Connections to Practice-Using Documentaries

Much to my chagrin, in March I found myself in charge of thirty 11th and 12th graders taking a sociology class. I taught a lengthy unit on social institutions, feeling like I was flying by the seat of my pants (for instance, despite having taught a unit on this topic, I still can’t really define what a social institution is without using both “social” and “institution”—eek). Essentially, we were looking at complex organized beliefs, rules, and practices that establishes how a society will attempt to meet basic needs and sustain itself (part of that is copied from the internet, I admit). For the lesson on religion, we spent the last 45- 50 minutes of the 90 minute block period discussing cults. The kids went NUTS. I had no idea cults were so interesting to high schoolers, but they are. After we went over the basic characteristics of a cult, I presented a cult case study by using portions of a PBS documentary on People’s Temple and Jim Jones (“Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple”). I’m not sure how this particular documentary fits in with Marcus, Stoddard, or Hess’ assertion that documentaries usually present non-mainstream ideas. Certainly People’s Temple (and cults in general) are controversial and their beliefs non-mainstream. The documentary itself was aimed at explaining Jones’ background, what his appeal was, and how he managed to exert such power over others. It relied heavily on first-hand accounts, old video and audio recordings. Many former cult members spoke about their experiences. I did not take time in the class to talk about the use of sources or potential bias. I paused often to reiterate an idea or ask a clarifying question. The students really responded to the video. It is a tragic story, particularly the ending, which had the actual audio of Jim Jones telling mothers to lay down their children. It also showed the pictures of piles of cult members lying in the ground at the compound, dead (I did warn them that they would see some graphic images). The kids were dead silent and at the end. I did not create a written guide like Woelders suggested, but I did “fill in the gaps” of the documentary, which was divided into 10 parts. We only watched 4 and a portion of the last due to time constraints. Most of the students were horrified and had a heated discussion about how they couldn’t believe this could happen, it was murder, not suicide. I had them write a response for homework having them explains if it was murder or suicide and why, based on what we saw and discussed. I got some interesting responses where students thought about free will vs. brainwashing. I think this lesson was successful on the whole because the actual content was really interesting to the students. A few came in the following week asking me questions or still talking about People’s Temple (one girl related that she talked to her grandmother about it and was told that she had relatives who had joined this cult).
Despite the lesson going well, if I were to do this again, I would try to use more firsthand accounts of People’s Temple. Students could then compare what they read in these primary sources with what they saw and heard in the documentary. This would lend itself to Woelders’ modified KWL chart.

PBS site on Jonestown documentary:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/jonestown/

YouTube divides the documentary into 10 parts. Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7IxGGfpSWk