Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where I Use 'The Seige' To Teach A Class

00:00:00.000 Classes in Session 2. Hey, everybody, and welcome to Unlearn 16, Classes in Session.

00:00:10.180 And today, guys, I'm in my class. That's right. I'm doing my podcast right from my classroom for

00:00:16.360 a very specific reason. Now, am I wearing my earbuds? Absolutely, because other classes are

00:00:23.720 so noisy that you would just like hear the trickle down effect of all the other classes

00:00:29.180 going on in this school at the exact same time as my podcast. The reason why I'm doing it here is

00:00:34.740 this. I teach a lot with movies. I just do. Guys, listen. I love media. I love movies. I love

00:00:44.200 television shows. I feel as though, I love books, that they play a real role in students understanding

00:00:54.460 and keeping their attention in sort of a creative process that connects history and society and

00:01:02.220 politics and all of these courses with the arts. Obviously, I do a lot of artistic projects as well,

00:01:08.300 and I'll be showing you that JFK one coming soon. But today I thought I'd share with you,

00:01:14.160 I don't know, a handful of titles of fictional movies, not documentaries, nothing like that,

00:01:21.060 because a documentary is a certain kind of movie

00:01:24.680 and a certain kind of media

00:01:26.120 that I think is incredibly important.

00:01:28.320 But we can see those connectivities, right?

00:01:30.920 I don't need to explain to you

00:01:32.680 why Food, Inc. would be connected to a health course

00:01:35.420 or a politics course or anything like that.

00:01:38.280 That's perfectly understood.

00:01:40.720 I think a lot of the times when kids come in,

00:01:43.340 back in our day, we'd roll out that cart,

00:01:46.100 pop in the VHS.

00:01:48.480 I think a lot of kids would be,

00:01:50.540 oh, we don't have to do anything today. What I find, the older I get, kids don't necessarily

00:01:58.860 love movies, which is hysterical. You really have to have the right movie to keep their attention.

00:02:06.060 You have to give them the right sort of focal point or lens in order to watch the movie,

00:02:12.760 in order to connect it to the more important issues of the class. You have to give them

00:02:17.400 things that they have to do throughout, not necessarily sit down, be quiet and take notes

00:02:23.900 and don't have a good time. That's not what I'm talking about. Most of the movies that I watch,

00:02:29.880 we talk about it in sections. So we won't even watch the full thing. I might pause it in different

00:02:35.460 places and we might talk about certain, you know, plot points or character development or anything

00:02:41.120 like that as we go to give them kind of a way to reference or frame the thing that I'm going to

00:02:47.520 want them to be understanding. And a lot of the time, like I've been teaching 21 years, so a lot

00:02:53.600 of the time I'll get people, oh, Joanna just, you know, puts on those movies, whatever. Well, first

00:02:58.900 of all, I probably maybe will put on one per semester, maybe, like an actual fictional movie.

00:03:05.700 And I'm very careful with what I choose because I want them to understand the weight of it, the connectivity of it, and the application of it.

00:03:13.920 Because if they don't understand those things, then I might as well, you know, just let them play Mortal Kombat, which sometimes we do.

00:03:23.380 Dial it down.

00:03:24.720 All right, so I have a long list of movies here, and I'm going to go through each one to give you an idea of what I will do with them.

00:03:31.100 Some are the more clearly directed than others. But nonetheless, these are tried and true.

00:03:38.540 I do teach high school, so put that kind of frame of reference in there. But I really don't think

00:03:44.200 like a lot of my grade seven and eights can watch most of these as well and still get a lot out of

00:03:48.000 them, depending on how you frame it. First one, I want to talk about Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins

00:03:54.020 in Arlington Road. Arlington Road is a fantastic movie. Please don't make me tell you when it was

00:04:01.640 put out because I can't read the back of this anymore without my glasses on. Arlington Road

00:04:07.620 is a movie about terrorism, terrorism within a domestic setting. You have a teacher that teaches

00:04:14.240 sort of elements of terrorism, what it looks like, how it's cultivated, when it's used,

00:04:21.220 what a cell is. And I don't want to give away the movie because trust me when I say if you've never

00:04:25.540 seen Arlington Road, you want to. The brilliance of this movie isn't necessarily that it's just

00:04:33.100 about terrorism. And that's a particular aspect, let's say, of my political science course. We

00:04:38.540 talk about what is terrorism? How do you define it? How do you distinguish it from war? How do

00:04:44.320 you know when fanatical groups are emerging? What do you do about fanatical groups? Can you

00:04:51.060 control them? All of these really, really, really big questions have all come from here, right?

