Why Did My Fourth Grade Teacher Show Us Flight of the Navigator (1986) in School?

Today’s issue of Dust On The VCR is a subscriber request! This blast from the past is courtesy of my dear friend Allison Pariani, who came into my life when she started dating (and then married) one of my best friends, so I really owe him for that. But it has been a joy to build a friendship with her beyond that limited role, even though I only see her a couple times a year because she lives in New York City. Today’s newsletter is a bit serendipitous, in fact, because Allison is a teacher herself! Which means it’s probably only a matter of time before she shows Flight of the Navigator to her own students. Anyway. Want to request a film for a future issue? Subscribe to the paid version!

Reader, I have a minor fascination with movies that my peers and I watched in school growing up.

Yes, it seems pretty obvious nowadays. Teachers work hard, and they need breaks sometimes! Give them days off where they can just press the play button and grade papers! Heck, if I was a teacher, my students would have movie days once a month.*

But it’s also a trend that began with my generation. Yes, video recording technology dates back to the 50s, and TVs were already in most American households by then. But the VCR as we know it didn’t emerge until the late 70s, and it took a few more years before VHS defeated Betamax in the format wars. Which means that Millennials (and maybe some Xennials) were the first students to regularly watch popular movies in class as early as elementary school.** Yet another reason why Boomers blame us for everything, probably.

If you’re like me, and we’re around the same age, you probably get a nice warm wave of nostalgia whenever you think about movie days in class. That big, boxy CRT television sitting on a tall, bulky cart and the cheers from the whole class when it was wheeled into the room. The lights dimming as you prepared for story time with some of your closest friends. The way the teachers pressed mute when a cuss happened or stood in front of the screen to shield our eyes from anything risqué. It was simply the best thing.

But how did our teachers choose what we would watch? This I have always wondered. Because there’s not much rhyme or reason to what I watched in grade school.

Sure, it makes sense that we watched Glory in 10th grade history class and Spartacus in 6th grade social studies and The Newsies on show choir trips. But elementary school was like the Wild West. In fifth grade, Mrs. Cesnick showed us Labyrinth just before we graduated, which rules but probably has no educational value beyond pop culture awareness. And just weeks before that, we joined the other students our age to watch Gone With the Wind over the course of a week, which…maybe wasn’t the best idea.***

And then there’s Flight of the Navigator, a film that we watched in fourth grade. (I think. Mrs. Wurtele’s getting credit for it either way.) Truthfully, I only remember watching this film because some of us laughed at a thing we weren’t supposed to laugh at.**** And now that I’ve rewatched it a good 27 years later, I have some questions about why this film was chosen.

Bear in mind: This is a good movie! I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, actually. It’s more inspired than most family-friendly filmmaking these days. But what was it about this film—which was a decade old by the time we watched it—that inspired Mrs. Wurtele to show it to us?

Let’s get one thing out of the way: I know some teachers will say that movie days happen when they’re just busy, tired, or even hungover. But that’s too easy. Mrs. Wurtele probably partied, but even then, I bet she would’ve made a thoughtful decision. So let’s give her the credit and do some investigating.

Is there an educational component to the film? Actually, yes! Sort of. The central mystery of the film is that a 12-year-old boy (David) gets knocked unconscious in the woods and discovers that eight years have passed when he wakes up. How did these eight years pass in the blink of an eye? I won’t spoil it for you, but the answer has to do with Einstein’s theory of relativity. Which we definitely did not study in fourth grade. I think astrophysics was a bit advanced for us.*****

Was our teacher presenting us with an age-appropriate protagonist? Maybe! If this was indeed fourth grade, we would’ve been a year or two younger than David, and it would make sense to have a slightly older child as a behavior model. But funnily enough, David spends most of the film not listening to the adults around him—particularly a group of shady NASA scientists who want to keep him locked in a hotel room and study him at will—and things work out great for him! Some example he is, right?

Did Mrs. Wurtele simply wish to foster a love of storytelling for her students? If so, I think she made a good choice. Flight of The Navigator actually employs a distinct three-act structure: The first act introduces a mystery, the second act answers the central question and replaces it with a problem, and the third act allows the hero to solve that problem.****** It’s simple enough for children to understand but compelling enough for viewers of all ages to appreciate. Also, Paul Reubens voices an alien robot, and I just think that’s neat.

Mrs. Wurtele was the kind of teacher that always encouraged our imaginations to run wild. And maybe she was just tired or busy on this particular day; she did teach fourth grade after all. But she nonetheless made a great choice for movie day that carried out that mission for her.

*Would this get me fired? Who’s to say?

**I’m sure you older heads watched some sort of educational films and things like that, so let me know if this claim is totally off base!

***I’m pretty sure we watched lots of movies in EDP too, but that doesn’t really count, because those counselors were just helping us pass the time until our parents arrived. Shouts out to Balto though.

****At one point in the film, Max tells David that human brains “leaked” when scientists from its home planet tried to fill them with information beyond the 10% that we actually use. Minutes later, when they’re under water, David asks if the spaceship’s windows leak, to which Max responds “I do not leak, you leak. Remember?” And we laughed because, of course, “leak” was another word for “pee.” Fourth grade was fun.

*****More than a decade later, I took an astronomy class during my last semester of college to collect one remaining math/science credit, and I hated it. I thought we’d just be talking about planets and stars and stuff, but no, it was all physics. Even the night labs were physics. (We should’ve watched this film in that class.)

******The first-act mystery is pretty effective too! It’s like a Twilight Zone episode for kids.

Flight of the Navigator is now streaming on Disney+.