Throwing our shoes into the machinery
Are the demands of technology putting too great a strain on communications educators?
by Gary Clites
Originally published in the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund’s Adviser Update, Summer 2006
In the 19th century, workers in France, struggling against a loss of wages as machines began taking their jobs, reportedly protested by jamming their wooden shoes, or “sabots,” into the machinery forcing it to grind to a halt. Just before the turn of the 20th century, several labor organizations officially sanctioned the technique, adopting the term “sabotage” to represent it. Analyzing the situation at the time, Frenchman Emile Pouget wrote, “It is necessary for the capitalists to know that the worker will not respect the machine until it has become his friend that will reduce his physical labour instead of being, as it is today, the enemy that steals his bread and shortens his life.”
What’s this: A technology column endorsing the destruction of machinery via footwear?
Of course not. But a century later, as we move forward in the 21st Century, it might be a good idea for us, as communications educators, to take a moment to examine our own relationship with the technology quickly crowding into our classrooms: To ask whether these new machines are friends reducing our physical labor, or enemies stealing our bread and shortening our lives.
Older advisers among us remember a day when creating the school newspaper meant either scraping copy into a ditto and running it off in the office; or handing copy, photos, headlines and rough layout sheets over to a professional print shop and letting them complete pre-press production on the publication. At that time, newspaper classes were more leisurely pursuits focused mainly on student reporting and writing with the technical end of publishing left to the professionals. All that changed with the advent of the personal computer and the introduction of desktop publishing.
In the nineties, technology became a key issue in education. “Is your school wired?” was one of the most asked question of the decade. As the World Wide Web brought the Internet into people’s homes, workplaces and consciences, the technological competency of a given school became synonymous in many people’s mind’s with the institution’s educational quality (fairly or unfairly).
In response, school systems pumped millions of dollars into buying and constantly upgrading computer labs. They expanded computer-related class offerings, pumped money into creating an institutional web presence and expended unheard of energies making certain that every facet of the core curriculum was in some way technologically-linked as evidence that their programs were wired, webbed and with-it.
Never mind that the vast majority of student in-school computer time has consisted of little more than learning to type on a keyboard, word-processing reports, and looking things up on the Internet.
Meanwhile, the student media has ridden the true cutting edge of the new technologies. Our newspaper and yearbook students create camera-ready publications full of digitally manipulated imagery on desktop publishing programs strong enough to layout The Washington Post or National Geographic. Many of those same students reformat their material for publication on the Web, often on sites many times more complex than those that school systems have invested tens of thousands of dollars to create. Broadcasting students today shoot footage digitally, then download it onto computers where they edit and enhance it using much of the same technology George Lucas used to bring us the latest entry in the Star Wars series (and our students can’t even be blamed for Jar Jar Binks).
Yet the student media remain the poor stepchild of the English curriculum in most school systems. As communications educators, we teach more preparations than most other teachers, work long hours with students on publications for which we are often ill-or-uncompensated. Students come to our rooms to immerse themselves in the practical use of the highest technologies: Scanning, downloading, inputting, designing, publishing and broadcasting to the school and community. Yet we work with them daily in the knowledge that the perception both within our buildings and across the educational system is often that students come to media classes to play... to take a break from their real courses when they happen to find a hole in their schedules. In my own state of Maryland, keyboarding classes, essentially courses in typing on the computer, count as a technology credit toward graduation while journalism courses wherein students perform full desktop publishing for both print and Internet publications were only recently so accredited (thanks to the hard work of journalism educators).
Adding insult to the injury, our technologically-driven curricula are seldom funded on a level nearly great enough to sustain them. My own student newspaper class receives no funding whatsoever from the school system, relying entirely on ad sales, fundraisers, and the occasional grant application for its survival. Students must generate not only cash to print the paper, but funding to buy and service all the computer equipment in our lab: A daunting task in a world where fifteen-hundred dollar computers are entirely outmoded every three years. Can you imagine a science class in which students were required to provide their own chemicals, test tubes and microscopes? Yet it is common practice for many school systems to offer publications classes with no funding for equipment and other expenses.
When I speak at conferences, issues of funding and equipment needs often top the agendas of those who’ve come to see me. Worse, those of us involved in educational organizations know that one of the main problems facing us nationally is the tremendous turnover in young teachers entering, then quickly abandoning, the field of communications education. This problem of turnover has grown over the last decade right along with the technological demands of the field. Isn’t it logical to assume that these new requirements of the business combined with a lack of funding and support for our classes have driven this problem?
In several ways, then, the growing demands of modern technology really are sapping the resources and shortening the educational lives of communications teachers. What do we do: Throw our Nikes into the Macintoshes and run away?
Never! As we move into the 21st Century we need to work together on a national basis to fight for a recognition of communications education as the cutting -edge technological field it is. We need to publicize the accomplishments of our students and fight for support for secondary journalism programs from the national and local media who benefit from the students we provide them.
National art, dance, drama and music education organizations fight for the survival of their programs with celebrity-fronted television, radio and magazine advertisements designed to build parental support for their programs. History and social studies organizations garner programs supporting the importance of their curricula on C-SPAN and The History Channel. Where are the commercials in which Anderson Cooper solicits support for communications education? Where are the programs on CNN promoting the importance of media education? It is ironic that journalism educators, who train students in the rudiments of advertising and public relations, have done such a poor job of promoting their own area of endeavor in the national consciousness.
In a world driven by new technology in which parents and communities demand that schools become and remain technologically competent, communications educators have fought to place themselves on the cutting edge. We must make certain that the educational community, parents and the nation as a whole recognize the value of the educational opportunities we offer. We must work together to build the funding, respect and support our programs need and deserve on a national level.
With proper promotion, we can make the technological component of our programs a friend which works to build support for our students rather than an enemy which drains our resources. And, unlike the workers in turn-of-the-century France, this time we can do it with our shoes on.
© Gary Clites, 2006
