Movies As Teaching Tools

An American pastor serving in Msia was absolutely shocked that our education system did not include a philosophy class. And we also discussed how we could encourage our youths to reflect deeper about faith and the world if people dun read texts?

I suggested movies as a powerful medium to introduce stuffs, and some time back, we showed The Schindler's List followed by a group discussion in church. We haven't found the perfect formula to do it yet, movies tend to be long and people get too tired to talk after that. Maybe we can edit only selected scenes and launch into discussion after each segment. Greg Koukl wrote a good commentary on the movie here

"This is a true story of a Nazi party member, a smooth-talking war profiteer, a womanizer who made millions in Deutsch marks from Jewish slave labor and-this is the twist-ended up spending all of that money to ransom the very Jews he had been exploiting. It was really quite touching to see how, in the process, Schindler underwent a slow conversion.

He went from seeing the Jews he had working for him in his small town factory in Krakow, Poland, as a ticket to the success and wealth that had long eluded him as a businessman, to seeing them as valuable human beings he now had an opportunity to rescue.

He did rescue about 1,100 of them. Because of what he did, Oscar Schindler is the only Nazi who is buried in Jerusalem.

This is a must-see film. I think those younger than high-school age should see it under supervision, and even for the older ones the viewing should be a family event. There is hard language. There are some brief sexual scenes with some nudity. But that's not the most difficult part. The difficult part is seeing-in the very powerful, even-handed, well-done, careful-not-to-overstate manner that Steven Spielberg is capable of as a director-how human beings were wantonly destroyed."