Let's Go to the Movies! Using Film to Illustrate Basic Concepts in Public Administration

Abstract

Although both the practical and philosophical roots of modem public administration rise from the Egyptian and Chinese dynasties, as from the Greek polis and Roman imperium, the academic discipline of public administration has to a large extent developed directly pursuant to Wilson's Study of Administration. The use of films as teaching tools enriches teaching by framing pedagogic content in ways that enable students to discover the relationship of academic concepts to their own life experience. To use movies and other popular art forms as tools for teaching, and to invite students to explore them as tools for learning, is a risky venture. It requires that academicians move away from the forms of communication at which we tend to excel to those in which we also become students. But isn't this what real teaching is about?