00:04:59.300 And so I don't want to give away the plot or the ending of this movie, but let me be very clear.

00:05:06.520 The point of this isn't just about, you know, a terrorist blowing things up. The point of this

00:05:12.100 is to talk about the human condition. The point of this is to talk about levels of government

00:05:19.640 involvement, government sort of between the FBI, because it obviously takes place in the United

00:05:26.900 States, local governments, local state governments, university settings, all these different places

00:05:33.580 and what functionality they serve in the protection of the creation of terrorists,

00:05:42.100 whether they're domestic or foreign, cells within your country. Incredibly important.

00:05:48.240 this doesn't speak to necessarily the why this speaks to the um it can happen in your own

00:05:58.320 backyard and it can happen in your own backyard where you think you know where you think you have

00:06:05.200 it on lock because you've studied it because you've compartmentalized it because you've put

00:06:10.520 them in categories and as soon as you put somebody in a category a very intelligent

00:06:16.600 nemesis will just shift, right? Talks about big issues when it comes to what a fanatic is,

00:06:27.340 what a revolutionary is, what the difference between terrorism and that is. Can we distinguish

00:06:32.640 between the two? All of those massively important, deep and thoughtful conversations

00:06:41.140 come out of this movie. So Arlington Road. Again, a little bit for the, obviously, for the older

00:06:47.320 kids. How about this one? Mona Lisa Smile. Come on. A little Julia Roberts. This is a,

00:06:56.940 if you've never seen this movie, first of all, go see it. Why do I love this movie? Well,

00:07:01.940 it takes place in the mid-50s to late 50s, and it takes place at an all-girls school.

00:07:08.460 and Julia Roberts comes in as the new art teacher and she comes in around the exact same era where

00:07:15.560 you see a shift of art into sort of abstract Jackson Pollock kind of art not only is it this

00:07:23.240 cool balance of of this shifting of artistic perspective but it stands as this incredible

00:07:30.840 metaphor that kids just love number one it's on the there's something on the front end

00:07:37.860 what is art what is art who gets to decide what it is who gets to say it's good who gets to say

00:07:46.080 it is worthy of the Louvre or you know the Guggenheim who gets to make all of those decisions

00:07:52.480 so that's important why is art powerful that's also incredibly important how is it revolutionary

00:08:00.120 How does it signify and change sort of periods within different societies?

00:08:08.900 But it also talks about people being revolutionary, right?

00:08:14.520 Metaphorically speaking, in the late 1950s, you have this very cool revolutionary time for women.

00:08:21.760 Obviously, it's at an all-girls or all-women's university, Wellesley College.

00:08:26.800 And at this time, you have women sort of struggling between the cusp, right? What was, what could be, what I am. And all those three things have incredible value to everybody. That's not just a story about women, right?

00:08:48.040 It was at that particular time, but it's the notion that tradition has a hold on us.

00:08:53.660 How much should it have a hold on us?

00:08:56.340 Does it have value to have a hold on us?

00:08:58.840 When we want to shift and every structure around us wants to curb that shift and curb

00:09:04.840 that revolution, should we push through?

00:09:08.000 How do we push through?

00:09:10.020 How do we fight for who we are amidst all of these people telling us who we have to

00:09:15.800 be, right?

00:09:17.200 And this was a time where a lot of women got very educated, but got educated only to the point where they got married, and then they're expected to give it all up, go be a mother and a stay-at-home housewife, right?

00:09:28.920 And again, what this movie does beautifully is it kind of walks the line between many different women and what they want and what makes them happy.

00:09:39.420 And it's not a uniform outcome.

00:09:42.500 They don't all chuck tradition.

00:09:44.460 They don't all stay within it.

00:09:45.900 Sometimes there's bits and pieces taking from either line.

00:09:50.480 That's incredibly honest and amazing.

00:09:54.540 But what I truly love about this, because I could show this in any class I teach, quite

00:09:58.760 literally, because in any class I teach, we will always talk about any history and social

00:10:05.180 science class that I teach.

00:10:06.920 We will always talk about who has power, how do they wield it, what do they get to control,

00:10:14.460 and is that good?

