Children Full Of Life

Children Full of Life The documentary “Children Full of Life”, is a CBC broadcast set in 2002. In the documentary, a fourth grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa Japan, learn lessons on how to be compassionate from their homeroom teacher Mr. Kanamori. The documentary follows this group of students throughout their school year, and through their experiences as a team we see how they develop together a unity of compassion and cooperation. The main class goal of these grade four students is to be happy and to care for others. Throughout the video, Mr. Kanamori guides and teaches his students happiness, empathy, how to cope with daily struggles, grief and loss support and the effects of bullying on everyone. This can mainly be seen by the tradition of letter writing. The letter writing help the children share their personal stories and feelings with others to achieve a sense of understanding and compassion. Throughout this process, Mr. Kanamori can be seen as extraordinarily supportive and caring to the student’s feelings, allowing the students to be trusting in the environment in sharing their hardships. Mr.Kanamori teaches and helps the students of the grade four classroom understand how bullying can negatively impact an individual, he teaches that all people are vulnerable but we must not cause harm, rather help and support others. The students learn that it is important to stand up for one another and what can be seen as fair outcomes. When a student is being punished, the students band together and unite as a group to ensure that everyone receives fairness in the responsibility as a team and how they can better achieve their goals together, and by doing so makes the group happy and thankful. Throughout the entire video, Mr.Kanamori helps the students be a family, to love and support each other through their struggles. He teaches that there is no certainty in life, and all life must be respected and not taken for granted. With his teachings and support, the students are able to help each other in life and provide a sense of trust and compassion. By the end of the video it is important to recognize the way the students care and respect one another, by writing a final letter to those who have passed on, they have sent a message that they are united and will support and take care of one another as a family.

I would recommend everyone watch this documentary, because I think that in this society we all focus on how to be and do better for ourselves. We see a lot of seclusion and bullying not only in the school system, but we as adults have learned to be selfish as well. It is important especially for children to learn these values to perhaps not make the mistakes of taking life for granted. Not only as a community, but as a nation I believe we should be more cooperative and supportive of those around us. I feel that this documentary not only has a great relevance to myself, but to several others as well. Those who choose to watch this video have not only been students, but are now bringing in the next generation of children, or already have. In a world where life seems unfair, we need to work together to better stabilize the great life that we have the opportunity to live.

The information presented in this documentary is somewhat reliable as it uses or contains most reliability factors. It shows authoritative qualities as it is being presented or is following an expert in education with Mr. Kanamori, is accurate on the subject of a grade four Japanese learning curriculum at the school. And shows completeness in answering all of the basic questions to obtain all information needed to be fully understanding of what the documentary is about, and the message it is trying to convey. The documentary is however not current with it taking place in the year 2002, thirteen years from present day. Several factors could have changed from that time to present.

This documentary is also not objective and shows some bias. This can be seen throughout the film as Mr. Kanamori’s teachings, although are factual for that specific location and time frame, are still very much a matter of his own opinion. He teaches the students about life and its importance as he sees it and how he believes life should be lived and how people should essentially be treated. Several times throughout the documentary, Mr. Kanamori explains his thoughts and feelings on his beliefs when it comes to life. For instance he believes that life is precious and it is a teacher’s job to teach students those life lessons.

This documentary uses many of the key elements of making a good documentary. It tells the audience in a subtle way about a conflict which can be seen in the different way students learn in a different country and how it influences the way students behave, learn and respect one another, something that is very different from the way things are done in the America’s. It encourages the viewers to take a look at what could potentially be effective if we changed our thinking. The characters keep you interested as you want to learn more about some of their life experiences and how they cope with them together as a unit. It is relevant to today’s audience especially on the topic of bullying as we live in a society where bullying is abundant and we are always trying to figure out better ways to teach children its negative impact on others. The narration of this documentary is also effective. Because the documentary is primarily in Japanese, the narration helps the viewer’s piece together some more background information.

The documentary could have been made better by providing more interviews. Although on its own with some short excerpts from the teacher and some students is qualitative, it would have been better to perhaps hear the difference from other teachers on how they feel the class was effective in its teachings. It would have also been better if there was an interview from a teacher or parent from Canada or the USA contrasting the ideas, or giving their opinion on whether the teachings in Japan could help our students or not as well.

Although there are several quotes throughout the documentary, I believe the strongest of them which could be used to help advertise it is when Mr. Kanamori says “there is no certainty in life, that’s why we must always think about life.” The documentary mainly touches base on the things in life that make you happy or ways to help you cope with difficult situations. We are in a time now where we are all realizing what is good and bad for our mind body and spirit, and I feel this quote would draw more people in to watch the documentary.

The messaging in this documentary is similar to several pieces that have been watched within this unit. Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech is similar in its messaging as it talks about peaceful living and working together to create a better life and future for the people of the African nation. Nelson Mandela can be seen as a very loving supportive leader who believes that happiness and unity can be achieved through teamwork. There are also similarities to the Plastic in or Oceans documentary. Although these documentaries are of completely different and mostly unrelated topics, they share the message and value of caring. Both documentaries represent a group effort to care for one another to build a more sustainable future.