There is plan under way in New York City to sell – of all things – attending school to children who may not want to be in school in the first place.
Newsweek reports this campaign will be delivered with the help of cell phones given to some 15,000 at-risk children who will receive messages from celebrities about the importance of earning an education. Students who get this marketing device will also be able to download interviews with professionals – accountants, lawyers and the like – about how each climbed the ladder of success by using education as a stepping stone to a high-paying job.
This has to be one of the most absurd marketing ploys released to the public since trying to convince consumers New Coke would be better than the original formula that had been tried and true for so many years.
Granted, there are children who, if considered good students, will be picked on by those in the neighborhood who are not academically inclined. Anyone who did well in school may remember grief doled out by other students simply because one grasped mathematics or history better than one’s classmates.
This is part of life. Such a lesson is best taught to children at a young age – if you succeed, be it in school or even later in your chosen vocation, there will be detractors wanting to take potshots at you.
Using cell phones to bribe children to try harder in school is nothing more than pandering. What’s next? A Nintendo Wii for every high school graduate? Of course not. Yet, these children who receive cell phones just for going to school everyday could very well come to expect such a trinket.
Offering up small rewards for staying in school teaches students that if they learn, someone will give them a treat for the effort. When the time comes and there are no programs dangling cell phones – or any technological toy – in front of students, there will be a lot of disgruntled kids opting to check out of school in order to work some minimum-wage job to pay for their own phones, gaming devices or whatever is the latest toy craze among the young population.
Staying in school should be incentive enough for these students. Bribing the new generation with tech-toys that match the age in which they are growing up does nothing to make them value school for what it can do for them. All they will see is what attending school can get them by way of the electronic section at Toys "R" Us.
An education is about improving one’s self – through increasing one’s knowledge base, developing social skills and getting those all-important pieces of paper at graduation ceremonies which state a student has earned a valuable education. These ought to be reason enough for any child to keep going to school day after day.
Not every student will be able to parlay a talent – acting, singing or athletics – into a multi-million dollar deal, thereby negating the need for school other than as a showcase for one’s abilities. Every student in school right now needs their education, for their future’s sake. If teachers and parents are not enough to get this point across, then kids do not need a message on a cell phone to realize how important an education is.
An education is the means through which this will be achieved, not by checking a cell phone text message from some celebrity about how "staying in school is cool."
Educators who push for this cell phone program are setting their students up for failure, in school and in life. There are no handouts for showing up to work everyday. Employers are not giving away cell phones or game consoles just to keep workers motivated enough to show up for work everyday.
Schools are forgetting the importance of education; it should not be a haven for arming students with a device, which will distract them from their studies. If students do not learn this and place their education before these tech-toys, then schools deserve a failing grade.
Lopez, an English senior, can be reached via [email protected]