00:10:15.900 None of those answers, by the way, have objective, true, you know, we're not looking for A plus B equals C. There's a varied opinion. And that's what I like about the courses I teach is that nothing is black and white.

00:10:32.940 Nothing is simplistic. Everything are shades of gray. And it's the shades of gray that have the best conversations that actually inform us and sort of work with us the most in life. This is a great question.

00:10:46.900 And then to start hearing kids say what art is, you know, getting them to draw something, getting them to look at childhood art, getting them to talk about poetry as art, literature as art, photographs as art. What gets to be art?

00:11:02.940 those are fantastic conversations.

00:11:06.320 And this movie, no matter what class you teach

00:11:08.760 in the social science, that can get you there.

00:11:11.600 Next.

00:11:12.400 Oh, this is one of my favorites.

00:11:13.780 I don't know if you guys have ever seen this one,

00:11:15.340 but again, politics, American history,

00:11:19.000 I've played it in.

00:11:21.220 Wag the dog.

00:11:24.580 Wag the dog, this is old, by the way.

00:11:26.400 This is the 90s.

00:11:27.320 Heaven help me when I say that's old.

00:11:30.400 But wag the dog is the notion that

00:11:32.940 I mean, the cliche of, you know, is the dog wagging his tail or is the tail wagging the

00:11:38.320 dog?

00:11:38.780 That's the whole thing.

00:11:39.860 Who's in control?

00:11:41.880 The premise of this, I think, is loosely, very loosely based on Clinton and the trouble

00:11:47.380 he got himself in with Monica.

00:11:49.300 And then all of a sudden they were at war.

00:11:51.800 So this idea that in order for the president to remain president through scandal, he hires

00:12:00.980 people to spin it.

00:12:02.940 He hires people to spin it and redirect everybody's focus over here at something shiny so that they forget about the scandal that was faced so he could roll into the next election and still attain power.

00:12:16.520 Now, in this movie, they actually create, they fictionally create a war.

00:12:22.980 And it's funny because I feel like a lot of people have really live in this kind of conspiratorial kind of framework.

00:12:30.540 Like this movie wasn't supposed to be a how-to.

00:12:32.940 I think this was a step above or maybe to the side of when we think about scandal and then we hear of countries going to war or they go to war because they're in economic crisis or they go to war because there's a political test of faith or they go to war because nobody changes president mid-war.

00:12:59.760 You always get elected to that second term. Instead of actually going to war, they fake it. Like quite literally, they hire a production company and a movie company and they fake a war. They come up with a song. They come up with a tagline. They come up with a ribbon. They come up with fake footage to sell it.

00:13:18.920 I think they attacked, I want to say Armenia, I can't remember, but it's just like a nation where in that time, in that space, nobody heard of. This is also pre-internet, so, you know, in a significant way.

00:13:33.980 So there was a lot more ability to spin. But then it comes with how much of politics is spin. And today, this might seem redundant, because we talk about it so much. This might seem redundant, but I don't think it is.

00:13:50.700 I think this movie has even more weight and more substantial necessity to watch and sort of, you know, disconnect all of the different players.

00:14:01.720 Because today, when you're sitting on your phone, betting on an algorithm, that algorithm has power.

00:14:11.660 Your search engines have power.

00:14:15.260 the things that flood your inbox and your Instagram and your TikTok, and we know that

00:14:22.200 has power. It can create or dissolve an entire narrative with a three-minute video.

00:14:32.600 Don't tell me we can't create enough distraction in order to pave the way

00:14:41.240 for powers to stay in power, for people to stay in power. I just watched the Argentinian guy get 1.00

00:14:49.600 elected as president, heaven help us, the chain, you know, chainsaw wielding, insane, it seems insane. 1.00

00:15:03.160 But how did he get elected? How quickly was he elected? And under what auspice did he get

00:15:10.280 elected. Because I have a feeling, as I've heard a lot of his banter, granted, I've had it

00:15:16.620 interpreted, I have a feeling he's very reminiscent. Well, I know he's very reminiscent of Trump.

