Movie Madness

OK. Just a warning. I’ve been sitting on this blog for almost a year now and have wavered back and forth on whether or not to post it. It has no ‘spiritual' point to it and it actually has no real meaning other than to be a reminder to us (years from now) when we’re no longer on the mission field and all our kids are grown-up, off to college and have families of their own. This is the type of stuff that happens on a regular basis here and would be easily forgotten if I didn’t write it down- so here it goes: )

Question:

When you think of getting an education and the things that ‘getting an education’ entails- what are some of the things that come to mind? Reading? Math? Science? Studying intently? Well, that’s what comes to my mind. But there’s another thing that they incorporate into our children’s education here in Terra Boa, Brazil (other than an exorbitant amount of soccer classes- for real, haha!). And that thing is movies. That’s right, movies. And I’m not talking about educational movies either. I’m talking about regular movies that are at the theater or on DVD. 

For the last 3 1/2 years our kids have had classes where, rather than actually teaching my kids something, the teacher puts a DVD on and that’s the class for the day! “Seriously,” you say? Yes, seriously. Now that wouldn’t be that big of a deal if it was a special day or a day where the teacher wanted to reward the kids for some type of educational accomplishment they had all reached or something- but no. It’s just a constant flow of movies for no apparent reason. And what makes it worse is that they’re showing rated R movies with questionable content. 

Last year, Robert’s 1st grade teacher decided to show Rambo- First Blood pt. 2 to a bunch of 7 and 8 year old kids. Now, it’s been a while but, if I recall correctly, doesn’t Sylvester Stallone shoot an exploding arrow into someones head that shows (in slow motion) a camera shot of their head as it is blown clean-off their body in that movie? Call me crazy- but I don’t think that’s appropriate for little kids. What do you think?

We’re by no means prudes when it comes to movies but we are very selective with what our children watch at home. Because we’re trying to help them- not harm them by filling their head with graphically violent images and sexually graphic images. Gabriel (our 11 year old) has a problem with nightmares so we really try filter out any kind of scary TV or movies so that he can sleep peacefully at night. But here they’re showing scary films at school (like the revenge of Chuckie, for real- they did) and so we have to deal with the aftermath at night(i.e., nightmares). Thanks guys!

We’re only about a month into the new school year and so far 2 of the 4 kids in school have already watched at least 1 movie in class. Last year they probably watched at least 20 movies in class. The sad part (besides that they’re watching movies at school) is that they’re only in school 4 hrs per day. So if they watch one movie then at least half of the school day is gone! It’s so frustrating. 

But it gets even better. All the movies here are bootleg movies. So not only are they showing movies, they’re showing ones that are illegal copies. lol!

But wait, it gets better yet... Robert said that when the movie is over, the teacher sells it (the bootleg DVD) to whatever kid in the class wants to buys it... haha! It’s movie madness!

Waitin’ for the Popcorn,

Jim