Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where Liberty Dies with Thunderous Applause

00:00:00.000 classes in session hey you doing and welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session today i am taking

00:00:09.680 you to class i am going to teach you a lesson and i am going to teach you the fine art of carefully

00:00:18.320 masterfully intelligently maybe a little sneaky interweaving pop culture and movies into your

00:00:27.360 classroom. The kids are going to love it. If you frame it and you preset the movie properly

00:00:36.340 and you have the right sort of, it doesn't, listen, not every movie needs to have

00:00:41.720 an assignment, yada, yada, yada, but these can, and these can have an assignment that they'll

00:00:46.940 enjoy watching the movie. And then they're going to get a lot of it out on the back end. Now,

00:00:51.600 here's the hard part guys we've created a educational system that has quieted the creativity

00:01:03.040 the ideas the exuberance of youth we've quieted them in order to sit down and write and memorize

00:01:13.280 and take tests and you know do all of the things they are expected to do and unfortunately

00:01:21.600 when I get a hold of them, or when you guys as other teachers who have all these creative ideas

00:01:28.120 get a hold of them, sometimes you come up against it. You come up against it because

00:01:34.000 it's not that they don't know how to think creatively. It's that they were taught

00:01:39.940 that's not what's going to get them an A and that's not what's going to help them in class

00:01:45.340 and so on and so forth. And so they start to quiet their ideas. I'm not about quieting.

00:01:52.940 I want big, rompus debates, discussions, sometimes, yes, even intelligent arguments

00:02:03.740 about the nature of the things we discuss and the ideas and the philosophies of the people

00:02:11.680 we focus on in both history and politics and society class and world religions and all of

00:02:17.380 those courses. All right. Now I'm strictly talking about the social sciences. Sorry,

00:02:21.580 math people, you guys are going to have to find your own movies. But when I look at some of these

00:02:27.860 movies, and it's funny, the older I get, the more that I can go back to other movies and kids are

00:02:33.320 like, oh, wait, I've never seen that. The more that I look back at these movies, the more that

00:02:39.260 you can recognize. Movies are always a reflection of the context in which they were written

00:02:47.860 by the people that wrote them. So right off the bat, you don't have to step a foot anywhere else.

00:02:56.040 Movies are a reflection of the time, such as a piece of visual art is a reflection of the time.

00:03:07.020 A music masterpiece is a reflection of the time.

00:03:13.980 So no matter where you go, kids are able to, and as a teacher, you need to be able to tie these strings together for them.

00:03:23.900 At least provide them a narrow path so they can start to walk down the road and actually say what they think.

00:03:33.920 Tell me what you think.

00:03:35.760 I sat down with my class. We just started a new semester. And I say, what do you care about? What

00:03:41.620 do you think? What excites you? When you sit down and talk about big issues, what are they? You know

00:03:46.860 what I heard from them? Nothing. Not because they don't think anything, not because they don't have

00:03:54.240 big ideas, but because they looked around the room and they thought, well, I don't want to say.

00:04:01.880 or they thought, well, maybe my idea is not good enough

00:04:05.480 or they thought there's no way this relates to history

00:04:08.200 or they thought or they thought

00:04:09.880 and what they did is they thought themselves

00:04:12.080 right out of the conversation.

00:04:16.440 So I try to reel them back in by saying,

00:04:21.220 you like music?

00:04:23.020 Great, we're going to do a music assignment

00:04:25.120 and they're like, what?

00:04:27.240 You like art?

00:04:28.600 You like doing art?

00:04:29.820 You like things that are tactile?

00:04:31.880 They're like, yeah, this is history class, Joanna.

00:04:34.560 Great, we're doing an art assignment.

00:04:37.040 If you guys want me to do podcasts on those two things,

00:04:39.000 we're going to do them.

00:04:39.880 I'll do them later so you can get an idea

00:04:41.600 of how I interweave those things.

00:04:44.700 You like movies and TV?

00:04:48.880 I'm your girl.

00:04:50.420 Then we got it.

00:04:51.420 They're like, what?

00:04:52.920 Joanna, we're in history.

00:04:54.000 How are we going to do an assignment on a movie?

00:04:55.980 You're going to make us watch, what, some documentary?

00:04:59.100 you're going to make us watch the same old, same old, you know, even something as obvious,

00:05:05.060 even though Oppenheimer was a great movie, something that obvious, we're just going to

00:05:08.840 watch this pseudo documentary about something we have to learn. And it's another movie. And I'm

00:05:13.840 like, no, no, we're not. Although those are great movies. And there's always space for brilliant

00:05:21.060 historical fiction, for political satire, for all of those things. So I have space for all of those.