00:15:24.160 Trump was one of his first congratulatory statements. Trump very beautifully started

00:15:29.820 talking about fake news. Talking about fake news on the offset was unfortunately brilliant,

00:15:37.660 unfortunate for us, fortunate for him, because then he gets to be the dictator of what's real

00:15:44.900 and what's not. And in this day and age, in this day and age, where you have people with AI voices,

00:15:52.620 with AI physicality, when you have AI being able to reconstitute actual people,

00:16:00.740 well then who the hell is wagging the dog who are we going to watch who are we going to believe

00:16:08.460 what truth makes sense if i can't believe what i hear anymore or i can't believe what i see

00:16:15.980 how do i know what to what is true and you would think with the the internet and the access to all

00:16:26.240 of these people living in places where we're getting information from, we would have more

00:16:30.500 truth. Well, we do. It just comes with a wave, a wave of manipulated data, manipulated audio,

00:16:43.080 visual imagery, to the point where you can't really discern anymore. You can't hear an audio

00:16:49.620 recorder anymore and go, oh, that was Tom Cruise. You can't. You can't. Maybe some super voice

00:16:57.900 recognition computer software program can, but you can't. So now what? If we can't believe what

00:17:05.980 we hear, we can't believe necessarily what we say because our technology has gotten that good.

00:17:12.600 Who's wagging the dog? That's, again, a little bit for older classes.

00:17:19.620 Oh, this one's a good one. I like to go far back because you know what? Once you've been teaching a long time, you understand new movies are great and all, but I have to really watch them to be able to pull a lot of things out of them a few times.

00:17:31.020 One of the best movies I have seen, and this movie I use for society class predominantly, and I also use it a little bit for world religions, with Uma Thurman, Ethan Hawke, Jude Law, Gattaca, premise of Gattaca.

00:17:47.200 somewhere in the not too distant future people are judged by their genes meaning we don't have

00:17:54.360 natural reproduction anymore we have genetically engineered production of perfect little humans

00:18:02.140 we get rid of all of the especially if you have money of course it's when you have money we get

00:18:07.180 rid of all the bad genes we get rid of all of the cancer and all of the disease and all of the heart

00:18:13.560 stuff and that all goes out the window right and what you end up with are these perfect

00:18:20.120 genetically perfect little people and then what they do in this world is they assign them well

00:18:26.440 we know your genes are great awesome you're going to be an astronaut awesome you're going to be a

00:18:30.120 doctor awesome you're going to be and the people that don't have the genes or don't have the money

00:18:35.080 to buy the right genes well guess what they get to do all the other jobs right this movie is an

00:18:41.560 awesome movie about an individual, and again, I don't want to give it away, who doesn't have the

00:18:48.280 genes, who fakes the genes, the right, stealing some hair and some blood and stealing the genes.

00:18:58.280 And instead of being born, naturally born superior, he's naturally born inferior genetically, yet

00:19:08.240 He has the heart and the drive and the determination that makes him exceptional.

00:19:17.300 So this is a big conversation, isn't it?

00:19:19.900 Huge conversation.

00:19:21.640 Because the more we can manipulate genes, the more we can get rid of disease, the more that we can perfect the biological human.

00:19:30.760 Aren't we doing that?

00:19:31.780 and by doing that are we then paving the way to saying those are better people and if those are

00:19:38.920 better people they should have a better shot at that job in that house and that money and oh my

00:19:43.760 goodness who does that sound like right absolutely insane and then you talk about something that's

00:19:53.460 different than the musculature you're born with or the natural intelligence you're born with

00:19:58.700 because there's something about humanity and there's something about people that that is is

00:20:03.800 more about the drive they have rather than the just pure talent they were born with and you guys

00:20:10.440 know this because everywhere you look around you i guarantee and this is a great conversation for

00:20:15.760 teenagers and elementary school kids to have you see kids that have the the talent the the gifted

00:20:26.160 talent to do amazing things, what do they do with it? Do they work hard? Do they push themselves?

00:20:33.940 Do they force themselves to excel? Some may, but a lot don't. A lot rest on that. They rest on the

00:20:43.520 fact that they're naturally gifted. They rest on the fact that they were given certain attributes,

00:20:48.340 height, strength, skill, coordination, intelligence. They rest on those facts because

00:20:57.540 they can sail through whatever basketball camp, physics program, music, whatever, music

00:21:07.340 functionality or whatever. That's not the right word, but whatever they put themselves in,

00:21:13.280 They're so above and beyond everybody else, they just decide to roll with that.

00:21:20.940 And what does that say about us?

00:21:24.220 And what does that say about the possibility that imperfection, imperfection, actually is what produces greatness?

00:21:36.680 And guys, make no mistake, you start talking about how imperfection could be the road to greatness to kids, to students, you will never have more of their attention ever because every single one of them feels that because nobody is perfect.

