One of the most common activities to partake in when one has a substitute teacher is to watch a movie. Now, we all know that while Remember the Titans has a heart felt plot line and ends with the girl in the back sniffling and wiping away her tears, it has nothing to do with the class. While I, myself, love a good movie every now and then, this tends to get annoying., some of us actually show up to class to learn. So why are we punished by a never-ending marathon of Holes where we never get to actually end the movie? If a teacher is going to show a movie in class, it should at least have some sort of connection to the class and what is being studied at the moment. No, showing Holes has nothing to do with Mississippi Studies or Science, so please stop trying to say that it is.
What about if it is for class? Like, an actual legitimate educational movie? Yeah, that is a lot different then just because the teacher does not feel like teaching. When faced with something along the lines of “Okay class, we are going to watch this National Geographic video that is completely relevant to what has been taught in the past week and a half to two weeks,” I can live with that. If it has nothing to do with the class syllabus and is some mind numbing stuff I can find on Direct T.V’s line up on Disney after 10 pm then no thanks. I think I would rather just sit and read my book. It is a complete waste of our time to sit in a classroom where we could be better utilizing our time by learning things so that we may have a chance in the real world than sitting in a classroom losing IQ points because we are all staring at a large projection of Radio. The college administrator who is giving me my interview of application is not going to ask me the similarities and differences between the movies that we watched. They are going to want to know what I learned in class. So far, I have learned that I loved Cuba Gooding Jr’s role in Radio, and that no matter how many times I watch Remember the Titans, it still touches me. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the actual course. If someone asked me what I learned in those courses I would not be able to tell them anything, except for what I said about the movies above. In all honesty, films in class should be strictly educational and not recreational.