00:05:27.260 but I said, we're going to have a little bit more fun than that. They're like, what?

00:05:33.420 So I'm sitting with, uh, history 10 actually, and this can go as low as history seven and eight,

00:05:42.660 but in Canada, it really fits in the history 10 curriculum. All right. Because one of the things

00:05:49.860 obviously a big, significant aspect of History 10 is World War II. And I know that in all parts

00:05:58.540 of the world, right, we learn about World War II. Now, we can teach this in relatively

00:06:04.360 easy to understand, kind of benign, take a note, here are the dates, here's what happened,

00:06:12.740 here are the horrific realities or, and I'm just spitballing here, we take a step out of that for

00:06:20.400 a second and say, put down your books. After you've already read about the growing fascist

00:06:29.360 state in Germany, after you already read about what he did with that power, but after you've

00:06:34.780 already read the backstory, you have to have read the backstory. Sorry, kids, you got to do the back,

00:06:38.960 You got to do your homework before you can do something fun. And I say to my kids all the time,

00:06:46.180 history isn't about the what, it's about the why. And the what, you're going to memorize,

00:06:56.260 you're going to maybe hold on to some fact, and then you're going to move on. But the why,

00:07:01.440 the why you're going to see time and time and time again, when you are in different places,

00:07:06.640 when you're studying different material, when you're talking with your friends, when you're

00:07:10.820 having discussions with your kids in the future, all of it, it's all going to tie back around and

00:07:15.520 you're going to, you're going to remember the why of the event. And then when you're sitting,

00:07:21.360 watching the news, you're like, wait a minute, I can see the why. We get wrapped up in fact,

00:07:30.320 we get wrapped up in the what, and we don't look at the why. So what I try to do with the kids is

00:07:35.540 force them outside of their bubble. Understand that we're going to learn outside of the material

00:07:43.240 for a second. So the first movie, movie, series of movies I want to talk about, Star Wars.

00:07:49.880 And guys, horribly enough, I'm going to talk about the first three. I know, I know, I can hear

00:07:56.620 people my age groaning, doubling over, shutting off their computers or their radios while they're

00:08:04.660 listening to me, give me a second. Episodes one, two, and three, okay, fine. They weren't my

00:08:14.260 favorite. Heaven help me. Number two was Anna's. But what these episodes of this series did

00:08:23.480 was it reflected quite beautifully the rise of fascism, of totalitarian dictatorship,

00:08:34.440 of Hitler in Germany during World War II.

00:08:40.580 Emperor Palpatine and the way he gained power is a direct reflection, a direct reflection

00:08:51.080 on World War II.

00:08:54.620 It just is.

00:08:55.520 If you've never heard that before, I'll be surprised, but it just is.

00:08:58.760 so we watch how he positions himself how does the emperor stand in different spaces

00:09:07.800 as the intelligent sage as the quiet observer as the orator as the as the guy who stands for

00:09:19.120 justice when nobody else will, as a guy that puts himself in sort of the limelight in order

00:09:30.780 to start occurring and start collecting power, a guy that creates fear in the background,

00:09:38.700 that subtly creates war and hardship and hatred.

00:09:48.660 A guy that slowly shows a victim

00:09:56.040 or slowly shows somebody to blame for the problems that are arising.

00:10:05.960 Sound familiar?

00:10:08.700 It's not the what, it's the why.

00:10:13.180 And if you can see the why, you will see it happening in many different places with many different people on many different levels.

00:10:23.080 One of my favorite lines of Star Wars, and I have it on my arm actually, is when Queen Amidala stands up and they have had an attack on the Empire.

00:10:35.640 and emperor palpatine stands up and is given emergency powers he's given all of the power to

00:10:46.300 do what to defend us from our enemies he's created the enemy to defend us from our enemies

00:10:55.220 and the whole galactic house of commons if you will roaring applause and queen amadala says

00:11:03.980 something to the effect of so this is how liberty dies with thunderous applause

00:11:11.620 listen to that for a second guys listen to that because that quote can be used right now

00:11:20.880 right now

00:11:23.240 how many people are talking about boogeyman in the closet how many people are talking about it's

00:11:30.740 those people as soon as as soon as we deal with them our country will be better

00:11:36.020 and we give them more power to take care it's it's been absolutely an accepted fact

00:11:44.340 that hitler burned down the reichstag he had it burned down anyways

00:11:50.260 and why so he could show the need for emergency power so he could show he could prove to everybody

