What do Journeys in Film and the Oprah Winfrey Network have in common? If you answered something like, “They both have an eye for powerful films that make the world a better place” then you are right. On May 6, 2012, the Oprah Winfrey Network aired The Dhamma Brothers as part of Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday programming. This is the same film for which Journeys in Film is producing a free curriculum guide.

The Dhamma Brothers Film

East meets West in The Dhamma Brothers–a provocative film that tells the true story of inmates in the Donaldson Correctional Facility. It’s a violent, overcrowded maximum-security prison in Alabama.

The prisoners’ lives and attitudes are forever changed after they participate in an intensive, extended Vipassana retreat. This physically and emotionally demanding program of silent meditation lasts for 10 days, and participants spend a minimum of 100 hours in meditation.

Vipassana Education and Teacher Lesson Plans

As one delves into meditation education and teacher lesson plans based on the film, it’s important to remember that this type of meditation is for people of all religions, races, and social levels. Although Vipassana was practiced and taught by Gotama the Buddha, participants are not called “Buddhists.” They are called “Dhammists.” Jains, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and members of various other religions practice Vipassana.

According to the Vipassana Research Institute, “Vipassana enables us to experience peace and harmony: it purifies the mind, freeing it from suffering and the deep-seated causes of suffering. The practice leads step-by-step to the highest spiritual goal of full liberation from all mental defilements.”

Adding The Dhamma Brothers to Global Education Curriculum

So why is Journeys in Film developing a curriculum guide for The Dhamma Brothers? It’s just what Journeys in Film is looking for when it provides material so teachers can teach through film. Designed for older students in high school, college students, film discussion groups, and religious and community groups, the film offers windows into our world. With proper guidance, students can move beyond lectures, textbooks, borders, and boundaries to gain understanding of global concepts. The standards-based curricula teach viewers how to watch the film and challenges them to examine how their own experiences influence their perceptions of others.The Dhamma Brothers is more than a tale of human potential and transformation. Through the teacher lesson plans, you can see that the film also has the power to dismantle stereotypes about men behind prison bars.

For information on when the free curriculum for The Dhamma Brothers, will be released, click on the Journeys in Film website and select “Get Email Updates.”

The Dhamma Brothers curriculum will be free through donations made to Dhamma Brothers. If you would like to make an online donation, you can do so through their website’s Click & Pledge option.

In 2012, The Hunger Games smashed box office records as crowds gathered to view a powerful story. The violent film offered a strong message of anti-violence. How ironic, and yet it worked. How? Because of empathy.

“The Hunger Games” Promotes Empathy

According to the article “Human Empathy Through the Lens of Social Neuroscience” from The Scientific World JOURNAL^[1], empathy is “the ability to experience and understand what others feel without confusion between oneself and others.”

Viewers of “The Hunger Games” connected with characters who had to make tough ethical and moral choices. By the time viewers left the theater, their thought processes changed because the film knew how to teach empathy. Viewers were confronted with the question of what they would do in a similar situation.

How Fiction Teaches Empathy

In her New York Times article, “Your Brain on Fiction,” ^[2] Annie Murphy Paul cites a study by Dr. Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University in Canada. In this study, he noted that preschool-age children who had stories read to them had a keener theory of mind. This occurred after the children watched movies, as well. However, it did not happen when they watched television.

Dr. Mar conjectured that the parent-children conversations after movies might have an impact on the results. He finds that parents are more likely to watch a film with a child, but children are often left to watch television alone.

In this article, Paul highlights a quote from Dr. Mar:

Fiction, Dr. Oatley notes, “is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.”

Using Film Curriculum to Teach Empathy

Journeys in Film uses its own curriculum and recommends films that teach empathy using fictional stories on film. For example, in Children of Heaven, middle school viewers develop an understanding of what it means to live in such poverty that losing a pair of shoes can break a family.

Although children viewing the title might live without financial worry, watching the film helps them connect to, and understand, others who struggle more. This leaves them with a desire to help others rather than judge or ridicule them.

Film is a useful tool for helping children understand others without living through experiences themselves. Their cognitive structures change, encouraging them to reach out in global understanding.

^[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

International Education Week – Ideas and Resources

According to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, International Education Week, the joint initiative between the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of State “celebrates the benefits of understanding the world around us so we can better communicate and collaborate with others from different cultures.”

Classroom Activities

In recognition of this, International Education Week offers a list of 11 activities for educators in the K-12 category. The Journeys in Film program uses best practices in education and results-based methodology in well-designed curriculum guides that meet the top two suggestions for integrating global perspective into teaching and learning:

1) Incorporate information on a country or culture into your regular lesson plan, even if you don’t teach social studies.

2) Explore international aspects of the arts – music, film, theatre, visual arts, literature, dance – by creating, performing, or studying artworks with an international component. This could include a field trip to a museum or concert or showing a foreign film in class.

The six Journeys in Film titles immerse students in the cultures of Iran, India, South Africa, South Korea, Tibet, and New Zealand/Maori by featuring peer protagonists in real-life stories students relate to. The curriculum guides deepen the film experience by offering lessons in social studies, language arts, math, science, media literacy, visual arts and special studies.

Journeys in Film – travel around the world and return before the bell!