A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is the book (simplified version) I've required my Freshman English students to read in the fall semester. Normally, it takes me an hour to introduce the book, including the background (Victorian Era) and the author. Then I'll give my students three weeks to finish reading this 57-page level 3 in the Bookworm series. By the time students finish reading the book, it's December. Then I'll show the movie starring George C. Scott around mid December. This has been in my syllabus for the fall semester since I started teaching at Tunghai in 1993. In other words, I've watched the same movie more than 15 times since then. I love the movie so much that exactly the same spot of the movie can make me cry or laugh year after year.
I can tell if people enjoy the movie from their answers to the following two questions--"Do you believe that people can change no matter how old they get?" and "Do you believe that there're ghosts in the world?" If both of their answers are negative, I can conclude that they won't/don't like the story. As for myself, I firmly believe that people can change regardless their old age. It's true that the older we get, the less flexible we may be; however, as long as people get tired of being the same people, it's time for them to change.
This morning my husband, Dan, told me that he had finished watching the DVD of the movie last night. Then he said he still had hope although he's 63 years old. I know what he meant when he said he still had hope--he could become a better person like what Scrooge turned out to be!

Do you believe you can change?