Monday, September 15, 2008

Waste of Time and Values

This is really grim. The radio station K-Bull 93 sponsored a texting contest for a high school to win an assembly with singer and tabloid staple Jessica Simpson.

The contest consisted of having students text message “Jessica” followed by their school’s name to the radio station. Two of my sons attend the school that won with 571,795 text messages.

The educational value of this contest is rather dubious. It kind of burns my toast that the school has no problem pulling students out of class to see what my son described as a famous blonde skank, when they won’t excuse a student from PE when he is physically ill.

But even more than that, it boggles my mind that some students at my sons’ school felt that continuously sending text messages to a radio station in the hope of getting a celebrity to visit their school was the best use of their time and resources.

What are we teaching these kids?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"What are we teaching these kids?"

You won't like the answer. :-(

Jesse Harris said...

I wonder how much the parents paid for that cell bill. If you're not on an unlimited plan, you could be paying as much as $0.20 per message over your limit.

y-intercept said...

It is ironic that our public schools often end up supporting the slimiest marketing campaigns. Public schools are often in cahoots with programs that install parasiteware on computers and tend to push marketing programs aimed at dominated communities ... opposed to marketing campaigns where businesses are trrying to be part of the community.

As Mr. Harris points out, the benefits that the children receive from this campaign is chump change compared to the money pulled in by the cell phone companies charging for the text messages.