Education Or Not? Debate Is Raging Over What Role Popular Culture Really Plays In Teaching Students History

Steven Spielberg must be wondering what he’s done to deserve this.

His new movie, “Amistad,” was first blasted as plagiarism. As soon as Spielberg won a critical court decision over the theft challenge, the civil rights drama and a related study guide were attacked as historical propaganda.

The new flap intensifies the debate over what role popular culture plays in educating - or miseducating - the nation’s students.

Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio sent the study guide to some 18,000 college and 2,000 high school educators. And teachers are supposed to use them to plan classroom exercises and discussions about the film’s story of slave traders and the early American judicial system.

The guides were promptly scorned by right-wing radio host and film critic Michael Medved. He said the materials present Spielberg’s historical drama as historical fact and advocate an interpretation of the past twisted by political bias.

Frank Rich, a liberal columnist for The New York Times, echoed one of Medved’s central criticisms, saying the guides blur distinctions between fact and fiction.

The writer of the guides and an academic unrelated to the project say the charges are unfair and ignore a fundamental truth: Today’s students spend more time watching television and movies than reading books, and if you want to teach them, you had better meet them on common ground - namely, in the entertainment world.

Furthermore, these people say, movies should never be confused with actual history: They are only a subjective interpretation of it.

“Anybody who assumes a film is authentic and truthful misses the point,” says Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies in the film school at the University of Southern California. “A film is a representation. And in films of a representation of history, it’s one person’s particular view of history.”

“Amistad,” which opened Dec. 10, stars Morgan Freeman, Anthony Hopkins, Matthew McConaughey and newcomer Djimon Hounsou in a story based on the actual 1839 revolt aboard a Spanish slave ship.

The 53 prisoners tried to sail the ship Le Amistad back to Sierra Leone but were captured by the U.S. Navy. The movie follows the legal efforts to free the prisoners and the arguments that John Quincy Adams made before the Supreme Court.

Author Barbara Chase-Riboud has sued DreamWorks, claiming that the movie misappropriated her Amistad novel “Echo of Lions.” Her lawsuit is still pending. On Dec. 8, a federal judge denied her effort to block the film’s debut, saying Chase-Riboud’s copyright infringement suit “raised serious questions” but did not “establish a probability of success.”

The next day, Medved published his broadside in the opinion pages of USA Today. He wrote that portions of the movie are “entirely bogus” and that the educational guides “distort a crucial episode in our history, using schools to shamelessly promote a commercial (and R-rated) venture.”

Medved was particularly bothered by the fictional character of Theodore Joadson, a black abolitionist played in the film by Freeman. Said Medved: “Nowhere in the kit will you find a hint that Theodore Joadson never existed.” He also complains that Adams and a prisoner named Cinque “never met.” He notes the pictures in the guide all come from the movie and are of actors, not historical figures, and argues the guide makes African culture look more advanced than it actually was.

Ironically, the character played by Freeman and the friendship between Adams and Cinque are the film’s key elements that Chase-Riboud claims were plagiarized.

The educational materials state clearly that Joadson is “a composite of African-American abolitionist activism in the early 19th century.” As for the meeting between Adams and Cinque, the historical record shows they did in fact meet. And the study guide repeatedly makes clear that “Amistad” is a film.

Medved is still not satisfied.

“I think what you have is a blown opportunity to teach kids in depth about the real history. As usual, the real history is more fascinating than the movie. When you have a chance to teach them about this history, why not do it right?”

Dominic Kinsley, a former Yale professor of English who wrote the study guide for Lifetime Learning Systems, says the “Amistad” educational materials are intended only as a prompt for classroom debate, not to supplant history books. Spielberg and DreamWorks declined comment.

“The commentary is so neglectful of the facts of the guide,” Kinsley says. “One of my reactions is this is why we send the guides to teachers and not the general public. The teachers will at least read it carefully and know how to use it in discussing the film.”

He said movies give educators a priceless opportunity to connect to young students bored by textbooks. The guides are designed to use the springboard of the film to launch invigorating discussion that few books would incite. By quoting extensively from the film, the guides give educators dialogue and scenes to discuss that they might not otherwise recall.

“We actually developed a first draft of the guide that was more historical, but it just didn’t work. We couldn’t do justice to the subject in this format, and it wouldn’t engage the student,” Kinsley says. He admits the guides are intended to sell more tickets.

The larger issue raised by Medved’s complaints is how “factual” movies should be. The new animated musical “Anastasia” is based on a Russian historical figure but is almost complete invention. “JFK,” likewise, starts with an actual event refracted through Oliver Stone’s conspiracy prism, just as Shakespeare told the history of “Henry V” with his own particular voice.

As USC professor Boyd points out, even a documentary film is one person’s interpretation of fact, a selective and often narrow view of “truth.”

“It’s all subjective. There’s no such thing as pure, unadulterated history,” says Boyd, the author of “Am I Black Enough For You? Popular Culture From the Hood and Beyond.”