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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or people will say 'moore's opinion is this but my opinion is that so that proves moore is a liar.' moore is the best documentary maker ever, no one can find one single lie in his entire movie, yes, he may have made a mistake or two but all in all his movie is factual. people are so afraid of the facts they have to convince themselves that moore is a liar.
not one single person has been able to tell me a lie from m moore. most sights that claim moore lied give examples like 'moore said 29% but the real figure is 28.9% that proves he lied' or 'moore said it was pm but it was really 11;55am so that proves he's a liar' or they tell you what they think he said but not his EXACT WORDS, or they say 'to moore this means...so that proves he's a liar' well, how do they know what something means to moore? and how does what they think something means to moore make moore a liar? not one person can give me one real example of moore lying.
you know, when i ask people if they would vote for a convicted theif and a convicted drunk for president every single person i've asked has said 'no', untill i tell them bush is the convicted theif and drunk i'm asking about, then they come up with all kinds of excuses why bush shouldn't be held accountable for his actions, there are more arrests in his history but these are the only 2 convictions.
do you want a lying drunken theif leading our country and influencing your children? what about the drunken theif down the block. would you elect him prsident? oops, bush was never elected president was he, he was court appointed.
A poll that is slanted to make Kerry look bad is doing pretty much the same thing Greg is doing here -- communication information in a manner calculated to shape opinion.
45% say Kerry should quit seat, poll indicates
A poll asks whether respondents "are concerned" that Kerry "missed 70 percent of the votes in the Senate over the last two years".
A neutral poll question would simply ask something like, "Do you feel Kerry is doing a good job in the Senate?" and "How closely is job performance link to attendance in the Senate?"
Stealing a Christmas wreath sounds like a rather stupid thing to do. I found a few news articles that note he was arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. For what it's worth, Bush was also arrested for rowdiness at a football game, though the charges were later dropped.
Ethos (personal character) certainly has a place in political discourse. Still, whether stealing a Christmas wreath and getting into a car accident makes a whole family "crooked" is a matter of opinion.
Plato observed that the ideal leader would not actually wish to lead. This means that those who do rise to power generally aren't ideal.
I shudder to think what my own flaws would look like, if they were magnified through their effect on the lives of millions of people.
sorry, i did some research tho and found out bush was convicted of stealing a christmas wreath while in college, a convicted theif he is, also i found out bush was convicted of being a drunk driver, i never called anyone a liar, there are hundreds if not thousands of websites calling m moore a liar so i wondered if these charges were true or more lies and they turned out to be true, the charges against laura were NOT public record untill FOI act forced them to open the files for the public. after 8 years of hearing how crooked the clintons were i wonder why everyone ignores the facts about crooked the bush's are, they were even convicted while the clintons were never even charged, thanks for the reply
You seem very informed about Michael Moore, Greg, and already seem to have made your mind about his veracity. I wonder why you're asking me? Nevertheless, I'll bite this time.
Who convicted Bush of stealing what? Is this a reference to the election, or something else?
The alcoholism in W's past and the car accident that Laura was involved in at age 17 are matters of public record.
If you think anyone with an alcohol problem is a "drunk" or that Laura Bush is "ugly", those are matters of opinion, not fact. Since they're not matter of fact, the "truth or lie" dichotomy here is a falsehood.
It seems like you've set a chip on your shoulder, ready to shout "liar" at anyone who disagrees with you. That's your choice, in a free country, but I'm not terribly impressed by the argument that is likely to result.
hey, i just read bush is a convicted theif, a convicted drunk and that his ugly wife killed her ex boyfriend, is this true or more of m moore's lies? let me know, thanks,
michael moore is a great american hero, and is mentioned as such in the rock opera adam g-214, 2073 a.d. , a kind of anti bush future rock opera, musicians wanted to record some of the songs for a compilation cd