All Quiet on the Western Front” (the 70s version with Ernest Borgnine), “Tora, Tora, Tora,” “Schindlers List” (well, clips of it anyway) and “Mississippi Burning.”
The only thing I remember is a 30 minute, or so, film projector clip of a woman giving birth and possibly one involving car wrecks and stuff. But I could be conjuring up a false memory on that one.
Seriously, you guys watched something other than The Miracle of Life and Red Asphalt III? I mean, we watched movies when we had a sub, or in English class (History was usually way too busy) but we didn’t get the rest of that stuff.
Oh, and other awful stuff with, you know, kids in heaven after they tried crack - we did get that PSA stuff.
Back in '91, my high school French teacher showed us the episode of The Simpsons where Bart goes to France.
Realistically, all it taught us was that we were wasting our time taking the class when we could learn French quicker by being kidnapped by the French equivalent of a moonshine operation.
I too saw the one with Helen Hunt and the drug fire in the gym, although at the time I thought that was an actual after school special rather than a repurposed entertainment film.
Almost cheating, but for English class, instead of Romeo & Juliet we watched Westside Story, and instead of Taming of the Shrew, we saw the TotS episode of Moonlighting.
History class is the only class with ‘re-purposed’ movies that I can think of - in English we watched film versions of books or plays we were reading, ditto drama…math, science, phys-ed and health, only movies made for the purpose or ‘we have no class today, but we have a VCR watch what you’d like’.
But, in history, we had, off the top of my head, Spartacus, The Vikings, and Monty Python’s Quest For The Holy Grail. All in the same year.
