Books vs. Movies- Which is better in terms of education and entertainment?

Pre-College Topics High School Cafe
1

<p>My friend and I are in a debate
Proposition: The general public should recognize that books have a greater educational and entertainment value than movies.</p>

<p>Terms:
Entertainment: The act of diverting, amusing
Educational: To develop the mind</p>

<p>We are the Con side, thus saying that Movies have a greater eductional and entertainment value.</p>

<p>I would like your guys’ opinion, which do you consider better and why?
Please try to include both factors, education and entertainment.
Clips would also be appriciated ^_^</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

2

<p>I find books much more educational and rewarding. There are many reasons for this:</p>

<p>-Books occupy you for a far longer period of time, while a movie only lasts for 2 hours or so. Books can last days, or weeks.<br>
-They improve your vocabulary and writing
-You can carry a book around with you and read it anytime, while you can’t just sit down anywhere and start watching a movie (excluding ipods or stuff like that)</p>

<p>I love movies but I always found books to be most rewarding.</p>

3

<p>Hmm. Well I don’t agree 100% but…</p>

<p>If you’re watching a movie that has harder vocab (LoTR even), you can see the way the actor delivers the word, plus you’ll actually here the word. So you may stand a better chance of inferring and then retaining the meaning and the word.
Movies may only last 2 hours but they can provoke discussions without being labelled “dorky”. I know at my school if we talked like “OMG! I just read the coolest book…” we’d get some strange looks, but if I was “OMG…Did you guys go see the new … movie? It was so good. I couldn’t believe it was really about…” And so you could get into a discussion that makes you think. </p>

<p>Also if you’re watching a movie, it doesn’t last as long. So if it’s finals week you can sit down and chill, watch a movie… Then go back to studying. Where if you get into a good story you might get wrapped up in it and forget about studying. Plus if I read a book when I was studying, I’d completely lose the text book stuff I just read, whereas a movie, I could easily separate the two.</p>

4

<p>depends on what movies and books and personal taste. </p>

<p>obviously, reading gossip girl won’t be as good as Vanity Fair. On the other hand, watching Die Hard won’t be as educational as a historical drama.</p>

5

<p>True, it definitely depends on what type of books and movies you watch. While I love books, I am and have always been a huge movie buff. When my workload isn’t too high, I watch a movie almost every night. Some really can make for some interesting moral, and philosophical debate. Personally, I love a movie that intellectual individuals can debate. I was talking more about educational value. Sure, you hear words used in movies but you can’t see the sentence. That is like being told verbally how to do a math problem. Something about seeing it written out helps make it alot more clear. But I find my sentence structure, vocabulary, and organization much better ever since I started reading on a regular basis. Movies are great, but there is no substitute for a good, old fashioned book</p>

6

<p>I believe that movies and books belong to two separate categories and that we can not and had better not compare the two. There are things that one can achieve only by reading books and there are pleasures that only come from watching movies. Books used to be used for entertainment, and they still are, but the modern technology and the present movie culture certainly altered, if not complemented, the way we entertain ourselves. </p>

<p>To use a hackneyed analogy: you can not compare an apple with a car. No matter how substitutable each of them seems with each other, there are values carefully and rightfully assigned to them.</p>

<p>Of course one might criticize current movie industries for taking away those who would otherwise find pleasure in reading. I’m in this too, as I’m a voracious reader myself and a self-proclaimed critic of post-modernism. However, reading for pleasure and reading for comprehension are two distinct things, and it would be still absurd to say that just because I watch the movie Twilight when I could be reading Harry Potter, I should stop watching movies. </p>

<p>No. If you are either a serious English student or a voracious reader, you will find pleasures in books(definitely) and in movies(maybe). Detaching yourself from the popular culture means isolation which, while I have a knack for it too, can be costly. Engaging, once in a while, in watching new movies won’t likely affect you and your desire to read, that is, as long as you consider yourself a reader.</p>

<p>Personally, being a movie fan and an avid reader, my penchant for both activities has so far generated complementary benefits and intellectual amalgamation, not hindrance of engaging in either one. I want to talk more about cultural benefits of watching movies, but I certainly don’t think watching movies can replace reading, and vice versa. </p>

<p>In terms of education and entertainment, each have their own values. In the modern world, one would not be deemed “educated” without ever watching any movie which essentially is a new type of “culture” that we as moderns are very, very privileged to enjoy. </p>

<p>Also, considering ubiquity of reading and its long-lasting history, I doubt that no matter how advanced we might become, we will keep reading. The accumulation of knowledge and literary works that have been amassed thus far in either printed or digital form in the last thousands of years are far superior than the superficial, entertainment-focused movies that have been produced in perhaps less than a hundred years.</p>

7

<p>By “movie” I’m assuming you mean something like a documentary rather than, say, a Khan Academy video. </p>

<p>In favor of books:

  1. You can set your own speed for reading them. The only way to do that with movies is constantly pause, rewind, etc. and that gets annoying.
  2. There’s something about the act of reading itself that makes the information sink in better. It’s a lot easier to zone out watching a movie. Reading is a more “active” process than passively watching a movie.
  3. More convenient to carry around.
  4. There is far more material available in book form than there is in movie form.
  5. Not every idea can be easily translated into an image or sound.
  6. Movies are often more sensationalized than books, so as to appeal to the “unwashed masses” who don’t read much.
  7. Movies are often more expensive than books. It costs money to check them out at a lot of libraries.
  8. It’s easier to find exactly what you want in a reference book (movies aren’t indexed, and generally aren’t long enough to be).
  9. Some topics are too obscure/advanced to justify the costs of making a movie. </p>

<p>In favor of movies:

  1. Not everyone can read well, and some people just don’t enjoy reading no matter what they do. These things should be remedied as best as possible, obviously, but in the meantime people can learn from movies.
  2. Some people aren’t great at visualizing things and would get more out of a movie image than a description in a book.
  3. Movies make it easier to convey emotion/connotation/context.
  4. It’s very hard to learn foreign language pronunciations from a book.
  5. Books have had thousands of years to develop, and they’ve probably gotten as good as they’re ever going to get. Movies haven’t been around long at all, so they’re still developing and improving.</p>
8

<p>Solid 6 year bump.</p>