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If you add it all up, Ken Burns and PBS have broadcast over 200 hours of documentary films. It might be impossible for one person to watch the entire body of work, but dip into any of the deep dives on baseball, jazz, the National Parks, and the Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War, and you鈥檒l find a chunk of storytelling that somehow crystallizes the overall narrative鈥攁nd the pulse of the narrative imperative itself.

What prompted Burns鈥� lifetime engagement with film? Receiving an 8mm camera at sixteen helped, though upon reflection he says the camera itself was just a spark. The fuel consisted of more intangible factors, notably the loss of his mother to cancer five years earlier. Seeing film develop in a darkroom built by his father entranced the future director. Watching tears fall down his father鈥檚 face during a broadcast of Carol Reed鈥檚 Odd Man Out (1947) brought home the emotional power of the medium. 鈥淚’d never seen him cry before. And I realized that the movies provided for him a kind of emotional safe haven.鈥�

A short list of the unforgettable, cinematic, indelible moments in Burns鈥� oeuvre would have to include:

• That tearjerker from his breakthrough 1990 series, The Civil War: Sullivan Ballou鈥檚 letter to his wife, written a week before losing his life in the First Battle of Bull Run, assuring her that 鈥渨hen my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name.鈥�
• 叠补蝉别产补濒濒鈥檚 gripping account of Curt Flood, the St. Louis Cardinal who risked his career to win free agency.
• The moment in 2001鈥檚 Jazz, when Wynton Marsalis reacts in stunned silence in the face of a critic鈥檚 claim that white musicians invented the music he鈥檚 dedicated his life to.
• The saga, embedded in The Vietnam War, of Denton 鈥淢ogie鈥� Crocker, a young man from Saratoga Springs, New York, who ran away from home in order to persuade his parents to let him enlist鈥攐nly to lose his idealism, and then his life.

The more of his work you watch (without feeling any guilt for missing an episode here and there), the more you鈥檒l discover what documentary filmmaking can accomplish. You also can gain insights into what good teaching鈥攏ot just history teaching鈥攃an and should be.

鈥淚n school,鈥� Burns says, 鈥淲e often just dump facts and expository descriptions of what happened and forget that to anchor things in story is to make it permanent and memorable.

鈥淭he poet William Blake said you could see the world in a grain of sand,鈥� Burns says, 鈥淎nd as much as we’re interested in taking on these big topics, we know that they’re sometimes best expressed by individual, bottom-up stories.鈥� Take the seven-part series on the Second World War, in which the saga is told through the eyes of people from four geographically distributed American towns. 鈥淭hat helped anchor it in intimate human experience,鈥� he says.

Continuing the Blakean wonder at how parts contain wholes, Burns asserts, 鈥淭he architecture of the solar system and the architecture of the atom are the same, and if you can make those kinds of connections it becomes hugely important.鈥�

To honor the subjects he treats, Burns strives to represent them in all their complexity. He muses, 鈥淵ou have to understand that sometimes the thing and then the opposite of the thing, as Wynton Marsalis once said to us, happen at the same time.鈥� The wall of Burns鈥� editing room features a neon sign in lower-case cursive that reads, It’s complicated.

In education circles, this is called project-based learning, 鈥渁 dynamic classroom approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and challenges and acquire a deeper knowledge.鈥� In Burns鈥� words, 鈥淗uman beings will always feel that the thing that they’re proudest of, the work or the relationships that they care the most about, have benefited from their sustained attention.鈥�

Burns鈥� faith in learning even holds up in the current media landscape. Asked about TikTok, the video app that is sort of the opposite of the Ken Burns documentary, he recalls, 鈥淲hen the Civil War series was about to be broadcast in 1990, all the critics were certain nobody would watch, because MTV’s two-and-a-half minute music videos had eroded the national attention span.鈥�

Although he confesses not too much familiarity with the latest app, he says, 鈥淒on鈥檛 presuppose that TikTok can’t coexist with complexity and depth. But for all human beings throughout all time meaning has accrued in duration.鈥�

If something scares Burns more than attention-sapping apps, it鈥檚 the widespread reaction against facts and truth. While acknowledging that propaganda has always existed, he says, 鈥淭he extent of what we鈥檙e experiencing today is unprecedented. And it represents, perhaps, the greatest threat to the health of our country and to the health of its citizens, psychological as well as physical health.鈥�

On all of his projects, Burns says, 鈥淚 have made a commitment that we are not going to be propaganda, that we are not going to be promoting a particular view.鈥� That means permitting lots of different views to coexist and trusting in the intelligence of the audience to sort it out. This is where teachers, scientists, journalists and citizens in general have a duty to affirm enduring values.

鈥淚t’s sort of what you do with your own kids. You’re going to ask them to be honest, and you鈥檙e promising them the same.鈥�

This story originally published on Early Learning Nation and is now archived on 蜜桃影视. Learn more here.