March of the Emperor

Last night, we saw “March of the Penguins”, a spectacular National Geographic documentary about the mating and breeding cycle of the emperor penguins, over the course of a grueling year, weathering the icy winter in Antarctica. A ritual that repeats itself every year, for thousands of years.

It was a touching, moving, loving piece of work by Director Luc Jacquet. The cinema was full of children, and at the end, I heard some of them say in wide-eyed wonder: “That was a very good movie!”

Imagine kids making that comment about a documentary. A DOCUMENTARY!

When I was growing up, multimedia did not exist. We gathered our knowledge of history, georgraphy, biology from dry pages of books. More often than not, these books, and the teachers who taught from them, lacked imagination in making things come alive for the students. We were also taught that Penguins live in Antarctica. But the generation of kids who learned about Penguins during the summer of 2005, having watched this marvelous film, I am sure, learned their lessons better.

This, to me, is Edutainment at its very best!