Media Dumbness and other Rants

Abstract

EVERY now and then, you need a good rant! I guess I am just tired of educators' media-related dumbness. Why is it that every sector of the commercial media exhibits more media savvy than the educational media? And why is it that there are public service announcements on television for everything under the sun -- Big Brothers and Big Sisters, seat belts, AIDS prevention, and services for the homeless -- but none about education and what's good for schoolchildren? To add to the problem, there are three cultures in education: the practitioners in the schools; the academics at the universities; and the researchers, who often don't teach much. Unfortunately, these three cultures don't really understand one another or feel a need to communicate. Let me illustrate this complex web of a problem. Yes, all these things do fit together, as you will see. When Mannheim Steamroller produced a Christmas DVD, the group used 30, 50-millimeter film cameras and more than 20 channels of digital audio. The disc is both compelling and moving. Why is there nothing approaching this kind of production in education? Or take music videos. If we can have high-powered music videos that sell songs, why can't we use them to promote things that are good for the children? The only high-fidelity educational video that I know of is almost exclusively wildlife oriented. Are bears and rain forests more important than kids? These are not unsupported rants. I just finished spending an entire day searching the Web for educational public service announcements (PSAs) and similar media. I found a total of two PSAs at Thomas Andrew Films -- one about a homeless father and one about the shortage of Big Brothers. I urge you to watch these two PSAs (www.thomasandrewfilms.com) and think how significant it would be if we could have similar ones about such educational topics as the importance of enrichment activities during the early years. While researching this topic on the Web, I reasoned that prestigious organizations and foundations, such as the Annenberg Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and others might be involved in creating PSAs for education. After all, Annenberg, for example, has been a big supporter of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. While I found that such public-minded organizations were involved in all kinds of projects, none of them were involved in sponsoring PSAs or other persuasive efforts to use the media to communicate about core issues in education. The only exception was some material I found on school reform, which to me is the wrong issue. Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California, discussed the public interest obligation of radio and television stations on Minnesota Public Radio's Marketplace. According to Kaplan, the Telecommunications Act of 1934 made it clear that radio and television stations had an obligation to act in the public interest. Because the airwaves belong to the people, the people have an interest -- the public interest -- in how they are used. The act required stations to keep a detailed log of what it was they were covering that was of interest to the local public. Reporters were even required to go out into the community with clipboards to ascertain what local people wanted to have covered. Deregulation of the telecommunications industry over the last several decades has regrettably removed this public interest obligation of broadcasters.1 No one but me seems to have noticed that PSAs for public education have almost vanished, except possibly PSAs from politically motivated special-interest groups. For example, about two years ago, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's office sponsored a 30-second PSA on why it was a good idea to stop social promotion and retain children in grade. He must have taken some heat for it because the PSA vanished quickly, never to be seen or discussed again. (I sure wish I could find a copy of it. …