00:21:58.880 but every single one of them feels that right what an amazing conversation this gets into science

00:22:06.880 if i taught biology i talk about the genetics of it i talk about how far and i do talk about how

00:22:12.240 far iui and ivf has come and how we can they actually rank embryos when you do ivf you get

00:22:20.080 eight embryos they're ranked they get a grade quite literally a letter grade and that's how

00:22:26.960 how you decide which ones to implant.

00:22:30.500 But that does not mean those are the ones

00:22:32.680 that are going to lead to do great things

00:22:35.780 just because genetically they were created to be superior.

00:22:43.780 Anyways, Gattaca, great conversation, great movie.

00:22:47.980 This is a classic.

00:22:50.260 A lot of people have seen it.

00:22:51.720 A lot of people have, you know what?

00:22:53.120 A lot of my kids now haven't, so it's nice.

00:22:54.820 It's coming full circle.

00:22:56.960 dead poet society robin williams the reason why this one this is kind of like

00:23:03.200 i guess part of me sees this as the as a similar movie

00:23:10.000 in some ways in some fashion to mona lisa smile but obviously this is talking about in a very

00:23:17.200 traditional world how poetry which let's be honest still to this day has been tossed by the wayside

00:23:26.240 in favor of mathematics and science and business courses to make money and change the world and

00:23:33.200 get rich and blah blah blah blah blah right whereas poetry kind of gets chuffed what are

00:23:38.480 you going to do the amount of times i hear what are you going to do with that degree

00:23:43.120 is absolutely asinine right this is one of those movies that sort of highlights the connectivity

00:23:52.000 that people have to the written word, to poetry, if given the option, right? It also talks about

00:24:01.720 that level of passion, what's in your heart, similarly to Mona Lisa's smile. It talks about

00:24:07.940 the pressures of your family and the pressures of structure and institution on who you're going to

00:24:12.760 be and what you're going to be and all of those same ideas. But it really tackles the idea,

00:24:18.180 I think, that no matter who you are, no matter what you're going to do, no matter where you come

00:24:23.880 from, that the ability of the human mind to be connected with things that are beautiful

00:24:30.980 is essential. Absolutely essential. And the day we start to strip that, because I still think

00:24:38.080 we're doing it today, right? We constantly undervalue the humanities, constantly.

00:24:44.320 And as we strip that away from people and turn them into little capitalist machines, we strip away their humanity.

00:24:53.180 We strip away what could make a holistic person.

00:24:56.640 I'm not saying don't be a scientist, a mathematician, a business person.

00:24:59.960 I am saying don't put down Keats.

00:25:05.620 Keep writing.

00:25:07.800 Keep connecting with a part of yourself that is artistic, that is emotional.

00:25:14.320 that is emotionally connected. These are the parts that make us human. These are the parts

00:25:18.960 that we leave behind and wonder why at 45, 50 years old, we're not happy. We're not fulfilled.

00:25:26.640 We don't feel connected. That's why. Because we've been chasing a singularly wrong thing.

00:25:34.980 We haven't kept the whole person. And I think arguing what that whole person is,

00:25:40.960 is pretty powerful. Because a lot of kids want to take over their family business. Amazing.

00:25:46.520 That doesn't mean you have to stop playing the guitar. It means you do both. And you do both

00:25:53.720 so it works for you and it works for your family. But you do both because they're both a part of you

00:25:59.500 and they're both going to build that sense of self. I know this one's based on a true story,

00:26:08.580 But it's still fiction, and it has probably, in all fairness, the best soundtrack I've ever heard, Remember the Titans.

00:26:17.320 But a school in Texas, a football team, I'm a sucker for a football team movie, make no mistake. 0.98

00:26:22.740 Football team in Texas, one of the first desegregated schools.

00:26:28.220 High school football team, the school gets desegregated, the football team gets desegregated.

00:26:34.360 how they work together, how they overcome this, how they get to know each other, how they do it all

00:26:39.860 in a town that wants to tear each other apart is absolutely amazing. It's amazing. And football

00:26:49.540 gets to be a thing in this movie. I mean, I do love a solid football movie, but the metaphor

00:26:55.480 is easy. And the metaphor is really, really simple. And when I look around my classrooms

00:27:00.120 And I see the diverse student body sitting in them, which is amazing.

