The “That’s just you’re opinion” Myth: How American Idol helps me teach my kids
A few weeks ago I got the shock of my life; I was able to use American Idol, or more specifically the early audition shows of American Idol, to help me teach my son about good and bad, right and wrong.It actually started with a pinewood derby car my son was making for boy scouts (well, it didn’t actually start there, but that was were things came to a head). I told him it would be a project he would have to do, but I would help him on. So he drew the outline of the car’s shape on the piece of wood, and he had to use a hand saw to cut it out. I helped him start the cut, and did some of it when he would start drifting off the line he drew, etc, but he had to do most of the cutting. It took awhile, and he was pretty tired of working on it by the time he was done, but there was still a lot that needed to be done. He had been pretty rough with the saw, so the cut he had made was anything but smooth, so it needed a lot of sanding. Meanwhile, we were enjoying a stretch of exceptionally nice weather, and he could see friends of his playing in the yard outside, and he was starting to realize that playing with them looked a lot more fun than sanding a pinewood derby car (I can’t say I blamed him). So he was maybe 1/3 of the way finished with his sanding, and he said “Dad, I’m finished. I’m going to go play outside.” I took a look at his car and told him he wasn’t nearly finished yet, that he had to get the surface smooth. That’s when he pulled out the classic “generation me” line; “that’s just your opinion; I think it is good just the way it is. Why can’t you just accept it?”
I am currently reading a book called “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled – and More Miserable Than Ever Before,” by Jean Twenge. Just last night I was reading a section about the “That’s just you’re opinion” attitude and it brought the pinewood derby car episode right back to the forefront in my mind. The book brought it up in the context of a chapter called “You Don’t Need Their Approval,” that talked about how generation me young people (born between 1970 and 1999) often feel entitle to do whatever they want, whenever they want, in any way they want, and no one has the right or authority to tell them it is wrong, especially if the person trying to tell them that is an older person in some established position of authority. What am I talking about? Think American Idol auditions.
Now I have worked with media long enough to know that producers put people on the air to make a scene. I know there are thousands of average people (in terms of singing talent) who try out for American Idol, but the ones who actually get passed on by the original screeners to meet with Randy, Simon and Paula, are either really good (and deserving of moving on to the next round) or really bad (someone that will just be shocking or funny on the air). So it’s all a set up. Yet hundreds of thousands of people show up at each city to try out, all thinking that they are “IT”. And you figure the people who get passed on to meet with Randy, Simon and Paula aren’t complete idiots; they must have seen the show before and realize that the exceptionally good, and the exceptionally bad, are the only two groups who get through. But it never fails, and in fact seems to get worse every year, that some horribly and tragically bad singer/performer will get in there with the judges, do a terrible audition for them, and when the judges tell them it was bad, their response is that it’s “just their opinion!” Somehow they are still clinging to the idea that they are actually good, and the judges just don’t know what they are talking about. Forget that these three judges have been multi platinum selling recording artists, both as solo acts and as members of a band, have been multi award winning choreographers, multi platinum selling song writers, multi award winning producers, and more! To the rejected contestants mind, these judges don’t know what they are talking about, don’t have any right to tell them what is good or bad, and wouldn’t know a good thing if it fell in their lap!
My family and I, like people all across the world, sit and watch these shows and sit dumbfounded that these contestants can be so bad and have no clue about it. One night as we were watching this spectacle, I commented to my wife that I thought it was just one more example of how the culture is setting up young people for failure. “What do you mean?” she responded. Well, we don’t give grades in elementary school for performance anymore, instead we grade their effort. Forget the fact that the kids did the problem or assignment wrong, they tried hard, and that’s what counts; after all, if we told them their answer was wrong, they would be ashamed and discouraged. Parents throw a birthday party for their child and spend all kinds of money buying presents for the other kids who will attend so that they will also feel special and have something to take home. We have a track meet where EVERYONE gets a ribbon so that no one feels left out. Never mind that we stop rewarding excellence. Never mind that we stop giving kids something to shoot for and an incentive to do their best. Never mind that we fail to teach them to celebrate the accomplishment of others without expecting personal gain from the experience. We abandon teaching and training to a standard in favor of just making sure everyone “feels good about themselves”.
So why should it surprise us when someone with little or no talent gets up on American Idol, does a horrible job, is told that they aren’t good enough to move on, and then they get angry and can’t accept the judges decision? Chances are today that this might have been the first time anyone has ever told them their work wasn’t up to the standard. Chances are they have never really been held to ANY standard. Everyone has always been saying “that’s wonderful” to them so that they would have positive afermation and feel good about themselves, but in reality it was setting them up for failure in the real world where standards DO matter.
So back to the pinewood derby (I bet you thought I had forgotten about that). My son gives me the “I think it’s good enough” line, and all the American idol stuff pops into my head. So I ask him about all the people we had been seeing on American Idol, and shared with him the simpler version of what I said above, and showed him how the job he did on his derby car was going to be measured against real standards, not against what he thought was “good enough”. And then I told him what he really meant was that he wanted to go play instead of finishing the work he needed to do. Did he suddenly see the light? Did a light-bulb turn on above his head as a sign of his sudden enlightenment? Not exactly. What he did was wine and complain a bit more because I made him stay in and finish his job on his derby car before going out to play. But the enlightenment part came a week or so later when his car beat every other car in the pinewood derby by a WIDE margin, and he knew he had done it all himself through hard work.
So yes, American Idol is a pop phenomenon, and a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it also can help a 10 year old see that there are standards, and in the long run it is worth “laying everything aside and pressing onward toward the goal.”
posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 1:36 AM
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