Zac's Place

by edit4life

Politics, Entertainment, Travel, Sports, and another ten headlines composed the news menu on CNN.com on this day, July 27, 2009. People doing the “Moonwalk” and the death of a former “Idol” contestant were apparently much more important than the reason why all of us can read and count: Yes, indeed, you guessed it! No headline about schools, good or bad, about outstanding or so-so teachers or superintendents. Nothing related to learning except maybe the exciting news regarding the ineffable Professor Gates trying to break into his own home. I even searched the smaller headlines, hoping against hope that some enterprising reporter would talk about the return to school that will take place next month; no such luck.

I even searched the 15 most popular news: Sara Palin’s last day in office, the death of a former boxing champ, more women watching porn (believe it or not), France’s President Sarkozy fainting near Versailles (as if we should care), and the four most important health problems for kids.

But nothing even resembling education, unless the kids’ health problems can be solved through education…of the parents. Just to be fair, I looked at Yahoo’s homepage to check on the latest regarding education: just maybe, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had more information regarding the 4 billion dollars allocated to the “Race to the Top”, supposedly to enact reform in public schools throughout the land. But again, this noteworthy news found no follow up interest among the media’s elite. Yahoo’s page had the usual sensationalistic (ugly word) medley of earthshaking information: Alice in Wonderland (pretty old news isn’t it?), the Tour de France (only because Armstrong was in there), Vera Farmiga (never heard of this person), and, of course, the unending debate on healthcare.

Again, to be perfectly fair, I opened the BBC site to check on our language cousins: Killings in Nigeria, Sarkozy again (sacrebleu!), the theft of a German minister’s car in Spain (who cares again?), and some playful dolphin interrupting a woman’s swim (earth shattering indeed); nothing regarding education and/or learning in the land of Shakespeare. So I decided to take a look at local papers, the ones nobody ever hears about except, for example, the 20,000 inhabitants of Newtown, Pa: It’s called the “Bucks Local News” and there, at last, I found an article on education: a local athlete and outstanding academic student named Tyler with a 3.70 GPA obtained a scholarship from the local American Legion. So maybe small communities know what’s important a little better than national news organizations?

Perhaps because local news applies directly to our daily life we give it more attention. At the national level, the media coverage of what they consider newsworthy is really superficial nonsense for the most part; for example, the Palin’s farewell speech loaded with insults, innuendos and disconnected rants. Or the Gates affair, which drags on and on even after President Obama acknowledged that his comments were a little too strong. In fact, we have become a society interested in the superficial, the scandalous and the glitzy, and that doesn’t include the stupid which can be applied to some of the new television comedies. Whenever the paparazzi come up with a “sensational” photo of a budding, immature, and sexy singing star, people rush to buy the scandalous magazine. Music has also evolved towards bad taste and loud noises. Our children, for the most part, have never heard of Mozart, Gershwin or Leonard Bernstein. When a teacher in high school asks for a current event homework, most students look at each other with a blank stare; they do not follow the important news, the ones that will affect their future, their jobs and their own families.

Were we different, 10, 20 or 30 years ago, when we just emerged from teen years? I remember listening to the news on the radio at a very young age, even though I didn’t relate most of it to my world. But there was some discussion at the dinner table among my parents and cousins; they were concerned about the Cold War and the awful possibility of a nuclear holocaust. Even in high school, my buddies and I talked about some serious stuff, aside from the daily fluff. Our vacations were spent working to help our families. Our musical tastes included classical and pop. We (gasp) read books, lots of books, maybe because we didn’t have internet or television and we really felt the patriotism flowing in our arteries when we heard the national anthem. Today, I see crowds going to the beach on Memorial Day, forgetting the immense and sometimes ultimate sacrifice of thousands or our soldiers.

Education should be the main topic of our modern media; learning helps bring down the dropout rate, helps reduce health costs (fewer obese and diabetic people), contributes  to less welfare and Medicaid which are used by so many as a crutch to avoid their social responsibility. But learning must include moral, social and economic values, and these must start in the family from day one. It stands to reason therefore that education also starts with the parents. When I see teens having babies, I shudder at the idea that these kids having kids have no idea on how to educate their progeny. But isn’t our society the real culprit by relegating education topics to the back pages?