Unpopular opinions go here

[Micah Sweet]

As a graduate student, I taught first-year composition, and my students bounced hard off of Citizen Kane. It really bothered me until a colleague pointed out that it's really difficult to get modern audiences, especially post-Internet generations, to see how revolutionary Kane is because so much of what Welles and Tolland did became standard vocabulary for filmmakers. It's like watching someone design the sentence.

Yeah. It's sad, but many, many people simply have no appreciation of history. Our educational system (at least in the U.S.) doesn't particularly value it, and often treats it as a vestigial discipline of little use in modern society.

 

[Gradine]

Yeah. It's sad, but many, many people simply have no appreciation of history. Our educational system (at least in the U.S.) doesn't particularly value it, and often treats it as a vestigial discipline of little use in modern society.

It certainly doesn't help that at least half the country is trying to replace actually researched historical curriculum for primarily and secondary school with what essentially amounts to their ahistorical fan-fiction.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It certainly doesn't help that at least half the country is trying to replace actually researched historical curriculum for primarily and secondary school with what essentially amounts to their ahistorical fan-fiction.

It does not. Its also unhelpful but true that many programs are downplaying the history part of social studies in favor of more practice of writing and reading skills (which of course are taught elsewhere, but they seem to feel history can take the hit). It's all quite depressing actually.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Yeah. It's sad, but many, many people simply have no appreciation of history. Our educational system (at least in the U.S.) doesn't particularly value it, and often treats it as a vestigial discipline of little use in modern society.

I don't think you're wrong, but I think in my situation the issue was that I wasn't meeting the students where they were at. They needed a more aggressive introduction to the film that provided context for its importance and influence. Strangely, they may have benefitted from watching the film with Ebert's commentary, to guide them through it.

(As a side note, this is going on twenty-one years, and the students were older millennials, where I'm late Gen X. It's only a six or seven year gap, but I really felt it in that moment. The world really changed in that gap.)

 

[Gradine]

It does not. Its also unhelpful but true that many programs are downplaying the history part of social studies in favor of more practice of writing and reading skills (which of course are taught elsewhere, but they seem to feel history can take the hit). It's all quite depressing actually.

I may be influenced by my time spent in higher education, but I think it's pretty significantly important for every discipline to help train students in reading and writing skills.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I may be influenced by my time spent in higher education, but I think it's pretty significantly important for every discipline to help train students in reading and writing skills.

Of course it is, but it is being given extra time and attention explicitly at the expense of history. It is being de-emphasized throughout primary and secondary education.

 

[Thomas Shey]

As a graduate student, I taught first-year composition, and my students bounced hard off of Citizen Kane. It really bothered me until a colleague pointed out that it's really difficult to get modern audiences, especially post-Internet generations, to see how revolutionary Kane is because so much of what Welles and Tolland did became standard vocabulary for filmmakers. It's like watching someone design the sentence.

I've observed a similar phenomenon with the 50's SF movie Them! Over and above the movie target of special effects technology, and engaging with a black and white movie, and one showing the social expectations of the period, to some people it'll seem like a storyline and pattern they've seen a million times--because they have. But that's because everyone and their brother copied elements from Them! to the degree its pretty much a convention of certain kinds of monster movies. So in many cases Them! is the sun-source, but it seems trite because so many people copied from it.

 

[overgeeked]

It's a shifting baseline. You're never going to get people to appreciated the newness or novelty of something that was commonplace before they were born.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's a shifting baseline. You're never going to get people to appreciated the newness or novelty of something that was commonplace before they were born.

Perhaps not, but they can learn to appreciate its place in the fabric of humanity's story, if we bother to try.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

I may be influenced by my time spent in higher education, but I think it's pretty significantly important for every discipline to help train students in reading and writing skills.

I can't agree with this enough. My experience back after the turn of the century was that we just didn't have the space to make up what they hadn't learned in high school. The writing skills of my first-years were incredibly variable (this was at a state flagship university in the South), as was their interest in learning writing skills. We were actually explicitly told in our pedagogy courses not to teach grammar or mechanics, which I ended up ignoring because a lot of them didn't know how to properly use commas. On the upside, I'm taking courses at CCSF this semester, and I'm generally impressed with my classmates' writing skills. I can't discount the geographical difference between where my university was and SF, but SFUSD is clearly doing something right, despite what my neighbors and the folks in the San Francisco subreddit would have me believe.

Of course it is, but it is being given extra time and attention explicitly at the expense of history. It is being de-emphasized throughout primary and secondary education.

I can't say that history isn't being de-emphasized, but writing and reading are so fundamental that I think that would have to be our first priority. How can you study history effectively if you're reading and writing at a remedial level? But I don't have kids, I no longer have a job that puts me in routine interaction with young folks, and my nieces and nephews are all just starting elementary school with one exception, so I've got minimal knowledge of what's going on with kids these days.

So in many cases Them! is the sun-source, but it seems trite because so many people copied from it.

Clearly, I need to see Them!