What am I learning? Watching a movie
translating everyday life into educational jargon series
This is an excerpt from one of my earliest publications, Learning in the Absence of Education, and was written 1998 when my kids were aged 12, 16 and 18.
Last night we saw Armageddon, a science fiction movie where Bruce Willis saves the world from a disastrous impact with an asteroid. On our way out of the cinema and in the car on the way home we had an extensive conversation and the following aspects of the movie were explored:
Comparing how some of us are becoming desensitised to disaster scenes in disaster movies, how they are having less of an impact as we watch more and more of this genre;
Noticing that when disaster scenes are preceded by scenes where individual victims are portrayed going about their normal lives they have more impact on the viewer, and the scenes where whole cities are obliterated make you think of not just the city, but the occupants;
Comparing the credibility of the plot to Independence Day (ID4);
Talking about the special effects; the improvement in special effects; how effective they were; comparing them to other movies, like Star Wars (1970s);
Talking about the actors, comparing the work they did in this movie with other movies they have been in;
Noticing Bruce Willis has noticeably crooked teeth and noting that it is possible to make it to the top of the acting profession without absolutely straight pearly whites! (Despite what the hype and advertising says!);
Talking about the realism, what scenes and ideas were realistic and why;
Imagining ourselves in the situation of an asteroid heading for the earth like that and talking about what could be done, especially on a personal level;
Discussing weaknesses in the movie which make it less credible;
Discussing the impact movies such as Armageddon and Deep Impact have had on budgets for science communities to look for near earth orbits;
This is quite a conversation, especially at that time of night! I don't know what National Educational Curriculum Outcomes it covers, or at what level... but it certainly shows that my children are not passive viewers of film media!
This is home education — real learning — conversational learning. It may not be recorded on paper, a term essay, a project, a comprehension exercise, etc. There is no one to satisfy, to give grades, only the participants are involved in the learning process.
Just how do you convey the depth of learning that occurs when a family engages in 'natural learning'. How do you convince the educational authorities, or anyone else, the people that continually question and seek to judge such a learning program?
The answer is, you can't, you don't, and you shouldn't!
And I still stand by that last comment, even though my focus nowadays in home educating groups seems to be, more and more, helping people translate everyday activities into educational jargon to help them jump through the annual home ed registration review (which is a requirement in some states of Australia).
The above is my attempt, back then, to help others understand how easy it is to build skills and explore knowledge across many areas of the curriculum simply by watching a movie with my kids. Below is a response ChatGPT gave me this morning to the prompt: “list Australian Curriculum learning outcomes potentially covered by a conversation with a 12 year old after watching the 1998 movie Armageddon”.
Watching and discussing the 1998 film Armageddon with a 12-year-old can touch on multiple learning areas in the Australian Curriculum, particularly across Years 5–8 (which includes most 12-year-olds). Here's a list of potentially relevant learning outcomes, grouped by subject:
✅ English
Strand: Literature / Literacy
ACELY1709 / ACELY1801 – Discuss how events, characters, and settings in texts can represent real-world issues or fictional themes.
ACELY1713 / ACELY1804 – Use interaction skills to discuss opinions and respond to questions.
ACELT1620 / ACELT1803 – Identify and explain how text structures and language features influence meaning.
ACELY1701 – Clarify understanding of content as it unfolds in formal and informal situations.
Examples: Discussing character motivations (e.g., Harry or Grace), themes like sacrifice, love, patriotism, and global cooperation.
✅ Science
Strand: Earth and Space Sciences / Science as a Human Endeavour
ACSSU115 – Recognise that natural events cause rapid changes to Earth’s surface (meteor impacts).
ACSHE119 / ACSHE134 – Science knowledge has changed people’s understanding of the world; science is influenced by social and ethical contexts.
ACSSU117 – Predictable phenomena on Earth, such as gravity and movement in space.
ACSIS124 / ACSIS148 – Use evidence to support conclusions.
Examples: Debating whether the science in the movie is realistic; identifying real astronomical threats like asteroids.
✅ Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) – Year 7/8
Civics and Citizenship
ACHCK048 – How citizens participate in Australia’s democracy (parallels with global cooperation in crisis).
ACHCK051 – How laws protect rights and how responsibilities are enforced.
Geography
ACHGK049 – The causes and impacts of a natural hazard.
ACHGK053 – How people respond to and prepare for natural disasters.
Examples: Talking about emergency global responses; evaluating cooperation between nations in fictional contexts.
✅ Health and Physical Education
Personal, Social and Community Health
ACPPS074 / ACPPS077 – Investigate how empathy and ethical decision-making contribute to relationships.
ACPPS072 – Recognise how media and societal norms shape emotions and reactions.
Examples: Discussing ethical choices characters make, e.g., self-sacrifice, leadership under pressure, teamwork.
✅ The Arts – Media Arts
ACAMAM066 – Analyse how media artworks use technical and symbolic elements to construct meaning.
ACAMAR071 – Reflect on how ideas are represented in media artworks and how audiences respond.
Examples: Exploring how film techniques (music, camera work, casting) shape our emotional responses.
✅ General Capabilities
Critical and Creative Thinking: Questioning the scientific accuracy of the movie; imagining alternative outcomes.
Ethical Understanding: Considering the moral dilemmas characters face.
Intercultural Understanding: Noticing how different countries are represented and how they cooperate.
There are two ways I could use the information ChatGPT generated:
Pro-actively, before watching the movie, to provide some conversational prompts during or after (not necessarily immediately). In this way, I could use the movie as a resource to focus on particular topics, which I could then plan to follow up with specific related activities. For example, we might do a science experiment examining the impact of different weight objects in the sandpit, or from differing heights.
Retrospectively, by recording the Aus Curriculum codes that most closely matched our shared experience of the movie. For example, “ACELY1709 / ACELY1801 – Discuss how events, characters, and settings in texts can represent real-world issues or fictional themes, and ACHGK053 – How people respond to and prepare for natural disasters.”
This is the first post in my translating everyday life into educational jargon series. Some years ago I wrote a short booklet about how I did this and it’s still available through Always Learning Books.