00:11:58.500 that oh my god look they're coming look at what they've done now when i talk about that with my

00:12:05.340 students and we talk about palpatine in star wars i'm like and they're like well well do you have

00:12:12.480 to physically burn something down i'm like get out of the what get out of the what it's not about

00:12:18.240 the what it's not about the parliament it's not about the drone army it's not the what's it's the

00:12:24.560 why and if you can figure out the why of history if you can figure out the cause and the consequence

00:12:32.320 the the effects of action it doesn't matter what date it happened on

00:12:41.760 it matters how somebody garners that kind of power and what are they wanting to do with it

00:12:50.240 And the key is, and the key is always, and I realize in Star Wars, it's obviously more science fiction based, but kids love it. I have walked across a couple of kids that didn't, but haven't helped them.

00:13:03.520 when you look at a movie like this and then you compare it to what's going on in our world

00:13:13.600 different times of history it's about the acquisition of power but then it's about

00:13:19.600 the retention of power once you gain power once you gain notoriety once you gain a level of

00:13:29.280 superstardom, if you will, everything you do then is working to hold it up.

00:13:39.640 That's the why. The why isn't just about the power that you get. The why is about how do you keep it?

00:13:49.280 Right? And in here, it talks about hate leading to fear, leading to anger and the dark side. I'm

00:13:54.680 not sure in what order that goes in. It's a beautiful metaphor about balance. It's a beautiful

00:14:04.080 metaphor about separation of powers. It's a beautiful metaphor that a single person,

00:14:14.260 even Yoda, never has all of the answers they can never see completely clearly

00:14:22.140 because in and of yourself, you always have, to some degree, narrow focus, right?

00:14:32.880 Anakin becomes Darth Vader, not because he hates, but because he's scared.

00:14:38.740 Who made him scared? Who created that fear? Because I look around the world today and I,

00:14:44.840 again, talk about it class after class after class. You want to know what drives people

00:14:49.520 to do horrible things, fear. Fear. And the more we amp that up,

00:15:02.420 the more easily I can say they are the enemy, whoever they are. Again, the what and the who

00:15:11.380 don't matter. The why matters. The more I can point and say it's them, but don't worry.

00:15:16.540 i got you i'll take care of them and then all of a sudden you have students in your room talking

00:15:24.840 about different dictators around the world and they're talking about different moments in time

00:15:29.940 and they're talking about today and they're talking about yesterday and they're talking

00:15:32.760 about in gym class because it all ties together they start to understand that history isn't just

00:15:39.520 this thing that happens out there it's the thing that's happening right here all the time

00:15:43.960 so if i can get them on board you know i might joke with them about the force but if i can get

00:15:52.100 them on board they start to understand and they start being able to apply it and then they're all

00:15:58.720 in guys because then i can use that as a metaphor to tap in to so many different aspects of the

00:16:06.340 curriculum going up a notch i don't know if it's up a notch this might be laterally

00:16:12.320 more sci-fi i'm staying with straight up sci-fi today i'll do another genre if you want me to

00:16:19.020 the x-men i'm holding up last stand only because it's the first movie i picked up off my shelf

00:16:24.720 the x-men listen everybody loves a good superhero movie but the x-men is more than that right

00:16:34.880 and in the story of magneto

00:16:42.880 if you haven't watched the x-men heaven help you but the story of magneto and how he became

00:16:48.000 magneto and the conditions under which the immense pressure and pain he was under and again

00:16:57.360 oddly tying again to the uh to the holocaust the the immense pressure he was under

00:17:03.440 and the metamorphosis of his genes enabled him to regain control of that fear in fact

00:17:19.680 his power was born from fear so what do you do with it what do you do when you've been hurt that badly

00:17:30.640 do you retaliate do you enslave do you imprison

00:17:36.760 do you wipe them out you want to talk about big questions that apply to politics and history and

00:17:49.980 philosophy the x-men is it and have it so they have a good time watching it everybody's always

00:17:57.820 like everything has to be so serious. It is serious. There are serious underpinnings. Can

00:18:02.840 they have fun watching it? Can you allow them to immerse themselves into a world that's completely

00:18:10.300 unique, but I am eventually going to pull at a string until they are all in sitting on the edge

00:18:16.560 of their seat, wondering what they would do with all of the power with no check or balance.