00:27:04.760 What makes for true education, what makes for true learning and unlearning of prejudice

00:27:13.800 is sitting in the same room, having the same goals, experiencing life together with many

00:27:21.760 different nationalities, with many different ethnicities, with many different languages

00:27:26.660 and cultures and identities, all of it.

00:27:30.120 The more people you can surround yourself who are different, the more impressive you will be, the more aware, the more educated you will become.

00:27:49.100 And this movie is talking, obviously, about segregation in the South.

00:27:54.560 Following segregation, we did a lot of self-segregation.

00:27:58.840 Canada never really had segregation in the same way,

00:28:02.520 but there's still a lot of self-segregation.

00:28:05.300 So when I talk to my kids about this movie,

00:28:08.720 I'm obviously, we're not talking anymore in this day and age.

00:28:12.900 I'm not applying it to, you know,

00:28:14.460 well, all the segregation that's still going on.

00:28:17.340 I will say to them, you have a choice.

00:28:20.680 You have a choice to grow up and stay

00:28:23.720 where you've always been,

00:28:26.140 surrounded by the people and the ideas and the perspectives you always have have seen and heard

00:28:32.860 or or you can purposefully thoughtfully put yourself in different scenarios with different

00:28:42.480 peer groups with different foods and cultures and religions and ethnicities you purposefully

00:28:50.380 go out of your way to ensure diversity because if you're just going to sit at home and wait for

00:28:56.000 to knock at your door, that's where all that bigotry lies. That's where all that injustice,

00:29:02.340 and that's where stereotype and prejudice and all those things can fester because you're not

00:29:06.620 actively going out of your way to learn. And I can't teach it in class. I can't. I can't.

00:29:14.460 I can talk about it. I can lead kids to it. But what's truly going to change their lives and their

00:29:22.120 minds and their perspectives. The only way they're going to unlearn anything that's been

00:29:27.040 shoved in their head without their consent is by actively seeking it out. And that can include,

00:29:32.520 and I talk about this all the time, the educational importance of travel. And I know not everybody

00:29:38.860 has millions of dollars to travel. I think we underestimate how powerful kids are. And just

00:29:48.180 because you can't go to another country doesn't mean you can't go to another city. And just

00:29:51.540 because you can't you know go to another city doesn't mean you can't go to a restaurant of a

00:29:56.140 different family or background or whatever that travel can happen in many different capacities

00:30:01.380 and my students and I after watching this consistently talk about how we can sit in

00:30:08.480 this room and talk and listen to each other but there's a whole world of diversity there's a whole

00:30:12.620 world of learning going on out there that I can't just tell you that I want you to go find

00:30:18.580 And the more that you go find it, the more you will understand that the notion of stereotype fades and blows away in the wind because it has absolutely no use or no place around you.

00:30:35.340 Oh, all right.

00:30:37.320 This has been one of my go-to movies.

00:30:39.920 This is for history, American history, Canadian history.

00:30:43.700 I usually show this right around the FLQ crisis in Canada, like in our historical time frame. 0.77

00:30:49.460 Politics, for sure.

00:30:50.660 Society, because it's about human nature.

00:30:53.080 One of my favorites.

00:30:53.920 If you've never seen this movie, go see it.

00:30:56.020 The Siege.

00:30:57.020 Little Denzel Washington. 0.57

00:30:58.800 Annette Bening, come on.

00:31:02.040 Oh, yeah, I forgot. 0.92

00:31:03.200 A little Bruce Willis.

00:31:05.200 The Siege.

00:31:05.800 Here's what happens.

00:31:06.900 And this is interesting.

00:31:08.400 By the by, this happens just before 9-11.

00:31:11.880 So keep that in your mind.

00:31:13.100 just before premise of the movie, New York gets a terrorist attack. You find out very quickly that

00:31:21.320 the government was involved somehow because they had secretly detained and illegally,

00:31:27.660 according to international law, arrested and kept a leader of a political party from another

00:31:32.360 country in their country. And then this terrorist action happens. Now that's the beginning. Do you

00:31:40.400 think there's somebody in on the government that's like, listen, I know what's going on 0.68

00:31:43.840 with the whole Afghanistan thing. Let's just pre-write the movie right now. The difference

00:31:49.240 between 9-11 and this movie was 9-11 happened on one day and it rolled into the Patriot Act and it

00:31:57.560 rolled into a huge war, not just one war, but two wars. So the fallout was just incredibly

00:32:05.560 disastrous. In this movie, it's not just a single terrorist attack. New York gets hit a few times.

