Movies in school

My sister-in-law just posted on Facebook that a teacher showed The Last of the Mohicans to her son's middle-school class without warning parents or children ahead of time. It's rated "R" for lots of violence, including a suicide of a young woman.

This brings up two issues for me:

1) The obvious one about showing extremely violent movies to minors without informing parents ahead of time, and

Teachers, just send out a form and tell parents so they can opt their child out if they want to. That letter "R" on the DVD case has an accepted meaning--parents should approve this film before a child views it--throughout the country. Teachers =/= parents.

2)  Do kids really need three class periods of The Last of the Mohicans to learn a little about Indian warfare?

Somehow I learned about U.S. history and got a 5 on the AP History test without ever watching actors get realistically pretend-scalped while Daniel Day Lewis ran around looking hunky. Surely a few pictures and some good stories (NOT The Last of the Mohicans book--far too long-winded for us modern folk) will do a more efficient and correct job teaching about Native Americans' interactions and wars with white people moving westward into their ancestral lands.

I love movies. I use short film snippets nearly every day as a homeschooling parent. Netflix is one of my best friends. Sometimes a movie says far more than I or a book could in the same amount of time. But usually a historical setting can be effectively shown in 10 minutes or less. Then the moving pictures and soundtrack just get in the way of thinking more deeply about the history while preventing any meaningful discussion between teacher and children. Not that I don't let my kids watch entire movies...I have to do laundry sometime.