I regularly read about purple cows with Seth Godin, giggle at truth-is-truth pencil sketches with Hugh's Gaping Void, marvel at will-he-slow-down-ever Tom Peters, pour through pages and blog entries along with my cubicle-of-the-future-morphing-brethren at Fast Company, skype with DK's phatgnat crystal ball, share ideas with dozens of trend-watcher groups and sites, and learn from a long-list of 'who's who' in the realms of consumer-based 'storytelling' (aka: marketing, advertising, PR, and he like).
No end to the learning when you trip down that rabbit hole. Some of it squares directly up against my professional responsibilities. Much of it echos what I taught to HS English students about grabbing the audience's attention. And much of it is blog-writing relevant in terms of what it takes you spirit away blog-visitors to the infinite avalanche of 'info' and story-links out there these days.
Thanks to Agenda Inc., and this Business Week article, I"m reminded of one simple principle. Advertising aint' journalism. It ain't about informing the audience with every possible fact. It ain't news. Thus, when advertising tries to pack in as much punch-for-the-buck as possible, trying to get one's money's worth with endless content, it actually fails in its original mission: Entertain!!!
In other words, advertising (and anything that uses ad-principles) needs to understand out of the gate that the masses "tolerate it because they know it helps pay for media they enjoy...For that reason, advertising needs to come across more like theater."
Or, perhaps better said this way:
"Over the years, an unspoken social contract has developed. Consumers effectively tell advertisers, 'Entertain me, and I will give you my attention. Respect my intelligence, and I'll give you my interest. Do neither, and I'll give you neither.'"
As stated earlier, the reasons these ideas interest me crosses many lines for me personally and professionally. But it also calls into question the deeper issues found in the world of education today, like it or not.
The old paradigm (think factory models and assembly line schools/curriculum), there was fact and expert sitting hand in hand at the gate. Kids/learners simply needed to take off their overalls and drop their farming impliments at the door, sign up for mass literacy, respond to bells like good pavlovian dogs and factory-worker-to-be's, and nod their head politely between test questions. Along came the rush to colleges in the 1950's and suddenly everyone has jumped on board to the notion that without college, you ain't got no future (worth a dozen posts on its own, but we'll do that later). And today, with the rush towards the virtual information age (and growing realization of the skill sets needed for the rising tide of the 'conceptual age' -- go read Daniel Pink, friends!), suddenly we realize:
- School no longer has a monoploy on information (or learning or experts)
- Media in all its glory is making linear, passive education/learning very hard on learners, and in more frightening terms...irrelevant as we look to the future.
That leaves teachers and educational software companies and all the rest of us left to 3 options:
- force the kids to learn the way they used to and tell'em about walking up hill in the snow barefoot both ways to make'em nod in agreement;
- acting like Robin Williams in "Dead Poets Society" [note: I 'became' a teacher because of this movie, if I'm honest, but in more than a decade of doing it for real, I come to realize that this review gets to the heart of that 'teacher' model...and why it's not what it appears to be on the surface] and turning the classroom into musical/comedy theater in order to 'entertain' them and keep'em in the seats long enough to graduate and forget tv, iPods, and IM'ing the rest of the planet later that night; or...
- realizing that if education (read: school) doesn't begin to make it a customized experience where learners can pursue topics of passion and simultaneously pick up the 'required skills' along the way, then you either sound like the Charlie Brown teacher ("wah-wah-wah, wah-wah...wah") or you act like a dancing monkey on stage. And neither of them have a thing to do with the future of learning. Period.
But you may disagree...
*****
Image1: http://www.flickr.com/photos/t_squared/4282412/ Image 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phitar/89287777/
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