Getting Refocused on the Photo Op
Is there anything more insipid than a
politician participating in a photo opportunity with school children? Why the
media plays along is beyond me. We need to use these empty news events as an
opportunity for meaningful changes in our education system, so our kids are
better prepared for the jobs that will await them.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and
Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology @tullman
I used to think that there was nothing more painfully
staged or artificial than the mandatory "sharing" sessions where some
world leader or political candidate, sitting in a classroom in front of a group
of elementary school kids and allegedly reading meaningful passages to them
from some picture book, would be "casually" observed by a noisy posse
of reporters and clicking cameras. These saccharine set-ups were regarded by
most of us as just slightly more shameless and time-wasting as the mandatory
state fair baby-kissings or the shots of someone chomping down on a steaming
ear of fresh-grown country corn or a mustard-slathered corn dog.
Those of us of a certain age sadly recall a major media
kerfuffle in 2002 when then President George Bush was photographed in just such
a session holding a book he was supposed to be reading to some students.But the
book's cover appeared to be upside down. Turns out that the photo was a
photoshopped fake, but the message about authenticity was still loud and clear
and everyone else (except maybe the kids in the class) was pretty much in on
the joke. Complaining about the sloppy staging of a photo op is pretty much
like sending your Big Mac back and complaining that you asked for it
"medium rare" and not "well done" as if a Big Mac of any
doneness is ever actually done well.
The press whines about how
and why they lost all their credibility with a large part of the American
public but one of the root causes may have been repeatedly subjecting us to
scenes like this (ripe for selfies and social media) and insulting our
intelligence as well as serving as the worst kinds of willing flacks for the
politicians. This seems to me to have been the beginning of the latest shift
and sowed the newest seeds of the slippery slope into the cesspool. As we used
to say, never interrupt your opponent when he is making a fool of himself. The
media were more than willing accomplices to their own demise and, in their
continued desperation for photo-ops and click bait, the decline just goes on
and on.
I also often wondered if the politicians themselves would ever
reach a point where they decided that it was just too embarrassing to continue
to be party to such specious spectacles, but, at least to date, that doesn't
appear to be the case. Even the ones who you would imagine have some semblance
of dignity and seriousness can't resist the directions and dictates of their
managers and the blandishments of the people that move their bodies (like hunks
of meat) across the country and along the campaign trail according to the same
time-old and time-tested conventions.
But more recently, I've come to realize that some of these
sessions can and do serve an entirely different and beneficial purpose for the
politicians and for those of us who understand the need to radically change our
schools and our entire system of education. Today our schools - especially K-12
- continue to mortgage our kids' futures with processes and programs that
haven't changed in a hundred years. The schools continue to put a premium on
posture and punctuality rather than productivity, and on memorization and
imitation rather than imagination and innovation. Sadly, we're not born bored;
it's something we learn to be at school. And it's gotta change.
We're not equipping our kids to succeed in "new
collar" jobs in a future where we know that the skills they will need are
vastly different from the ones we learned so long ago. Today the only constant
in their lives is constant change and the rate of the changes taking place
continues to accelerate. And frankly, the only recourse that we as parents (and
prospective employers) have is to convince the very same politicians doing
these "dog and pony" shows in the schools that we need their help in
recognizing, funding and effectuating some real changes in our schools. And
that we need those changes yesterday.
The somewhat encouraging news is that as cynical, jaundiced, and
beaten down as most of our representatives are these days, they still have
something inside them that responds powerfully to seeing and interacting with
young kids who are still curious and passionate about learning. Of course, they
do have to be pretty young kids these days so that they don't talk back or say
something snotty. But if you surround these guys with the right kids, the magic
and their love of learning does come through.
Kids who still have a sense of ownership and agency in their
futures and the imagination to think about how bright and wonderful those
futures could be. Kids who haven't had their dreams snuffed and their naïve and
native creativity crushed. And, at least in those moments, the optimism, the
energy and their faith in the future is contagious and you have to hope that
maybe just a little bit of it rubs off on their visitors.
Way back when, it really didn't matter how President Bush was
holding his copy of the book because the kid was reading to him, not the other
way around.
