HEAD: RUNNING HOLLYWOOD GOES PEDAGOGICAL
John Rice Assignment 3: Hollywood Goes Pedagogical November 12, 2005
Submitted in partial completion of the requirements for CECS 6000 Dr. G. Knezek University of North Texas
Rice: Hollywood Goes Pedagogical Abstract Hollywood demonstrates good teaching techniques to the delight of movie audiences, whose appreciation for positive illustrations of pedagogical skill is akin to the appreciation of finely played sports. Two movies show teaching at its finest, Dead Poets Society and The Emperors Club are discussed in this paper. One promotes constructivist teaching, the other
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promotes the idea of knowledge as beneficial for the sake of knowledge. The movie, The Matrix, illustrates the infusion of technology within teaching, and shows audiences how human simulations can effectively replicate good teaching techniques.
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Dead Poets Society: enthusiasm for learning The Emporers Club: learning for knowledges sake The Matrix: the best of both worlds can be simulated in virtual realities
Rice: Hollywood Goes Pedagogical Hollywood Goes Pedagogical
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Good teaching techniques are sometimes difficult to quantify. Showing the techniques in action, however, remains one of the best ways to illustrate them. Like a sport observed by its aficionados, audiences like seeing good teaching on the screen. The reason for this universal appeal likely resides in the fact that everybody is taught by somebody at some point in their lives, and most of us teach others at some level, too. Seeing effective formalized teaching portrayed onscreen, though fictionalized, holds an appeal for many of us, just as we enjoy sports movies where the underdogs make a dramatic comeback and win the game in its final seconds. Many people of a certain age hold fond memories of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. With themes of seizing the moment, going for dreams, and living life to the fullest, Williams character invokes classical poetry and literature in an effort to bring profound meaning to education. One of the measures of pedagogy seen in the film is the effort to bring the text alive by the teacher. So often teachers go through the motions, teach from the text, lecture to the class such efforts are mostly dead to students. Williams character bucks the system and brings the text alive. He pointedly has students shred up textbook passages promoting quantitative measures of poetry. He stands on desks and exhorts his students to excellence. He promotes self discovery, placing the students in charge of their own learning. Of course, in the end it all leads to tragedy and he leaves the school, which then presumably resumes its traditional teaching efforts. But the style promoted by Williams teacher could be construed as constructivism of the highest order. Contrasting with Williams portrayal, Kevin Kline in The Emperors Club promotes more of a traditional style of teaching. Klines character is concerned with the memorization of facts, the traditional gaining of knowledge associated with history. But there is an undercurrent in the
Rice: Hollywood Goes Pedagogical film revolving around the ideal of knowledge for knowledges sake. There is a notion that
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classical schooling can improve the character of students, that if students themselves apply in the pursuit of education, they will become better people for the effort. Klines character was more teacher-focused than Williams. But, it was teacher-focused with the idea of ultimately creating a better student as an outcome. Both movies focus on pedagogy, but are not much interested in the use of technology in teaching. The Matrix, by contrast, is heavily focused on integrating technology into the pedagogy. Although the most famous pedagogical scene involves the Trinity character downloading the skill of helicopter flying directly into her head, more interesting elements involve the training of Keanu Reeves character early in the film. Reeves character learns how to manipulate the artificial matrix environment whilst in a simulation akin to Star Treks holodeck. The idea of using simulations to replicate learning techniques was given its biggest Hollywood boost in The Matrix. Ultimately, the best and most exciting elements of education, those that involve turning on students to learning, those that involve problem-based learning, constructivism, and learner interactivity, can be effectively handled through the use of three-dimensional human simulation software. The Matrix holds an idea of neural networks simulating life, and the idea of the holodeck is one where full bodily participation occurs. Both involve complete physical immersion in a virtual environment. Presently, similar benefits can be attained through virtual representations running on modern computer equipment and software. Gredler (1996) called this through-the-window virtual reality. Virtual reality is not yet refined to the point of full body immersion to the level of such films as The Matrix. However, Laurel (1991) asserted computer graphics are sufficiently detailed to afford a suspension of disbelief. Plays that have been
Rice: Hollywood Goes Pedagogical performed well before technologys ascendancy likewise afforded suspension of disbelief, w...