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American History class 8th grade
Posted on 08/20/2008 1:52:36 PM PDT by baba123
Our son is an 8th grade student at a Charter School. He came home with a list of movies they would be watching in class. As we have not seen any of these movies we would like opinions as to how appropriate and accurate these movies are. We do not let our kids watch R rated movies but would like to know if they are historically accurate. The movies are The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, Glory, Uprising and Saving Private Ryan. We value your opinions. Thank you
TOPICS: Education; History; Society
KEYWORDS: american; history; movies; school
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To: mass55th
I don’t think any of these movies are meant to reflect specific historical accuracy. Whether the guy burned a church as a fact or not, it depicts the human toll in a very realistic way, I thought.
101
posted on
08/20/2008 4:29:17 PM PDT
by
adopt4Christ
(The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.)
To: baba123
The best way to describe The Patriot is Braveheart II. Mel Gibson really hates the English apparently :-P
102
posted on
08/20/2008 4:32:25 PM PDT
by
thefrankbaum
(Ad maiorem Dei gloriam)
To: adopt4Christ
I enjoyed The Patriot and have a copy of it in my DVD collection. Hollywood does have a tendency to play fast and loose with the truth. Unfortunately though, many people take what they see on screen as the gospel truth, and are too lazy to read books, private manuscripts, or newspapers from that time, to find out what was really going on.
To: baba123
We do not let our kids watch R rated movies but would like to know if they are historically accurate.
I was way younger than being in the 8th grade (4th grade) when my father, a WWII veteran of the SPT took me to see the movie Patton. Back then it had an M rating which today is somewhere between a PG-13 and R.
Before the movie my dad explained to me that I might hear some bad language (actually the bad words in that movie was nothing all that bad and not anything I hadnt heard before even at that tender age, even sometimes from my dad on occasion) and scenes depicting war and violence and death.
He explained that it was just a Hollywood movie but that it fairly accurately portrayed a very real person, one who he greatly admired and a time in history in which he lived.
After the movie my dad told me he thought the movie was pretty good and we spent a lot of time talking about the real General Patton and WWII history and my fathers experiences during the war and that a movie could not accurately depict the real horrors and brutality of war or the great scarifies that American soldiers made in order to protect our freedoms. Keep in mind that that movie came out during the Vietnam War and my dad thought it was important for me to understand and counter balance the anti-war movement, things I might see on the TV news or heard in my school from teachers or other kids and the bad rap that Vietnam soldiers were getting at the time.
My dad used the movie, not as a complete factual record of history, but more as a teaching opportunity and a discussion point for me to learn more.
My dad was very protective of me, his only daughter, but he never believed in sheltering me from the truth. And Im very grateful to him for that.
Shortly before he died, we watched two movies together, one was Saving Private Ryan and the other was Schindler's List.
My dad told me that Saving Private Ryan was the most realistic war movie that he had ever seen, and that Schindler's List reminded him of what we were fighting against.
I think you should watch these movies for yourself then decide, first if you think your child is mature enough to understand (and being that he is in a Charter School hes probably pretty bright) and secondly you should do the additional research to determine for yourself whether you think these movies are historically accurate or not and then provide him with books or other materials that might do a better job in teaching history.
In either case I say let your 8th grader watch all these movies and then discuss them with him and use it as an opportunity for him to learn more than what he might learn in a classroom alone and to impart on him your values.
By the 8th grade, no matter how you have tried to shelter him, I would bet hes already heard just about every bad word there is and a whole lot of other stuff you would prefer he would have never heard about. Like my dad, I think an overly sheltered child is a child who will grow up to be an ignorant and impressionable adult. I think youd be a great parent for being open and honest with him and letting him know he can come to you with any question about whatever he might have heard or leaned about outside your home and that he can count on you to give him the facts and good guidance.
The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, Glory, Uprising and Saving Private Ryan are all pretty good movies as far as movies go and many of them have a somewhat conservative bent so Im surprised your kids teacher would show them to his class. You might want to contact his teacher and ask him (or her) why they are being shown and how they are fitting into a lesson plan and what other materials are being provided and taught in conjunction with the movies.
104
posted on
08/20/2008 6:46:42 PM PDT
by
Caramelgal
(Just a lump of organized protoplasm - braying at the stars :),)
To: baba123
The only movie I haven't seen is "The Uprising." I've heard that "The Patriot" isn't all that historically accurate, but IMHO, it's a great movie. All of the movies I've seen in the list were at the very least, brutal in the combat scenes. All of the movies I've seen in the list make important statements, though. Especially "Saving Private Ryan" and "Glory." Unfortunately, both of those movies are also extremely brutal and gory at times.
Mark
105
posted on
08/20/2008 6:53:22 PM PDT
by
MarkL
(Al Gore: The Greenhouse Gasbag! (heard on Bob Brinker's Money Talk))
To: baba123
I’m an ex-teacher. Showing full-length Hollywood movies in school is a waste of time. It’s passive. The teacher should reserve the DVDs in the school library, and have the students borrow them overnight/weekends during the course of the year. Netflix, Blockbuster, cable TV, bargain bins at Walmart... lots of ways to get these outside of school.
Instead, the students should be actively engaged in their own learning: researching original materials, finding Matthew Brady’s Civil War photos, reading Abigail Adams’ letters to her husband, taking a field trip to DC, Williamsburg, Civil War battle sites, or New England...
Have the students use the Internet! Tons of source materials are out there for free. For pre-WW2, there are photos, paintings, first-person accounts. For WW2, there are documentary video clips.
And this is happening in a charter school? Geeesh!
To: Domandred
Thanks to all of you that have replied.
Your input has been so helpful to us.
107
posted on
08/20/2008 10:02:22 PM PDT
by
baba123
To: baba123
You may want to see them with you 8th grader first so you can make sure the right lessons are learned. iow so you can pre-empt any pc indoctrination.
108
posted on
08/21/2008 5:19:15 AM PDT
by
longtermmemmory
(VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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