Anderson Cooper Asks the RIGHT Question (In This Case)

Even Anderson Cooper thinks people are asking the wrong questions. Though I frequently disagree with the approach and tactics of news media, on this one I happen to agree with the question Anderson Cooper asks in his pre-CNN/YouTube Republican debate: "What were they thinking?" You can view this video at http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/22/you.tube.debates/index.html and get a minimal glimpse of what some people thought it was important to ask (we'll no doubt hear the better questions at the debate itself). Mostly, this little video blurb reveals what NOT to do when videotaping yourself for a national media event.

I definitely think that we Americans take ourselves far too seriously most of the time when it comes to politics, and that it is probably good for us to lighten up from time to time. But this Anderson Cooper spot is more evidence that we're becoming collectively sillier and sillier. Perhaps we should take things like Presidential Election campaigns and our participation in them far more seriously. I mean, look what happened the last time--need I say more? Tighten up, America! Four to eight years is a long time to have to suffer the consequences of our silly attitudes toward politics.

The News We Deserve

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in the news lately: major newspapers and online news sources have eliminated the Education news section from their papers. As a teacher I have relied on Education news in my favorite news sources to keep me up to date on education legislation that is being considered or voted into law, as well as trends in other states. As a citizen I have relied on Education news to let me know how well No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is working (or not working) to ensure that the next generation of Americans is well equipped to take care of the country when I enter my golden years.

When my favorite online news source redesigned its website and dropped the Education news category from its front page, I went hunting through the website to find any education news and was disappointed. Then I kept getting these pop-up windows asking me to give them feedback on their new site, so I did. I told them that I would find another online news source if they didn’t put the Education section back up. Not only did they not put it back up, they never acknowledged my feedback.

I went looking elsewhere for a favorite online news source, and that’s when I discovered the disturbing trend: NONE of the major online news websites have an Education news section anymore. Well, there was one that did, but I had to go deeper and deeper into it to find it, so it might as well have not been there at all (the average web surfer will give up three layers into a website if they do not find what they are looking for).

What does this mean in the big picture? I’m afraid that it means that Average American is tired of reading or hearing about how poorly NCLB is doing, and is also tired of reading or hearing how poorly our students are doing as compared to students of other industrialized nations. The sad truth is that our students still lag far behind other countries in math, science, social studies, and language arts test scores; and this is after nearly eight years of NCLB.

Again it appears (to me) that we are not asking the right questions. While trying to get our students’ math, science, social studies and language arts scores to go up, we’ve narrowed our focus to those four subjects. In the countries where the scores are high the educational focus is broad, with more emphasis on the arts and foreign languages (much like what we in this country once called a “classical education”). It appears that getting math, science, social studies and language arts scores to go up requires a more holistic approach to education (according to the most current brain research). (If you are interested in learning about why learning art or dance or music is essential to becoming expert in math and science, get one of my favorite books: “Arts With the Brain in Mind” by Eric Jensen.)

A further sad truth is that our collective response does not seem to be to try to solve the problem, or even to educate ourselves about it. When searching fruitlessly for education news online I made another startling discovery: where the Education category once existed there is now a category called Living (on my favorite news website) and additional Entertainment categories on that site and all the other news sites.

I fail to see why we need additional Entertainment categories when Brittney Spears and her travails are already considered headline breaking news (much to my dismay—I could live the rest of my life without ever knowing what her next debacle might be). No, we Americans would rather ignore the problem of the ever declining intelligence of our children so we can learn more about our favorite TV programs and their stars, and how long the Hollywood writers’ strike is going to last so we’ll know when we can expect to see the beginning of the next season of our favorite show.

Voltaire said that nations get the leaders they deserve. Well now it seems that we’re getting the news we deserve as well—drivel to satiate and titillate our diminishing collective intellect.

The good news for me as a teacher is that there are all manner of Education publications that I can get my hands on to find out what the state of education in America is. But that doesn’t make my mind rest easier, because the lack of education news in the mainstream news (in paper or online) suggests that people just don’t care to hear about how poorly we’re doing anymore, and that is disturbing to me. We all need to wake up before we become so dumbed-down that we can’t even understand the entertainment news anymore, and I’m afraid that day is not so far in the future if we continue the way we’re going.

We're Asking the Wrong Questions

Finally, someone admits he inhaled. Not that I really care one way or another; but I have to agree with Mr. Obama that the whole point was to inhale—you get no “benefit” from the drug if you don’t.

To know what I’m talking about, go to http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/ and read about how yet another presidential candidate was asked if he smoked marijuana, and how he responded to this tired, unoriginal, and unrevealing question.

When Presidential hopeful William Jefferson Clinton was asked this question he responded with the now famous, “I didn’t inhale.” Obama effectively cries, “The emperor has no clothes on!” by responding that the whole point was to inhale, underscoring the importance of being totally honest if you’re going to be honest at all.

By responding to this question in the way that he did, Obama is not making a statement about being honest so much is he is making a statement about the stupidity of some of these questions. Of course by answering honestly he diminishes the possibility that someone will be able to flag around his dirty underwear later on and compound the negative effect by having been caught in a lie.

But the real importance of Obama’s response is that it underscores how irrelevant some of these questions are. Even our own born-again President George W. Bush admits to having imbibed in illicit substances in the days prior to his entry into public office, and no one really cares, nor does anyone really think anything he did while a teenager or twenty-something affects how he runs the country today (outside of the possible deaths of a few million brain cells). The really important thing about Obama’s response is it reveals how little we care about what a candidate might have done in his or her youth that he doesn’t do now, but how persistent reporters are in continuing to ask questions about what we don’t care about.

In the blog that I’ve referenced here, Mitt Romney says, "I agree with the sentiment that nobody's perfect and most of us, if not all of us, in our youthful years have engaged in various indiscretions we wouldn't want to have paraded in the front of a newspaper...On the other hand if we're running for president, I think it's important for us not to go into details about the weaknesses and our own failings as young people for the concern that we open kids thinking that it's ok for them." This begs the question why do reporters keep asking this question? If we don’t want to set a bad example for our kids by suggesting through our own honest admissions that we may have participated in the very things that we forbid them to do (culturally and legally), and if no one really cares about what the candidate of their choice did in his/her youth when they go to the ballot box, then why do reporters and Senate committees keep asking this stupid question?

I don’t have the answer, except that it has become the status quo, somehow. Perhaps one of the reasons that we have so much trouble finding out what candidates really stand for when we are trying to decide who to vote for is that no one is asking them the right questions. While I want to find out what Mr. Obama’s position on foreign policy, health care, and the budget are, reporters are asking whether he smoked Marijuana in high school or college; and then the response to THAT question is what the news publisher (in this case CNN) thought was worthwhile enough to publish.

We need to start asking the right questions if we ever want to find out anything that is worth knowing. Who will start?