English pedagogy
Culture and civilization I
Claudia Trajtemberg
Katherine Silva
Friday, 04 December 2009
Words: 781
It is necessary to learn from the past
Current society and Victorian Times’ society are not so different from each other. It is possible to prove this statement comparing present-day issues with others from the movie “Modern times”, which represents Victorian Times. The pedagogic use of this film can be useful during the teaching and learning process of (future) teachers because this movie allows understanding the reasons why current society is like it is. Besides, from this understanding do not repeat the same errors from the past and motivate (future) teachers to propose new methodologies or ideas in order to improve learning and teaching process of their student. For this reason, the present essay consists on demonstrating the described thesis from each part of it. The following paragraph is about similarities between the current society’s issues and the Victorian Times film “Modern Times”. The next one is related to the knowledge that present-day society can get from previous errors to avoid making the same ones. Then, it is going to be explained how “Modern Times” can be used to motivate (future) teachers to propose new methodology and ideas in order to improve learning and teaching students process.
Firstly, this movie can be useful to understand current society issues because “Modern Times” film mirrors them. This Chaplin’s production is about a factory worker, who flew into a fit of rage (due to his stressing job) and was arrested. He was really happy in jail because he was relaxed; he did not need to pay any bill and so on. However, unfortunately for him, he was liberated. At the same time, factory workers were on strike and protesting on the streets about their work conditions. Besides, during that period there was not enough work for everybody, so many people were unemployed. This was the case of a man, who had to look after his three daughters alone. Unfortunately, he was died suddenly and the police tried to take the girls to the orphanage, but the oldest run away. Then, when she was stealing a piece of bread, she crushed into Chaplin and as he was so happy in prison he said to the salesman he was the thief to be arrested again, however, a witness told the truth. So, he was liberated once more. As he really wanted to back to the jail, he went to a restaurant and ate all up he could without paying. When he was in the police car, he met the girl again, who was arrested too, but the car had an accident so they took this opportunity to escape and try to be happy together. About these issues, is it familiar to you stressing jobs, unhappy workers, unemployed ones and poor people, who have to steal to eat something? There are not enough differences between the Victorian Times and the current society.
Secondly, it is possible to learn from previous experiences. During this movie it is possible to see how people are losing their importance as persona. Work conditions did not worry bosses, they saw their workers just like machines, which had to work pretty hard and fast, it was the Chaplin case. From this point of view, students were considered as workers (machines) too. There was not difference between one student and another, in fact, cloth decreases differences. Considering students as a uniform mass it is an error that (future) teachers should not make because they have to be aware that each person is completely different from another. For this reason (future) teachers should consider all the information they have about their students to make more successful their learning and teaching process.
Finally, this film can be used to motivate teachers to propose new methodologies and ideas based on this period to change current society. This point is very close to the previous one because if (future) teacher were aware of errors already done in the past, they would ask themselves how they can change this situation. For example, if the error was thinking that all people are similar, maybe (future) teachers can propose using a methodology more focus on specific abilities or ways of learning that each student has.
To conclude, the “Modern Times” film mirrors perfectly errors that society has being repeating through the years until the present time. For this reason, the pedagogic use of this film on teachers’ education can be useful to understand better present-day society issues, to avoid making the same errors and encourage them to propose new methodologies and ideas, which can be helpful to improve teaching and learning process. It is necessary to learn from the past.
