The Ideological Implications of Using “Educational” Film to Teach Controversial Events

Abstract

Use of media in today’s classrooms, from feature and documentary film to news clips streamed via the Web, has grown exponentially. Film can be a powerful medium for teaching and learning, but is often viewed as a neutral source of information. This collective case study focuses on two teachers who use documentary film to teach about controversial events, with the goal of better understanding teacher selection and use of film as part of pedagogy and the experiences of students who are engaged in deliberative activities with film. In this case, teachers utilized film to help students examine two controversial events in U.S. history, the use of atomic weapons against Japan at the end of World War II and the role of the United States in Vietnam. These cases illustrate a tension that many teachers, who want to engage students in deliberative activities but who also want students to adopt particular moral or political stances, face in today’s classrooms. The teachers in these cases utilize film as a neutral source for students to use as evidence for taking a position, despite the value-laden perspectives included in the films, perspectives that aligned with the teachers’ own political beliefs. Other findings include student inability to recognize the perspectives in documentary films, the epistemic stances of teachers and students that documentaries are accurate and neutral, and the characteristics of students who are better equipped to recognize ideological perspectives. Implications for teachers, teacher educators, and especially democratic and social studies education researchers are explored.

Notes

Notes

1 Marcus and Stoddard (2007) found that 92.7% of the teachers they surveyed reported using some portion of a feature film at least once a week, with 83.4% reporting use of some portion of a documentary film at least once a week.

2 Case teachers were identified using selection criteria and recommendations of administrators and peers.

3 I initially selected 10 students from each class, but ended up with these final numbers after students either declined to be interviewed, transferred to other sections, or left the school. Unfortunately, the students who didn’t participate included two African American male students and several students who were lower in terms of achievement.

4 See, for example, Dorothy Rabinowitz’s column in the Wall Street Journal, “TV: The battle of the documentaries” (August 7, 1995, p. A11).

5 See, for example, N. Taylor’s article in the Ottawa Citizen, “ Dear America is the final Vietnam movie” (September 17, 1988, p. C5).

6 The Teaching American History grant program is a federally funded professional development program created to promote increased historical knowledge of K–12 social studies teachers in the United States.

7 In the instructions for the survey, I explained that by neutral I meant that it didn’t favor one perspective over the other—essentially that it provided a balanced perspective.

8 For Johnson’s class: “Twentieth Century Monsters” in J. Hakim (1995), A history of US: War, peace, and all that jazz (pp. 105–109). New York: Oxford University Press; for Simpson’s class: “Germany: Nazi Seizure of Power” (author and publisher unknown).