Customer Reviews

What is the Constitution?-The Bill of Rights [VHS]

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a teacher in the middle school my students used this tape to motivate an excellent class discussion of the meaning and importance of the Bill of Rights and our Constitution. This was a helpful educational tool.

I gambled and lost on this one. The Bill of Rights is an important subject, requiring (I think) a bit of explanation along with each Amendment. One would expect to hear something about why each Amendment was included, what it means, and what it doesn't mean.

Unfortunately, this video does none of these things. It simply shows the text of each Amendment, then spends the entire rest of the video showing film clips from the news and asking, "What Right are these people talking about?". At the end of it all, the student is apparently able to identify a Right as being (sort of) in the Bill of Rights, but that's all.

This tape is marketed to public schools, according to the tape's intro, but as an educational tool, I deem it worthless. Even at the level of K-Grade 2, one can easily imagine a presentation that is more informative, more thought-provoking, and less sleep-inducing.