I want the heart, I want the soul, I want control right now
After following a Slashdot post to this story about the forthcoming deluge of video games as educational tools, I'm once again left wondering why our education system seems like it can't get inspiration right.
Case in point: like a lot of people in America, I went and saw 300 this weekend. And, like a lot of people, after seeing it, I wanted to learn more; as of this writing, Battle of Thermopylae is the most-read article on Wikipedia for the month of March.
Yet, when I think back on my own education and I'm reminded how we always watched the movie at the end of the unit, rather than at the beginning when it might have actually inspired someone to hit the books.
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I great idea in theory, but i'm not sure if it would work in practice since everything school related has to pass through a zillion filters ensuring that it couldn't possibly be offensive to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. Think of the lame ass movies that they usually showed to us. Even if it had been shown at the beginning i seriously doubt that "The Blue and the Grey" or the 1960's version of "Romeo and Juliet" would manage to jumpstart anyone.
Another thought- maybe media doesn't have any bearing at all on people's actions and inspirations. It could just be a coincidence. I bet a lot of people were going to look up the battle of Thermopylae anyway. Just for fun. Yeah. That's it.
I know that a lot of the time if I am bored on a, say, Friday or Saturday night, I will just look up the Battle of Thermopylae and just read it all night long. Its a pretty popular thing to do actually. I, like, belong to some kind of club for it actually. We keep talking about doing some sort of historical reinactment, but we always get tied down with group politics, you know how it is. Anyhow, it is pretty sweet. Yeah, definately sweet.