Mike86

I didn't remember this being rated R. As far as I remember its a fairly tame film and I would think kids that age could handle it. I suppose in this day and age where people get up in arms over everything though it'd probably be smart to have permission slips signed.

E Unit

Show them Johnny Tremain instead.

OldBoy

glad to see the No's winning...

Dan

yeah, but not for the reason you stated.

OldBoy

oh.

creekdipper

No. Inappropriate amount of violence for 7th-graders.

Had to make decisions about things like this all the time when choosing what's appropriate to show 6th & 8th-graders (mostly 8th) over a 30-year career. Also applied to literature, poetry, music lyrics, etc.

Even when you think something is really outstanding, you always have to consider the maturity level. I had a couple of girls who were upset that Anne Frank: The Whole Story actually showed the briefest glimpse of one breast of a middle-aged, overweight female when the women prisoners were being herded into 'delousing' showers after having their hair chopped off. And this was in a Disney production (Buena Vista) that had been shown on network tv. And the class was an "advanced" English class of 8th-graders (I showed the movie in conjunction with study of the "Diary..." play which was in our lit. books as well as using other Holocaust materials).

Learned my lesson & turned the tv monitor around for other classes for those couple of seconds &just described what was happening. Seemed to work in that many were interested in knowing how they could obtain a copy (I ordered some from Deep Discount & sold them at cost to students who brought permission slips since I only showed the first & last hours which included Anne's background up until going into hiding and her later internment in the camps...none of which was shown in the play). As for the "censored" few seconds, the preceding scenes showing the humiliation & fear shown by Anne, her sister, & their mother while their hair was being chopped off and forced to disrobe (hands covering themselves) were powerful enough to make the point & arouse a powerful sense of empathy within the kids. Even the boys were very quiet & seemed angry at the mistreatment of the innocents. Still, I hated that, for time considerations, we couldn't show the middle portion since it basically overlapped so much contained in the play, and they got to compare the different depictions of the characters.

Same thing happened when we took the kids to see the play at a professional theater re: impact of the story.

If you want to create interest in something for middle-schoolers, just tell them they're not ready for the material or that it's too sensitive for them. They'll take it from there.

OldBoy

^ very well thought out.

creekdipper

Thanks for the compliment.

We may watch SOL just for fun (and, hopefully, be pleasantly surprised), but the promo ads in magazines make Paul Revere & Sam Adams look like extras from Sleepy Hollow (the tv series).

On the other hand, we enjoyed the first season of Turn (except for the soap operish elements. )

superdeluxe

My wife showed 'The History of Us' or whatever it was called that was on Discovery a few years back. That would actually be better and more educational.

GuessWho

My high school American History teacher didn't give a shit.


He started one class with "We're gonna watch a movie about Nazis."

We watched Raiders off the Lost Ark for the next three days.


Two years later, he blew his brains out.

Crocker Jarmen

This sounds like very wise advice, I hope lots of middle-school teachers take advantage of it.

Hadrian7

[QUOTE=GuessWho;12375139]My high school American History teacher didn't give a shit.


He started one class with "We're gonna watch a movie about Nazis."

We watched Raiders off the Lost Ark for the next three days.


Two years later, he blew his brains out.[/QUOTE]

Brack

Sean O'Hara

Return of the Jedi is a more accurate depiction of the American Revolution than The Patriot is.

dom56

I would've show The Crossing starring Jeff Daniel as George Washington instead. TV movie that was aired on A&E some years ago, much better than The Patriot.

OldBoy

i just downloaded this!! gonna watch and preview.

ken_572002

This

Inhumans99

I am not a good judge of what to show junior high/high school kids in class, as I had a teacher in junior high show Poltergeist (uncut, man tearing off face scene was still there), and as an end of summer school treat a teacher (a woman) let us watch Revenge Of The Nerds...again, uncut. Of course, my parents actually took the ratings of films to heart, and I actually did not watch rated r films until I was at least 17 years of age.

I think I have said all this in another thread on DVD Talk, but I find it interesting that I got to watch some films that you just would not see in classrooms today (at least the majority of classrooms): The Final Countdown, The Andromeda Strain, Poltergeist, and Revenge Of The Nerds (at least these are the films I remember).

OldBoy

that is awesome and appalling at the same time.

karoomba

I remember in Grade 6 the class convinced the substitute teachers to let us watch a Dazed & Confused.. when she bothered to pay attention and noticed the pot smoking..she ran to turn the tv off.

In Grade 11 or 12 English class... we were reading 1984 and our teacher showed us a movie adaptation (again it was a substitute that day). He got all annoyed that some of us were snickering at the scene where the two leads run towards each other naked on a field. If I recall it was because they were all pasty and hairy. Moral, some students just will never be mature enough.

mhg83

My junior high school history teacher showed us a screener copy of The Patriot.
For Media Studies we watched The Usual Suspects. He also almost showed us Requiem For A Dream but decided against it

hanshotfirst1138

One of the teachers at my Catholic school showed Requiem for A Dream. Didn't take his class though, thank God. I can't imagine went down to my fragile, impressionable, malleable, underdeveloped adolescent mind. Another one showed us a George carlin routine. I shit you not. I did take that class.

inri222

In my 10th grade English class we viewed Polanski's Macbeth & River's Edge. In Macbeth when the witches are nude some people started laughing. The teacher paused the movie and told them to stop behaving like children. While watching River's Edge everyone was mostly quiet due to how messed up the movie was.

JimRochester

No because it's a jingoistic, political, inaccurate, one-sided, story about a psychopathic liar with a big ego. Oh wait, I thought we were still talking about American Sniper. If I recall the theatrical version wasn't that graphic. The extended version was just graphic and dragged out at the same time.

DthRdrX

We used to watch the first few UFC tournaments in history class in our high school. Some teachers will do anything to get kids quiet I guess.

I can say my sixth graders routinely watch R rated movies and then tell me about them. Don't know what we are shielding them from in school at this point. Nothing they can't see or hear walking through most Walmart parking lots.