Aren't Classroom VCRs wonderful?

The party line is that Classroom VCRs are wonderful.

Thanks to modern technology, a world of video imagery is available to just about every classroom. Schools and Libraries have ever-expanding collections of educational videos which can assist teachers in classroom instruction. Videos can be used to enrich, to motivate, even to spur discussion.

First let us make very clear that we have nothing against the use of truly educational videos such as historical documentaries and expository material that is difficult to visualize without the use of film (for example, processes in the realm of science). And of course our standard caveat applies: when used in moderation, videos aren't a big deal.

What we're talking about is the wholesale abandonment of teaching time in favor of pressing play on a VCR.

We wax nostalgic over the "good old days" of the 16mm projector (we're kidding, of course, although we do miss the big screens). Back then, if a teacher wanted to show a movie, there was planning required, for if the movie wasn't in the school's film libary, it had to be ordered. Thus, we have many happy memories of sitting in a darkened room watching documentaries and shorts of history, science, and occasionally literature.

Ok, it might not have been that quite utopian in reality, but our point is that in thirteen years of public schooling, we can count on one hand the times we watched a Hollywood movie within school hours.

Fast-forward to today (pun intended), the age of the VCR.

While TV-VCR carts have multiplied in our schools, and the video resources available to the average teacher are truly impressive, there's a darker side, and its name is Blockbuster™.

One middle school principal told us of the mother who came to the school concerned about the use of movies in her child's special-education classroom. She patiently waited while the principal explained that occasionally a teacher may use a movie to motivate the children or to illustrate themes that were taught in the curriculum. When the principal was done, the mother produced a list of sixty-seven Hollywood movies that her child had inscribed in his composition book, with the date of each! (Gotta love those kids, they sure can stick to a routine.)

And it was only November.

We shudder to think what could have been taught in those hundred-plus hours of lost time, especially in a special education classroom. It reminds us of the story related by Elaine McEwan (in her book Angry Parents, Failing Schools) about the elementary school class which "spent over forty classroom hours constructing a life-size dinosaur as part of an interdisciplinary unit even though none of the students in the class were reading on grade level."

We've taught at schools where on Fridays it was de rigueur to have Hollywood movies broadcast throughout the school on the in-house cable system (paid for by Whittle's Channel 1, natch). Not the Friday before winter or spring break, mind you, but every Friday of the school year.

Once while strolling the hallways of a middle school on a Tuesday we heard explosions, gunfire, and profanity emanating from a classroom. It was the Martin Lawrence movie Bad Boys, rated not PG, not PG-13, but rated R. Turns out a student brought it in and the teacher in charge put it in the VCR. Educational malpractice, anyone?

But what about Literature, you ask?

Other than once in a great while, we caution against using videos of classic or popular literature. (Yes, we can hear your howls of protest.) We're talking about the videos of everything from fairy tales and fables through Shakespeare and Dickens to Huckleberry Finn and Harry Potter. If you're going to teach any one of these pieces of writing, then teach it! Just leave the VCR turned off, okay? One of the greatest blessings about literature—expanding one's mind by using your imagination to visualize the picture the author is painting with words—is shattered when translated to film. All you have left is plot, and an expurgated one at that.

The boundary between "armchair traveller" and "couch potato" is no wider than a VCR remote control.