Using films as teaching tools

Rating: Null/10 (5 July 2006)

With the problems in education, the rise of movies and the decline of book reading, how can we not look to films like these to help illuminate, educate and inspire our youth of today? Films such as Gandhi, Kingdom of Heaven, Passion of the Christ and Paradise Now all are educational, almost completely historically accurate portrayals (with a few dramatic licenses) of very notable moments in human history.
This film is one of them.
Not only does it give you an uncompromising illumination to the "other side," but it helps to educate us on exactly what we are like as humans. It shows us how we will follow our beliefs to our death beds if we believe in them strong enough. Ideas like National Socialism are powerful and dangerous, but this movie does not portray the idea, but the leaders and the effects of them.
Downfall should be shown in history classes worldwide. Life is not black and white, good and evil, right and wrong. It is filled with grays and those grays should be embraced. This film shows us gives us this embrace and without such illuminating pieces, then we are no better then the Nazis and their beliefs of right and wrong. Art and their creators are authors of the culture of our times. Let's continue to do this by asking the tough questions, and respecting the facts.