Research shows that when information in a film doesn’t match what’s in a history text, students are more likely to remember the film version, according to my colleague Debbie Viadero over at Inside School Research.
Her post makes me glad that I’m a fan of documentaries about history, such as those directed by Ken Burns or Henry Louis Gates (yes, I watched his PBS series on Africa before he became famous for speaking out publicly about his arrest by Cambridge, Mass., police), and I’m not inclined to watch history films that come out of Hollywood.