About - Educational Guidance Institute

About - Educational Guidance Institute

Educational Guidance Institute, headed by Dr. Onalee McGraw, uses classic movies to teach character and values. On Dr. McGraw's blog, you can read essays on the lessons taught by great films like Twelve Angry Men, On the Waterfront, and Roman Holiday.

"Since our founding in 1986, the Educational Guidance Institute (EGI) has implemented character formation programs for highly diverse groups of young people. Our program history includes public school classrooms, after school programs, special events in detention homes, pilots for college students and young adult groups, and parent-teen events in communities and churches. EGI uses the great classic films of Hollywood's Golden Age to teach enduring values that are both timeless and deeply relevant to the generation of today. These stories touch the deepest longings of the human heart."

EGI offers study guides, each covering a series of seven films around a common theme. For example, "Liberty and Justice for All: Classic Movies and the Things that Matter Most in a Free Society" covers Key Largo, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront, No Way Out, The Big Country, and Bad Day at Black Rock. "Men of the West: Classic Western Heroes and the Examined Life" includes High Noon, Shane, Bad Day at Black Rock, 3:10 to Yuma, The Big Country, The Magnificent Seven, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In an essay on The Best Years of Our Lives, Dr. McGraw writes, "The greatest films of the Golden Age give us a vision of human nature through Classic Realism. With films made in this mode, moral choice drives the characters and events in the story. While we have different sensibilities and worldviews, we can view and discuss these films together, seeing essential truths with the same lens."

In an essay reprinted from Word on Fire magazine, Dr. McGraw writes, "The isms on the one side of this centuries-long debate--like materialism and fatalism--deny our powers of free will and moral choice; those on the other side, subjectivism and radical individualism, insist we have the power to define ourselves and reality. The beauty of classic cinema elevates us to a higher plane as we engage each other, moving to understanding, solidarity, and moral action.

"The greatest of the classic films presuppose a moral universe where our power to know, love, and do the good is at the center of the drama. From the mid-1930s to the early 1960s, this art form occupied the center stage of our popular culture."