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Film Restrictions in Montgomery Schools Earn Poor Reviews
"Saving Private Ryan," starring Tom Hanks, left, Matt Damon and Edward Burns, is one of the R-rated films that Montgomery County teachers cannot show to their students.
(By David James -- Associated Press)
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Alona Gutman, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School, said the ban doesn't make sense, particularly because at her school, parents sign consent forms giving permission for students to view the films.
"I've read articles that say it shouldn't be necessary to show films, but it is necessary," she said, arguing that movies help bring the material alive for students.
Her mother, Gayl Selkin-Gutman, said she was stunned when she heard about the ban.
"In Montgomery County, could they really be pulling movies off shelves?" she recalled asking herself, when she first heard the news. "I really thought I was going to get to the bottom of this, and it was going to be a joke. As a forward-thinking person, I find this to be a backward policy."
The regulation has forced many teachers to alter lesson plans. Gates said the ban means she can't show clips from "Apocalypse Now" to complement a unit on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." Another high school teacher ended up substituting Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" with Disney's "Hercules."
"There is no gray area," Gates said. "What's really frustrating is that first of all, legally, there are plenty of classes that have all 17-year-old or older students."
Blum said that looking only at the film's rating is not the best way to make judgments about its appropriateness for the classroom.
"I feel very strongly that each film should be judged on its own merits," she said.
Parents and teachers remain hopeful the working group will come up with an alternative to an outright ban.
"You have to give [students] the tools to make their own judgments, and you have to trust your personnel to make their own judgments," said Eleanor King, another Richard Montgomery parent. "You don't just make a blanket policy that's one-size-fits-all, because it doesn't work."
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