Film in the Classroom

As a credentialed public schoolteacher who effectively utilizes film in the classroom and who has conducted workshops in California, New York and Bordeaux, France, teaching others how to do the same, I wish to make some points about “Attack of the Public School Time Wasters” by William Chitwood (Valley Perspective, July 2).

* The showing of a movie by a public schoolteacher is legal when it is part of a prepared lesson plan and the teacher pays the rental fee. This is called the fair use exclusion in the copyright law and only applies to teachers “engaged in a systematic course of instruction in face-to-face teaching activities in a nonprofit organization.”

* Film has a very important role in the language arts classroom in the same manner that literature is used as a means of engaging students in literacy (reading, writing, discussing and using critical thinking skills).

* Film can be highly effective in focusing students on some aspect of the math / science or social science curriculum. “Apollo 13” might anchor the study of the space program. A good historical movie can provide information about the clothing, architecture, food, arts and culture of a particular period.

* The National Council of Teachers of English commission on media states that “an understanding of visual, as well as verbal, texts is essential in today’s world” and “inclusion of the study of media certainly should no longer be optional in our schools. We must send students the message that critical thinking extends beyond print.”

It is entirely possible that the teachers cited in Chitwood’s article used movies solely as entertainment and not for any of the reasons I have stated. But to condemn all public schoolteachers because of the few he cited in his article is a hasty overgeneralization. It is also an oversimplification to imply that the waste of classroom time is to blame for the “overall dismal performance of California public schools.”

With the overcrowding and lack of adequate funding of the public schools in the last 20 or more years, it is arrogant and spurious thinking indeed to reduce the problem to leaving “show business to Hollywood.”

It takes a special kind of person to work in the public schools today and suffer the kind of abuse and fallacy of thinking reflected in articles like Chitwood’s. I am proud to be among them.

MICHAEL VETRIE

California Continuation Eduation

Assn. Teacher of the Year, 2000

Sylmar