The Value of College

Whether you are 80 or 18, you're learning every day. People will say, too, that the world is your teacher, that experience carves character and life can provide lessons no classroom ever can.

Yet, more and more I'm finding that my world is full of uneducated people, for whom life/experience and so forth haven't taught so much as proper grammar, a perspective on history or art appreciation, or the ability to count without a calculator. Saying "I didn't know nothing" is no longer the purview of backwoods characters on TV shows, but common language among the gum-smacking teenagers at shopping malls.

Was I the only one who didn't fall asleep when the teacher taught us about double negatives? (Or for that matter, when my mom taught me how rude it was to smack gum in public?)

The way forward is not only through experience, then, but through modeled experience. A good mentor is tantamount to our raising standards of excellence, not only for ourselves but our children, peers and family. How many times in your life have you recalled the lesson of a good teacher? Or his or her words of encouragement or helpful criticism? I remember frequently the admonishment from a college English professor to "never tear down the building without replacing it", or words to that effect. The idea here was to simply debunk a story line or author or genre without supporting my argument, was weightless.

Why can't the gum-smacking, cell phone-chatting seventeen-year-old turn off the noise for five minutes and read a book?

How many of these kids are remembering anything their teachers tell them if the experiences they're having are so connected to technology that they're disconnected from humanity? How long before the actual teachers in classrooms become technology (robots) themselves?

I suggest the world take a step - or several - back and embrace the "Little House on the Prairie" days of the one-room school house, the teacher who learned every student's name and won their hearts each term. I am not even sure we need computers in the classroom, even though I am writing this blog on one. If the power went out, and computers broke, would kids even know how to do all their work offline?

Education, the old-school type from teachers and books, is so critical for the survival and advancement of society that I put it right up there with enviornmental health and hazards. If we cannot save the planet including the rainforests and world's oceans, we cannot save ourselves. Ditto, if we cannot teach Johnny to read, write and know how to say "I don't know anything" rather than "I don't know nothing" we are no better than animals - and perhaps not as smart as they. For the chimps, cats, birds and squirrels communicate with one another flawlessly, and are not at risk for losing brain cells because they're hooked up to an MP3 player.

The Ann Curry in all of us

Watching Ann Curry's heartwrenching goodbye Thursday on "The Today Show," I wept like a school girl. Who didn't? When was the last time viewers were treated to such honest, gripping emotion?

First, kudos to the NBC executives who allowed her to have her five minutes. As critical as I am of her ousting, it could have been far worse -- we might have awakened to her simply being gone, like an anchor-cum-Sopranos victim. She could have been 86'd like the first Darren on "Bewitched" or the superiority of network programming over cable (oops - did I say that out loud?)

Yet, we all know that what happened to her was merely what happens to all of us women of a certain age who are no longer desirable in the eyes of our male bosses - or in her case, the imaginary viewers these male bosses felt had lost interest. Their golden boy, after all, has to fight the drool coming out of his mouth whenever Savannah Guthrie or Natalie Morales are at his side.

Is this a cynical view? Perhaps. Maybe it's all in my imagination that I've been reading about illicit affairs on the show, or that Ann, once voted a MILF by some men's group, has lately looked more like a concerned Mother Teresa.

It's as if looking smarter, looking more concerned and actually being those things were a detriment in television journalism.

Think about it.

Years ago I interviewed many former broadcast journalists for Mediabistro. The subject was how these journos had jumped over to PR. I'll pick up that story at some point and publish it, but until then let me share the gist: I was told repeatedly that these news programs are becoming increasingly infotainment driven.

And this was 2002. Back when "The Today Show" still looked like a news program.

So while watching Ann Curry's passionate and at times pathetic goodbye, not only did I want to hug her, but I wanted to slap her. She is far too smart, too gifted, too worldly and wise to be diminished by this episode.

I am sure her family has been reassuring her of that this pre-Fourth of July weekend.

I only hope that the Ann Curry that rests in all of us - especially we female journalists of a certain age - will kick it into overdrive the next time a smarmy white middle-aged male executive no longer wants to flirt us up. Give him the heave-ho and just run the reel of our work in Darfur or tsunami-ravaged Thailand.

Who knows, but maybe one of these days some testosterone-driven network may just hire us for our brains.