00:32:13.920 And what ends up happening is that they put Brooklyn, because they assume logistically,

00:32:20.500 ethnically, all of that kind of stuff, that the call's coming from Brooklyn, so to speak. The

00:32:24.860 terrorist cells are coming from inside Brooklyn. So they seal off the bridge with what? Well,

00:32:29.820 they institute, they institute martial law. They call in the army, and the army led by Bruce Willis

00:32:37.480 says you don't want to do it. The army is a broad sword, it is not to be used against a civilian

00:32:44.620 population in our own country. But if you use us, we will get the job done. And then the very

00:32:51.200 brilliant question, the amazing question that I think is one of the most fundamental questions

00:32:58.160 of philosophy, politics, history alike, because I think this question is at the root of conflict

00:33:04.720 and spawned conflict that you can then apply for years to come. Are you ready for the question?

00:33:12.500 Does the means, sorry, does the ends justify the means? Does the end, do the end justify the means?

00:33:23.580 meaning. If we get the job done, whatever the job is, we get the bad guy, does it matter

00:33:31.520 the means that we use? Does it matter the tactics that we used to get the bad guy? Take a deep

00:33:40.000 breath on that for a second. There's a lot going on in the world right now. Do the means justify

00:33:47.440 the ends. You want a brilliant conversation? Ask that question to a bunch of 16-year-olds.

00:33:55.500 Let them apply it to their lives. Let them apply it to more mundane circumstances.

00:34:05.560 Let them apply it to what parents should be allowed to do. Let them apply it to what teachers

00:34:09.960 should be allowed to do, what they should be allowed to do. And then let them gradually,

00:34:15.580 slowly start thinking and applying it to bigger issues of state and of of colonization and of

00:34:26.240 expansion and the creation of empire and the creation of capital and the building of a fortune

00:34:34.040 you want to know how smart teenagers are lead them down that road don't tell them the answer

00:34:44.040 And by the way, who the hell knows the answer? That's the brilliance of these questions.

00:34:49.800 These questions don't have a finite answer. And anybody who thinks they do, in my opinion,

00:34:56.500 is either trying to control and manipulate to gain power or is too simplistic to understand

00:35:01.220 the question. These are big questions that apply to everything. Because it's never just about

00:35:10.460 country A versus country B. It's never just about the narrowly defined specifics. It's about human

00:35:18.320 nature and it's about our preset defined level of morality and application of morality to any

00:35:30.400 given situation. And in my opinion, we will then roll right into the hypocrisy of the application

00:35:40.020 of this, because I'll tell you what, the ends certainly tend to justify the means when

00:35:46.180 it's you, your country, who sits on the winning side.

00:35:53.240 If you're sitting on the winning side, the ends did justify the means.

00:35:58.200 If you're sitting on the winning side, nobody ever questions the means you use to get there.

00:36:04.340 Because you have all the power and you have all the control of the back end.

00:36:10.020 That's the question.

00:36:11.980 We can talk about World War I and World War II

00:36:15.020 and the bombing of this and the bombing of that

00:36:17.980 and terrorism here and revolution there,

00:36:20.160 but it all comes down to the same premise.

00:36:27.520 Do the ends justify the means?

00:36:30.520 And, bigger question, what end are you looking for?

00:36:35.660 so when people say Joanna you can't use movies to teach class I say to them you've never watched

00:36:46.040 the right movie or you've never spent enough time trying to understand the depths and the

00:36:51.900 application and the intelligence of students to be able to understand these questions and really

00:36:59.000 delve into some of these bigger issues and when you say well there's no answer Joanna how are you

00:37:05.500 supposed to mark on that, you're not supposed to mark on the answers. You're not supposed to grade

00:37:10.060 them on the answers. Because if I was grading the world on their answers, we would all fail.

00:37:15.380 I will grade them on their thought, on their critical analysis, on their ability to draw

00:37:20.660 conclusions from many, many, many different sources, and their ability to sit in a room

00:37:25.640 and discuss it and listen to different perspectives and understand how all of those

00:37:31.600 things intertwine and run the world we live in. That is education. That is teaching. And that's

00:37:38.160 exactly what learning looks like. So until the next time, guys, go watch a few movies. I'll see

00:37:45.920 you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat station. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - November 21, 2023

The One Where I Use 'The Seige' To Teach A Class

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