00:18:24.560 And then what does that power become

00:18:28.020 Symbolic of

00:18:30.040 You know we might not all be able to fly

00:18:33.040 But again it's not the what

00:18:35.560 It's the why

00:18:36.560 The more power a single entity can gain

00:18:41.920 What do we do with it

00:18:42.960 And then in the X-Men obviously

00:18:46.740 There's this incredible level of

00:18:51.040 Conversation around being different

00:18:54.560 Right? That's what the mutant is. It's a metaphor for being different. And in the bottom depths of us, we are afraid of that which we do not know and we do not understand.

00:19:11.540 that's the goal

00:19:15.800 right and in the wake of fear before before people understand them they're met with hostility

00:19:25.200 but what's their goal well magneto's goal is that of well humans prove themselves to be who they

00:19:35.920 work look at what they did to me i will show them what i can do back guys this has ramifications

00:19:44.000 for our prison system for our political system for international relations for codes of conduct and

00:19:50.960 and uh rules of war all in the x-men and instead of passing it over and being like oh well it's

00:20:01.200 just another action move look at all of that application and you got to watch a guy with

00:20:10.240 titanium in his in his claws for crying out loud got to watch people with this incredible

00:20:21.200 fantastic capacity you want to know why we're drawn to these people

00:20:25.040 Because although the bad guys might do horrible things, there's always people that are willing to give another chance, more space, another option of doing the right thing no matter how much I have been hurt.

00:20:50.860 Tell me how many metaphoric ideals and connections can be seen in that movie.

00:21:02.200 It's incredible that we, and I mean, I often see a lot in action movies and sci-fi movies

00:21:11.020 because they try to speak to a whole bunch of different ideals and they get to exist

00:21:16.760 on this whole other plane, but just like a great work of art.

00:21:20.860 these movies are tapping into our biggest fears as humans and the capacity to which we could rise

00:21:33.260 to the occasion to be better than we were as superheroes metaphorically of course all right

00:21:42.420 last thing i'm going to bring up a tv show i don't know if you guys have already seen this

00:21:46.580 if you haven't already seen this i don't know you're wasting your time talk watching me

00:21:50.680 Battlestar Galactica

00:21:53.320 Battlestar Galactica as a series

00:21:58.960 is perhaps the deepest philosophical dive

00:22:04.920 into AI

00:22:08.880 how timely

00:22:10.720 into what is a soul

00:22:13.520 into faith

00:22:16.980 into

00:22:19.640 what's the word into the degeneration of us into small groups of protecting the like-minded

00:22:33.540 into our creations and what we are willing to do with them or what they're willing to do to us

00:22:43.780 i'm going to give you a brief synopsis because this happens within the first episode so i'm not

00:22:47.920 ruining anything. Are you ready? Battlestar Galactica. Less than five minutes. Here we go.

00:22:54.360 Humans create AI, robots, to do all the jobs we don't want to do. Cool. AI grows up,

00:23:04.700 becomes a little more self-aware. AI doesn't want to do the jobs we are now commanding them to do.

00:23:10.700 we say do them anyway, we fight. Sound like anything? The parallels to slavery are

00:23:20.180 outstandingly obvious. In this first conflict, humans against, they are called the Cylons, 0.99

00:23:28.660 the Cylons lose. It's their first time coming up against the humans. What do they do? They regroup, 0.99

00:23:36.100 fly off the planet. They go away for like, I don't know, 20 years, 30 years, I can't remember.

00:23:44.040 And all of a sudden they come back, redesigned, impossible to detect. And they've embedded

00:23:53.120 themselves within the human population so that they can drive wedges and plant seeds of doubt

00:24:01.680 and fear and distraction so that when they are ready to fight for the second time because don't

00:24:09.360 think unless you you know unless you really finish the job they're not coming back humans are getting 0.59

00:24:17.000 obliterated they get on a ship they take off the Cylons kill the majority of the population

00:24:23.800 boom they're gone and then the Cylons are chasing them that's all in the first episode

00:24:28.900 now you look at that kind of movie and you think oh my god it's just that's it it's just science

00:24:34.520 fiction it's battles in in space there's this lovely little underpinning that says something

00:24:45.700 to the effect of it is all happening and it has all happened before i'm getting that quote wrong

00:24:55.420 It has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

00:25:01.040 What?

00:25:02.960 Well, these themes of whose God is right,

00:25:09.880 these themes of who controls the population,

00:25:13.420 who decides who works for who, who is enslaved by who,

00:25:17.840 the idea that our tribe has to look like us, be like us, speak like us in order to consider them

00:25:27.160 valued human beings. What are we saving? What are we rescuing?

00:25:39.360 Who has a soul? Who is considered sentient? Now, sure, we can talk about this with direct AI,

00:25:47.840 right? Or you can talk about the animal rights movement. Do they have a soul?

