The new movie “Wall-E” is getting lots of rave reviews. Here’s mine:
The movie reminds us what fools we are to settle for how things are – that we are just not bothering to think about doing something different. Below is a section from a column by Frank Rich in the New York Times. He uses the “Wall-E” story to compare the U.S. Presidential campaigns to the people in the movie who are blissfully oblivious to their inexcusable lethargy. Rich’s column seems to have struck a cord because it is number 5 today on the list of stories most often emailed from the NY Times.
When I read the excerpt from the column quoted below I thought that what caused the children to clap their small hands was a hope they sense that adults will break through to a future children already understand. As readers of this blog know, my purpose in writing it is to propose that we can and should move education into a learning environment not trashed by mouldering theories and artifacts from the pre-digital, unconnected world. Our children already know that such a future-engaged world is a few clicks away in the billowing digital commons of knowledge and learning. The kids are tugged by an unmistakable summons to remake the world of learning. We adults can take part now in that remaking, and like the movie ending, can expect future generations to learn happily ever after .
From Frank Rich’s column:
One of the great things about art, including popular art, is that it can hit audiences at a profound level beyond words. That includes children. The kids at “Wall-E” [in the audience when Rich saw the movie] were never restless, despite the movie’s often melancholy mood and few belly laughs. They seemed to instinctually understand what “Wall-E” was saying; they didn’t pepper their chaperones with questions along the way. At the end they clapped their small hands. What they applauded was not some banal cartoonish triumph of good over evil but a gentle, if unmistakable, summons to remake the world before time runs out.
