Advantages VS. Disadvantages

Advantages and disadvantages of using films in the classroom.

Advantages

Disadvantages

Films are a great addition to the classroom in terms of differentiated learning. It reaches students through visual stimulation and auditory learning. Movies can be a powerful stimulus for historical empathy. (Metzger, 2010) Students can be taught to recognize historical perspectives in films and begin to care about social justice. (Metzger, 2010)  Films are a familiar and comfortable form of media for students to use in the classroom. Film serves a larger role as a historical source for the public at large. Most people learn about history through film or video games above text. (Stoddard, 2010) Movies give audiences a feeling for life in a distant time and place. (Metzger, 2010) The activities that accompany viewing films promote critical thinking within the classroom.

Many Hollywood movies produce “faction” (a blend of fact and fiction) to create an entertaining story. This may become confusing to students. (Metzger, 2010) The confusion between fact and fiction can sometimes lead students to develop inaccurate ideas about a particular group or draw naïve conclusions about the past. (Metzger. 2010) Without critical thinking in the classroom films contribute to passive viewing and unquestioning acceptance of received material. (Paris, 1997) Students tend of measure historical accounts against what they already know from watching films outside of the classroom. Dubbed the “Disney effect.” (Metzger, 2010) Empathy from films has limits. Watching a Holocaust film will not give you an accurate idea of what it was like to survive an ordeal like that.

            Although it does seem like the disadvantages outweigh the advantages we can easily eliminate the problems that arise with watching films in the classroom through careful planning and appropriate activities that promote critical thinking.

            It is important that we teach critical viewing skills to avoid passive viewing. (Paris, 1997) Students must become critically aware. (Paris, 1997) It is important that students are able to pick apart films and recognize the fact and fiction within a film.  Films should be treated like other resources in the classroom such as textbooks. Students need to be aware that they cannot take a film at face value. Not everything they view on film is the truth.

Students will encounter history movies long after their formal schooling, a major benefit of teaching with film is to provide students with the skills and knowledge to analyze interpret and evaluate the messages in historically themed film. This is known as ‘historical film literacy’. (Metzger, 2010)