Movies in the classroom Options

[impala454]

A couple of recent happenings spurred this topic. Curious what you guys think.

#1- http://www.khou.com/news/local/galveston/s...y.6f97d768.html
A teacher in a Clear Creek ISD high school showed Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to her class. I heard this on the radio and one of the parents had called in, she said it was explained to her that the relevance of the movie to the ALGEBRA class it was shown in was the "charts & graphs" depicted in the movie. Pretty friggin pathetic if you ask me. There's no excuse for this kind of crap, and nothing to gain by it.

#2- http://www.kentucky.com/476/story/68870.html
A substitute teacher showed Brokeback Mountain to an 8th grade class.

The substitute asked a student to shut the classroom door at the West Side school, saying: "What happens in Ms. Buford's class stays in Ms. Buford's class," according to the lawsuit.

All I got to say is.. WTF

[James]

#1 - IF only clips of the video were shown and not the entire video, then yes, there is something to gain from it in a mathematical sense. Bravo to the teacher for trying to come up with something different to teach what is frequently considered the most difficult subject in high school. I realize it's been a while since you've been in a high school environment, but try and think back to how excessively boring it was.

#2 - Never seen the movie myself, so I can't comment. What kind of class was it in? When I was in 8th grade, my history teacher showed us Dances with Wolves when we got to the American Indian unit. I ended up having him as a history teacher again in the 11th grade and he showed us some other movie about man-eating lions in Africa with, I think, Val Kilmer.