Smart as a Whip: Can Indiana Jones teach kids about history?

(David Zax, SLATE) - "Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading," says professor Indiana Jones to a roomful of students in Last Crusade. But it's the other 30 percent—the boulder-fleeing, the snake-dodging—that makes for good cinema.
Moviegoers lining up today for the professor's fourth outing probably aren't looking for what you'd describe as an intellectual experience. Who can claim to have learned anything from Raiders of the Lost Ark—beyond the fact that if you happen to be present at the opening of the Ark of the Covenant and prefer your face unmelted, you had better close your eyes? Continued