Yesterday I wrote about teaching my students with special needs about The Age of Exploration/Discovery/Expansion. This includes class discussion based on prior knowledge, introduction of some new information, and discussing a selection from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
I want my students to take their learning a bit further. I use a movie to help me with this task.
What is the title of the mystery movie?
What's in the box? I assure you it is not Gwyneth Paltrow.
I did actually provide a hint in the following caption...
Nothing could make us pay attention to another story about explorers overpowering natives
...unless there were like blue aliens and robots or something.
On the challenge of getting my students to practice their thinking skills in a way that wouldn't bore them to death, I thought:
But what if I could "trick" them into applying these thinking skills? What if I could get them to see similarities between 15th and 16th century explorers and another story? Do I have to use a real story to help them to practice these skills? Perhaps not.
I decided to try something a little different. Instead of completing another reading, I had my students analyze a famous Hollywood movie in order to allow them to practice their thinking skills.
That mystery movie is...
James Cameron's Avatar
There are many parallels between Avatar and the European explorers we studied.
First, the students connected the "Na'vi" people to the native people of the Americas. The name "Na'vi" is not a very subtle way to encourage the audience to make this connection. My students also noticed that the Na'vi used more primitive weapons than the humans. In addition, the Na'vi had a special connection to nature, much like the indigenous Americans.
Like many things in the movie, the Na'vi's "connection" to nature is not very subtle.
The students were also able to quickly determine that fictional resource "unobtainium" was a symbol for gold. The corporation in charge of the expedition to the planet Pandora puts the acquisition of this resource above anything else... including the lives of the indigenous inhabitants of the planet. My students connected this concept to the Howard Zinn reading. In the portion that we read, the Europeans required the native people to reach a gold quota. If they did not, the natives were killed.
In the movie, the largest deposit of "unobtainium" was located directly under the Na'vi's most sacred tree. When a scientist explains how devastating the destruction of the tree will be to the inhabitants of Pandora, the head of the corporations boldly says, "They're fly-bitten savages that live in a tree. Alright, look around. I don't know about you, but I see a lot of trees. They can move!" My students immediately recognized this as similar to the attitude of explorers who expected native people to relocate in order for the Europeans to take the land. This quote also allowed the class to discuss the term "savages" and how offensive this term is.
The students also recognized that the humans had a technological advantage over the Na'vi. Because of this advantage, a small number of humans was able to control a large native population. My students immediately made this connection to the European explorers as well.
The discussion ended with a student asking, "Did any native people ever rise up and defeat the explorers?"
I didn't answer. Instead I said, "Hmmm I don't know. Maybe we should look that up".
My students are currently researching native uprisings from throughout history. Nearly all of them are really interested in finding out. I'd like to say all of them are super excited, but then you'd know I'm lying... they are still teenagers after all.