History 101 Pass The Popcorn Please Analysis

Article Review of “History 101: Pass the Popcorn, Please” In the article, “History 101: Pass the Popcorn, Please” Elaine Minamide, an English Professor at Palomar College explains why movies in the classroom can be both good and bad. Minamide’s thesis as stated in paragraph fourteen (218), “The question is not do movies enhance learning, but rather, are they becoming a substitute for actual learning?” Conversely, Minamide provides compelling arguments with many general statements from both point-of-views. In the end, Minamide gives a couple ideas as to what we should do going forward. Although, the Pro-Movie arguments are very convincing, I agree with Minamide, we need to find a middle point to the use of movies verse books. Literacy is an …show more content…
Studies show that people learn in different ways; I am a visual learner myself. There are very strong arguments for the way movies help visual learners; However, the content shown in the classroom should be held to a higher standard. The example of the movie Titanic used in a history class, doesn’t contain enough historical information to be considered a worthy movie for the classroom. It is further explained in the seventh paragraph (218) these “propaganda” films could help students to become “critical thinkers”, this works as long as the teachers follow up by asking the critical questions. In many ways I believe sometimes the critical questions, get skipped because of the lack of allotted time. The next argument provided in Minamide’s article is that movies can be overly used in class, when teachers “accommodate” their students by only relying on movies instead of using them for “dessert”. The belief that teachers should meet students in the middle is not a great argument, it disables students from finding the excitement in