This ain't a troll. A troll would be you hiding under a bridge getting ready to knock us upside the head with billyclub. You've clearly warned us of you intentions, so unless you are a closet Micahel Moore fan, your doing just fine.

Personally, I'm still fuming over his comments at the VH1 awards where he compared what he was doing with the election to the Civil Rights Movement and black people.

Teachers can use books or novels with inherent author bias to develop skills, but not films? Nowhere does this guide say you have to be a fan of the film to deconstruct it using/under the stated perspectives.

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Marty Gaal, CSCS
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Films can be a great source for learning. However, in this case, I went through some of the questions used to stimulate analytical thinking by the students. They were all based on treating the film material as factual and accurate, thus promoting the film's inaccurate and biased message. That, I have a problem with.

A case in point is Oliver Stone's JFK movie where fiction was clearly added for either plot purposes, or in Oliver's words "it probably happened and therefore is reasonable to place it in the film." Mr. Stone did not indicate upfront that this was a fictionalized story and protested the criticism foe quite some time. There is a whole generation under thirty now, who get most of their history from TV and movies (witness Jay Leno's Jay-Walking clips) who believe that Stone's movie represents a reasonably accurate account of JFK’s assassination.

Mr. Moore’s claims in the teacher supplement tend to be as lame as his movies. For example, to exercise student math skills, a question is asked regarding the slimness of the vote margin in the 2000 Florida presidential election results. The question guide tells the student to go get a calculator and calculate the percentages. Now, that is real impressive work to improve math skills.

I would be much more impressed if the film was used as a subject to teach critical thinking and logic/argument by the process of deconstructing the film and comparing the film’s logic with the complete individual facts. I remember an unbiased teacher doing this with the Beatles “Lucy in the Sky” in ninth grade and found it fascinating. Unfortunately, the questions and guideline don't deconstruct Mr. Moore's movie, they reinforce it with the intention of propagating the "theory" of his movie.

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