Welcome to the Bowling For Columbine TEACHER’S GUIDE.
The lessons and activities in this GUIDE are designed to help students develop critical thinking skills, historical analysis, and open their minds on many universal issues. —Bowling for Columbine: Teachers’ Guide (Bowling for Columbine)
1) Moore is a very talented filmmaker.
2) I am personally in favor of all kinds of gun-control legislation.
3) Using a teacher’s guide authored by (or at least marketed by) Michael Moore in order to study the film made by Michael Moore in which Michael Moore advocates the social positions held by Michael Moore will teach the students not to think for themselves, but to think like Michael Moore.
4) To teach critical thinking, open students’ minds to the wider debate — walk them through some of Spinsanity‘s objections to Moore, or better yet, analyze some of Moore’s own comments. Show the videotape of the Hollywood crowd booing Moore during the Oscar presentation, and then show him afterwards claiming that the booing was actually some of his friends kidding him. Analyze with them the tautology of Moore’s recent defense, “Every fact in the film is true. Absolutely every fact in the film is true.”
5) Oh, wait — no need to ask your students to confront that material head on, because Michael Moore has already told everyone “How to Deal with the Lying Liars when they Lie about ‘Bowling for Columbine‘.”
6) Decide whether you want to use the controversy surrounding the movie “Bowling for Columbine” in order to teach critical thinking, or you want to teach the movie “Bowling for Columbine” to appreciate and/or deconstruct Moore’s mastery of the art of persuasive filmmaking, and to discuss the origin and purpose of the documentary film, and the artifice of the “Reality TV” genre.
Or remind them that as long as Coulter, O’Reilley, Moore, and a host of others on both the right and left keep making money off of a host of books that rely upon anecdotal evidence, ad hominem attacks and all sorts of other things that you try to prevent them from putting in their assignments, our students are going to need to be informed about rhetoric so that they can make their own critical judgements about what they watch or read.
Post was last modified on 9 Jan 2012 2:03 pm
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when people don't like the truth they hear then they call it propaganda. is he saying 911 didn't happen? did moore lie about terrorists destroying the twin towers? did 3000 people not die? what lie or propaganda did moore tell? it's a documentary of the 911 tragedy and moore haters act like it never happened, like moore is just making it all up, well 911 DID happen and f-911 is a documentary of the facts
Have anyone seen the teacher's guide for the 9/11 film?
The film is a propaganda film, no a good propaganda film, a la Moore..
OK, I am not terrible upset by that, it doesn't take much fact/contex checking to see how Moore defines 'truth'. BUT reading the teacher's guide gave chills down my spine. It strongly reminded me of political 'education' classes (although in new clothes) dished out the Soviet Union era.
BTW, I am not a Bush supporter... but coming from Europe, I can recognise political indoctrination when I see it.
The 'guide' can be found at the link below, remember to check out the mathematics section.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/books-films/fahrenheit911/teachersguide/
boy #19 sounds real smart doesn't he. a true republican always resorts to obscenities and insults when they realize someone doesn't hink bush is god. his argument was real clever, boy, he's probably volunteering for bush right now, what a real smooth talker he is, i'm not a democrat or republican, i will always vote for the best man for the job but that man is NOT bush, bush has destroyed this country and his patriot act has erased the constitution and made a mockery of the freedom our troops are fighting for, so go on swearing and insulting, its the only thing republicans have going for them, democrats can at least argue sensibly
bitch, i hate mike moore
i think m moore's numbers did a pretty good job of proving his point without your help, how many million dollar documentaries have you made? no, his movie did not list china but i looked it up because their population is greater than ours, also, why didn't YOU give us the per capita stats, why should moore? the numbers speak for themselves.
And the tone of your comment also speaks for itself. Thanks for stopping by.
g_stomberg, you don't seem to be listening to my point. I am offering a critique of Moore's method, you are defending his ideology.
To what "theory" do you refer when you say that introducing China blows it away? I not only never said it didn't, I explicitly said it did, when I wrote "He would still end up with statistics that overwhelmingly support his point that the U.S. has a gun problem. I agree with him there, of course."
Does the list of nations Moore uses in this scene include China? I don't think it does.
you're not going to tell me usa has more people than china are you? we have more gun violence than china so that kind of blows away your theory doesn't it. he didn't manipulate the facts, he quoted the facts as they stand, his numbers are correct
I don't recall ever calling Moore a liar. But that doesn't mean I think his documentaries should be considered unbiased, balanced examiniations of an issue.
If you take a population of ten people you might truthfully state, "Nobody in this room is a college professor." If you take the population of a room full of a million people, and say "Thousands of people in this room are college professors," it would be misleading to present the idea that something about the room caused an overabundance of college professors.
For instance, in a scene in "Bowling for Columbine," Moore quotes statistics showing the number of gun deaths for various countries in a recent year. [He never actually specifies what year, by the way.)] The number of gun deaths in America is much larger in every case... but the population of America is much larger in every case, too.
A more useful, more objective figure would be to compare the number of deaths per capita. He would still end up with statistics that overwhelmingly support his point that the U.S. has a gun problem. I agree with him there, of course. What I disagree with is the maniuplation of facts (of "true facts," as Moore and his supporters point out) in order to emphasize his point.
A documentary filmmaker has no obligation to be fair and balanced, of course, and I do support Moore's right to put his ideas before the public.