00:25:55.740 Are they sentient? Do they know what is happening?

00:26:03.200 When you step back from these things, you can start to see it doesn't just have to be about

00:26:10.440 people and robots, although that's highly enjoyable. It can be about the treatment of

00:26:15.080 our planet. It can be about the treatment of life on that planet. It can be about the degradation

00:26:22.700 and the lack of sustainability on that planet. The thought that we can just continuously

00:26:30.600 fly through, drive through space, finding new places to ravage and never learning a damn thing

00:26:39.040 because this too will happen again.

00:26:42.620 The cyclical nature of history

00:26:44.280 is probably one of the most important things to teach, period.

00:26:49.140 The rise and the fall of empires,

00:26:52.680 the patterns that are clear.

00:26:57.460 When I teach world religions,

00:26:59.140 I usually get to the end

00:27:00.260 and we've studied 12 major world religions

00:27:02.420 and my kids will go,

00:27:03.280 Twenna, did we just study the same religion 12 times?

00:27:09.040 I don't know, did we?

00:27:12.040 What's the difference?

00:27:14.040 They'll say context.

00:27:16.040 They'll say language.

00:27:19.040 They'll say time.

00:27:22.040 They'll say need.

00:27:27.040 So when my kids, when my students can start understanding those deep conflicts and deep

00:27:34.040 and I got them there by by drawing in something fictitional because it allows

00:27:42.240 them to think creatively where before they had shut it off how am I expecting

00:27:52.640 them to think creatively unless I give them paths to let them create how am I

00:27:59.540 expecting them to draw these grand applications of knowledge when I only ever sit them down to

00:28:07.720 memorize dates and terms and people and places? If that's how we teach, we are losing education.

00:28:17.300 Whereas it's hysterical because there's a lot of people who would say, yeah, but Joanna,

00:28:21.420 you show so many movies. Well, first of all, I don't. I would like to, but I don't.

00:28:29.540 And funnily enough, a lot of the kids will do this after school, will do this before school, will figure out ways now to make it bigger than it ever was before because it means something more. It's not just stuck in 1962 anymore.

00:28:47.760 right it's not just trapped in the moment because they see the application to today

00:28:56.340 because this kind of teaching this kind of grand sort of methodological

00:29:03.100 inclusivity of idea and culture and and entertainment all of a sudden allows them

00:29:12.500 to open their minds free their thoughts and actually say what they think and sooner or later

00:29:18.980 they're talking about history and politics and power and democracy and control and fear in a

00:29:27.500 whole different light but they're still bringing up the cuban missile crisis and they're still

00:29:33.900 bringing up you know the war of 1812 and they're still bringing up because they're like oh my gosh

00:29:39.800 I can see it there, there, there, and there.

00:29:44.620 That's, to me, humble opinion, my 72 cents.

00:29:51.000 To me, that is education.

00:29:53.980 What's it to you?

00:29:55.960 Now, if you like this rendition, I would love to go through more movies as they apply.

00:30:02.220 I don't want them to be obvious.

00:30:05.760 There are obvious movies that fit the classroom.

00:30:08.640 those ones bore me because it's too on the nose and when they're too on the nose for kids

00:30:14.800 they're like you can see them no it's the lesson's too obvious you need to sneak it in

00:30:21.280 you know like pureeing spinach and putting it in the spaghetti sauce

00:30:27.240 do you guys do that stacy grain living taught me how to do that you have to sneak it in and if you

00:30:32.700 sneak it in all of a sudden they're talking about big issues and having big conversations and deep

00:30:37.580 thoughts without even being told that's what they were supposed to do today. So if you have

00:30:42.860 any movie suggestions, throw them in the comments. If you want me to continue this with a part two,

00:30:48.560 maybe I'll tackle drama. Maybe I'll tackle comedy. Comedy is an interesting one. Maybe I'll tackle

00:30:54.320 old school film. You ever watch what happens when you put a black and white movie in front of a

00:31:00.980 grade 10 student. Now that's classroom management. Tell me in the comments, tell me what you think,

00:31:09.560 ask me any questions you want to, because I would like to consider this sort of a new possibility,

00:31:15.840 maybe once a month to tackle this kind of education so we can see the bigger picture

00:31:21.400 and we can help students enjoy the debate. Thank you guys so much for hanging out and I will see

00:31:30.740 you next Tuesday. Same bat time, same bat station. Dismissed.

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - January 30, 2024

The One Where Liberty Dies with Thunderous Applause

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