It seems that most of the television and movies kids are exposed to today don’t offer much in the way of constructive lessons or examples of how to live your life, especially for young men. Well, just about everything is an example I guess, but good ones are few and far between. There are some movies, new and old, that do offer inspiring examples and over the next few Fridays I’d like to share some of these with you, along with the story of how they were incorporated into a group of junior high and high school aged boys. The first movie in this series is the Gary Cooper classic, High Noon, but before I get into that allow me to offer a little background.

A couple of years ago my oldest daughter was still in private school and I found myself frequently in the company of the boys in her classes. Listening to their conversation and the things that were interesting to them I could tell that the images of manhood they were getting from their entertainment were rather limited: essentially either Homer Simpson or pro wrestlers, and this was showing up in their behavior.

Now this is a complex age for boys already, and these images they were absorbing weren’t helpful. I wanted better for their lives, especially since they were around my daughter, so I tried to think of a way both entertaining and challenging to offer examples to model character in concentrated doses. Almost immediately a plan developed nearly fully formed in my mind. I worked it out with the school and my employer so that I could show a series of movies (with discussion time after each) to the boys on Friday afternoons during the spring semester as part of an elective class where the boys would be graded. Naturally, an afternoon of watching movies was appealing to the lads, but there was a catch. I divided them into two teams, gave each boy a scorecard I designed and announced special rules, only for them.

In order to view that week’s movie, each boy would have to earn a set number of points on his scorecard. The card detailed the point values of various acts of service and courtesy they could earn. There was also a list of things with point values that would subtract from their totals. If a young man hadn’t earned the minimum number of points by class time, he’d have to spend the afternoon in a study hall or in classes with the girls. Not only that, his behavior also affected his team which not only got credit for all points earned by its members, but also for having a full complement present during class time. At the end of the semester the highest scoring team would be treated to a Famous Dave’s feast. In the coming weeks I’ll describe how this experiment played out, along with providing the questions and “thinking points” I brought up with the guys for each movie. If you’re already familiar with these movies then try the questions out yourself. If there are important issues you think I’ve missed in any of the films then feel free to leave your input in a comment. As with the young men, I hope you’ll find this exercise entertaining and useful.

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