A new way of learning

One of my least favorite activities, strolling through Netflix to find a new serie. It always takes too long and it is a rare occasion that I’ll find one right away. Although, after a lot of searching I found Lie to Me last week, a serie about a guy who is an expert in detecting lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toxVYw_nRus

Lies are detected by so called micro-expressions in the face, little muscles will react to your initial thoughts when a subject is brought up. Therefore, you’ll be able to detect if somebody is lying just by looking for those. The face contradicts the words. Unfortunately, almost every episode starts with a disclaimer that it is totally fictive.

I have always been somebody who was intrigued by getting the truth out of people, so despite of the disclaimers I started to study the expressions in the serie and tried them out in real life. No clue if it worked, but I still enjoyed it. While doing this something interesting struck me, education or behavior influence through films and series.

One of the main reasons Dutch people are better at English than Germans and people from France is the way movies are presented. In Germany and France every movie is in their own language, so in an American film in Germany the spoken language is German. In the Netherlands, the language is still English, but they provide subtitles. This is not the sole reason, but it definitely helps. At this point in time I feel that this is still the only big educational gain in movies and series. But what if the only main you must do for courses is to watch a serie during the semester and talk about it in class. Wouldn’t that be great? It should be entertaining as well, but I think this would be a good way to educate.

One thing I’ve seen is that a lot of students experience huge amounts of stress. Education in this way can be stress relieving as well. Series are experienced as stress-relieving and will therefore contribute to a less stressed student. This will contribute a little to a healthier society all together, isn’t that what we all want?