Archive for news
Dear kids: school is your job. Act accordingly.
Posted by: | CommentsIt has become accepted wisdom that public schools in the US are failing their students.
I confess to believing some of that conventional wisdom: I think we’re losing generation after generation of inner-city and rural kids with sub-par schools and technology. I also think that inner-city schools have become both a dumping ground for teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, and a road to exhaustion and defeat for teachers who arrive fired up and get ground under the wheels of budget shortfalls, bureaucracy, and bullsh*t.
But I digress.
The Washington Post Answer Sheet blog shared a post by Will Fitzhugh, editor of the Concord Review – the world’s only English-language quarterly review for history academic papers by high school students (smart kids + smart teachers = intellectual advancement for all!) – that puts the blame for poor student performance at the feet of … students. The title of the post: “Teachers Not Enough? Who Knew?”
And he’s 110% right there.
I’m now going to sound like the geezer I’m becoming, but just roll with me for a minute here. When I was in school, my job was to go to school, do my work, and learn. That was my job. The one that would set the stage for all the jobs coming after, the one without successful completion thereof I would be stamped with the storied “L on my forehead” and consigned to the career-and-success scrap heap. It was up to me to learn as much as I could, and use that knowledge to forge my way in the world.
Am I nuts, or does it seem as though students in K-12 now believe it’s the responsibility of the school to pry open their brains and pour in knowledge without much in the way of student effort? And that expectation is being driven by parents, and the community at large?
I watched the documentary Waiting for Superman recently, and found it compelling. However, something nagged at me as I watched it, and after, that only became clear when I read Fitzhugh’s Concord Review post: the film left the viewer with the impression that schools, parents, and the community were responsible for the entire education cycle. What was left out was the obligation for students to work to learn.
I’m not saying that a kid in a failing inner-city school who fails to learn is solely at fault for his/her lack of academic progress. As a society, we must make sure that each of our kids has the chance to learn as much, and go as far, as s/he possibly can in life. Charter schools can be a terrific answer for places where public schools are letting down the kids who try to learn there … but they’re not the only, or even the first, answer.
That first answer is: kids, school is your job. Act accordingly. Pay attention, do your work, do not expect to have learning pass through your ears and into your brain without any effort on your part. Life requires that you be present, pay attention, and act to further your own progress. You will not be borne through life on Cleopatra’s barge, much as your helicopter parents might have led you to believe that was your destiny.
Work. It’s what makes things happen. So go do some.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
Now, who will you tell your story TO?
Posted by: | CommentsAt Today, she looked into the camera and imagined her average
viewer as a 32-year-old lawyer with a toddler who was preparing to
prosecute a case that day, or a stay-at-home mom who would “hopefully
get some things about raising kids or the environment.” On the CBS Evening News, she couldn’t see anyone in the camera lens. “I’m not sure,” Couric says drily. “My parents. I know they’re watching.”
No matter how good your story is, if you don’t know who you’re telling that story to, it won’t have the desired effect. In fact, your story isn’t great, or even good, unless you know exactly who the story is going to be told to – because the audience will decide if it’s any good by agreeing to keep listening.
All the hand-wringing in the world won’t stop a newscast from sinking in the ratings. CBS News has got plenty of audience measurement data, and they should know who they’re trying to attract to the evening news. The next step has to be to tell stories to that audience. Unfortunately, I don’t know that they know, or will do, that. And therin lies the issue…
Tabloids, Noise, and Handcuffs. Film at 11.
Posted by: Mighty Casey | Comments (1)Also around that same time, CNN (acronym for Cable News Network, was referred to as Chicken Noodle News by those of us in “establishment” TV news at the time) brought the 24-hour TV news cycle to life. That was, I think, one of the first strikes on the first nail in the coffin where the body of real news ultimately got buried.
As my grandmother used to exclaim, “saints preserve us!”
That 24-hour spin cycle has now delivered the most meta of screaming headlines. A media shark frenzy is now chowing down on media itself: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and its burgeoning phone hacking scandal has, so far, brought us the heads of Rebekah Brooks, chief of News International and the last editor of The News of the World (I so will not miss that rag) and Sir Paul Stephenson, who was the chief of Scotland Yard until his career got hacked by hiring former NotW editors as Scotland Yard PR flacks.
The wind sown on the day that 24-hour spin cycle started – April 1, 1980 – is now reaping the whirlwind, and taking down an entire profession. Both Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner have a lot to answer for – I’m wondering how wide a net might ultimately be cast as the feeding frenzy keeps bloodying the news-business water.
I’m no longer working directly for any news organization, haven’t been for five years. Part of that decision was driven by the writing I saw on the interwebs wall. The web was eating the lunch of mainstream media, and combined with “the internet wants content to be free!”-ocracy that developed in the first decade of the 21st century, it all meant that making any kind of a living in media was going to be problematic at best, impossible at worst.
But what really drove my decision was my utter disgust at what had happened to a profession in the 20+ years I had been in it. I was passionate about news, about that first draft of history that is the news business, about the feel of newspapers in my hands, about covering stories that I thought were important, exciting, and informative.
Democracy only fully works when an educated citizenry has access to unbiased information about what their overall society is up to, going through, exploring, learning, or pissed off about. By “unbiased” I mean that the reporter isn’t inserting his/her own opinions into their reportage.
Calls ‘em like they sees ‘em – those should be the rules of the game.
Unfortunately, the advent of a 24/7/365 “feed me!” mindset, along with the rise of info-tainment – which dictates that everything from how Tiger Wood’s wife deploys his 3-wood, to whether or not some celebutante is or is not wearing underpants, to which loser gets a rose from some other loser on some “reality” show that’s about as real as Pam Anderson’s rack – as “news” has brought us here.
At first blush, the crew who was phone-hacking might seem to be just the lower-than-pond-scum Brit tabloid jerks. However, the investigation has crossed the pond, and the FBI is now looking into allegations that Murdoch’s minions were hacking the families of 9/11 victims, seeking headline-worthy dirt.
So, the next time you pick up a People magazine or a supermarket tabloid, watch Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood, read TMZ or Perez Hilton, you must understand that you’re supporting the lack of real information available to move our society, our culture, and our world in a positive direction.
Yep, I’m talkin’ to you.
Stop the insanity.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…