By Caitlin Walsh, Columnist
The idea seems pretty simple at first. A design team comes in to fix a failing school. Except they complete their overhaul in seven days with the help of hundreds of students, volunteers and contractors who work pro bono.
That is what NBC's new show this fall, School Pride, is all about: Extreme Makeover School Edition. Students and teachers nominated their schools to be redone over the summer with a video sent to NBC. On the surface it's just another good-hearted reality TV show, but it brings educational issues to the table that should be discussed.
Just like Extreme Makeover Home Edition, this show could be seen as one giant advertisement for all the companies involved. Every computer that is donated to the schools is a Hewlett Packard running a Microsoft system. A reading room is named after People Magazine, who paid for all the furnishings. Any technology or science labs bear the name Microsoft for the same reason.
One can only hope that all of product placement is just for the TV cameras. When school resumes this fall, hopefully most of those ads will be gone.
The objective of this show is that by participating in the renovation of their school, kids are fired up about their education and eager to learn. There are studies that prove when students are involved and take pride in their school, they excel.
The first school, a middle school in California, was renovated six months ago, and, according to the show, test scores have already improved. These students care enough about their school to submit a video to NBC.
When you look beyond the slightly gimmicky nature of the program, School Pride is a commentary that asks why the schools are failing in the first place and how to stop it from happening again. It proves the whole educational system is failing, from the school itself all the way up to the superintendent.
A system that is unable to correct its failing schools, or at least show some effort, is failing as well. For example, the Louisiana School System invests zero dollars into their schools facilities.
That's because, according to the Secretary of Education, they put all their money into paying teachers so they have to depend on the local communities to cover the facilities. If a community is too cash strapped, then the school facilities do not get taken care of. Because of a failure at the top, everyone on the bottom suffers.
There's a misconception that the American school system is great. In fact when compared to other first world countries, like Korea, Finland and Canada, the United States falls far behind in dollars spent per student and test scores. Our schools used to perform better, but now students graduate from high school and barely know the minimum. One of the factors is educational spending, but there are many other components to this problem.
School Pride tries to examine those factors in an hour of TV programming. How well they do is for the viewer to decide, but they do at least bring up different problems and solutions for discussion.
Maybe viewers will realize that every school needs fixing, not just the schools shown on School Pride. Hopefully people will be inspired to take charge of their own school and community. Perhaps they'll even volunteer in some way to help make it better. Then every school won't need a drastic makeover.