Encouraging life's meaningful conversations
BY DON RICKERS Special to the VOICE
Having spent most of my career in schools, it should not be a surprise that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is one of my all-time favorite movies. It was a top-grossing film in 1986, and earned over $70 million on a budget of less than $6 million. Both critics and audiences loved it. The lead character, played by Matthew Broderick, was a lovable teenage prankster whose escapades were at the expense of officious adults, primarily the dean of students whose primary job was to hold teenagers responsible for their truancy.
In one scene, a droning economics teacher is taking attendance in class. Short guy, big glasses, deadpan delivery. His name is Ben Stein, and in real life, he is not a boring nerd at all. In fact, he has a great sense of humour, and has led an interesting life as a lawyer, economist, author, television commentator, and character actor.
He earned an economics degree from Columbia University in 1966, then graduated from Yale Law School as valedictorian in 1970. Stein went on to be a White House speechwriter for presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He has contributed economics articles to The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and even hosted a popular game show in the late 1990s called Win Ben Stein’s Money (the show was hosted by rising star Jimmy Kimmel). These days he is a sought-after speaker on political, economic, and social issues.
Ben Stein is one of many intellectuals who believes that America (and by association Canada and other western countries) is undergoing a crisis in education.
He feels that there are too many teenagers and 20-somethings who are skilled at video games and can deftly navigate their cellphones, but don't have a grasp of basic literature, history, geography, and current affairs. They simply don’t read enough.
He is worried that the younger generation is bombarded by the media with game shows and reality TV, which convey a sense that it’s cool to sing, dance, fight, and party, but have little appreciation for traditional education which stresses competencies in core subject areas.
Stein believes that education is a primary element in forming human capital, and is the key equalizer in terms of lifting people out of poverty or mediocrity and into the middle and upper classes, with productive jobs which benefit society.
Unlike billionaire Bill Gates, Stein does not blame teachers for this predicament. He blames students themselves.
He has been a teacher (as a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz) and considers it hard work. The biggest challenge he faced was trying to hold the attention of lackadaisical students. Stein asserts that young people just have to get it into their heads that learning is critically important.
To buttress his thesis, Stein shared an anecdote which communicates the situation better than he could describe using statistical data. Years ago he was co-host of a TV show called America's Most Smartest Model. They took about 1600 young men and women who said they were models, and gave them various skill-testing questions in an attempt to find brains behind the beauty. ("Most smartest" is grammatically incorrect, which was the whole point.)
One day Stein was talking with a group of the contestants, who were impressed by his intellect.
One commented, "Jeez, you sure are smart, Ben. How old are you?"
At the time he was 62, and told them so. Stein then said, "Okay, let's do a little quiz right now. If I'm 62, who was president of the United States when I was born?"
They thought and thought, and one responded "Abraham Lincoln.”
“No”, said Stein, “Abraham Lincoln was president in the mid-1800s.”
“I'll give you a hint”, said Stein. “When I was born, there was a very big war going on, and it was happening all over the world, and it was not the first of its kind. What was that war called?"
A young man responded, “was that the Civil War?"
“No”, responded Stein. “The Civil War took place in the mid-1800s when Abraham Lincoln was president. I’m referring to World War II, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president.”
A few of the young people nodded in agreement.
Stein next asked, "Who was America fighting in World War II?"
Two of the group immediately responded "Germany.”
“Right”, said Stein. “Who else were we in conflict with?”
“Russia?” asked one.
Stein responded, "No, Russia was on our side in World War II. They were our allies. And a damn good thing too. Here's another clue. In World War II, America fought in the European theatre of operations, and in the Pacific theatre of operations. Who did we fight against in the Pacific theatre of operations?”
The group proclaimed they couldn't figure it out. So Stein said, “Okay, I'll make it real easy for you. It's an island nation in the Pacific which produces very high-quality cars.”
They pondered, but finally gave up.
“It was Japan,” proclaimed a disheartened Stein.
One replied in astonishment, "America fought a war against Japan? Who won?”
Stein shook his head in bewilderment, remembering the blank looks he received while giving a lecture to a high school class, when he mentioned Pearl Harbor. Apparently none of the students had heard of it, although one ventured a guess that it might be a new jewelry store at the local mall.
Of course not all young people are as uninformed as those Stein was referencing. Many are diligent in their academic studies, have well-developed skill sets, and strong innate curiosity. They read news stories online, watch news programming on television, and even pick up the occasional newspaper. Our society depends on this cohort of young minds to innovate and lead in the future.
What Stein was driving at is the same concept promoted in a bestselling book I read a couple decades ago entitled Cultural Literacy, written by an English professor at the University of Virginia named E.D. Hirsch.
The theme was that we were losing the ability to communicate effectively because we lacked a common knowledge of certain core items. A couple generations ago, people read more books and newspapers for entertainment because television was not so ubiquitous, and accordingly people were more commonly grounded in the same types of information.
In this fast-paced electronic age, what knowledge really matters? What are the people, places, ideas, and events that shape our cultural conversation?
Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline and the Alberta Tar Sands. Sandy Hook and Columbine. Margaret Atwood. D-Day. The Holocaust. NAFTA. Sputnik and SpaceX. Wade vs Roe. The Great Depression. Mohammad, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. Woodstock. Keynesian economics. The Big Bang. Wayne Gretzky. The Beatles. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. David Letterman. Viagra. Vietnam.
All these terms should mean something to you, and allow for intelligent discussion with others.
One of the most instructive lines from the mouth of Ferris Bueller was, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Young people need to get more involved in life’s meaningful conversations.
It is encouraging to see a wave of student activism in America in response to the mass shootings in schools. Students have become the new face of gun control and school safety, challenging lawmakers to take action. Teenagers are tweeting out their views, and organizing marches, boycotts, and walkouts for stricter gun laws. In Canada, students from across the country have rallied around the shaken community of Humboldt, Saskatchewan to express their support in the wake of the catastrophic crash which claimed the lives of so many junior hockey players.
Young people: turn off your MP3 players, put down your gaming consoles, unplug your headphones. Curl up with a good novel or newspaper or news magazine, and spend some quality time reading. Share your thoughts and impressions with others.
Do you encounter terms in your reading which you don’t understand? Google them. Consult Wikipedia. Ask your teachers or parents. Have a conversation. Engage others face-to-face. In person. Not by text message or video chat.
Cultural literacy is important. I think even Ferris Bueller would agree. ◆
