Tag Archives: Newspapers

Why Teachers deserve more …

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Teachers are singlehandedly the most important people you are ever going to come into contact with outside of your immediate family and in some cases, even more pertinent in your journey throughout life.

I’m not kidding or overstating this in any way at all (even though I am on occasion known to be a tiny bit overdramatic!). True, my mother is in education so I may be a little biased but I do truly believe that teachers shape your life, and most imperatively, your attitude.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t have a “teacher” story to tell. Unfortunately though, not all the teacher tales are good ones. I have a friend who actually dropped out of school at the age of sixteen because his teacher had such a profoundly negative effect on him he could simply no longer take the torture of having to go and see her face for a whole two more years.

In hindsight, I often wonder if he thinks back to his decision and ponders on how his life could have been different had he soldiered on for two more years. I mean, what’s two years in comparison to an entire lifetime? For adults – nothing. For a teenager being mentally bludgeoned five days a week, simply put – the end.

I was one of the lucky ones. I was gifted with a teacher comprised with the best quality any educator could ever possibly have and that’s inspiration. My art teacher, Mr John Philippides didn’t just teach me art, he taught me attitude. Best of all, Mr. Philippides taught me about life, in an age where most of us struggle between right and wrong, about going against the grain because it’s the right thing to do, about the “mark” we want to leave on the planet. Some of you would know that I didn’t exactly have an easy time throughout school. I was bullied continuously and being a fair bit younger than my classmates didn’t help, what with having a “delayed” reaction to anything that actually mattered, namely leaving all the “uncool things’ behind, like my love for Disney characters (which has never left by the way. Just in case you’re wondering).

Mr. Philippides would often tell me I’d forget about him once I left school and I would vehemently deny the atrocious accusation, he didn’t believe me and I’d just like to say, I have proven you wrong Mr. Philippides!

I often think about my art teacher and his many, innumerable gifts that he has partaken with me along the way. Though he most likely will never know, his words of wisdom continue to stroll alongside me throughout my many obstacles, turns and twists and like him; they inspire me to be the best I can.

Though I always knew of his immense talent, my youthful naivety blinded me to the truly great artist he was and the amazing genius the rest of the World had also been fortunate enough to glimpse.

My childhood “greed” I guess (for the lack of a better word) almost always believed that he was simply put on this planet to teach me art! 😀 However, I was wrong, and now I see the profound effect my art teacher has had on many lives outside of mine, but he was still and always will be my teacher first!

Thank you Mr. Philippides for teaching me about life, your enamoured lessons are ones that I am positive I will take with me across lifetimes because yours are ones that touched my soul, not just my brain.

You need to shut up sometimes

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I am a big supporter of the age old adage of keeping your mouth shut if you have nothing worthwhile to say. Often, just because you can say something doesn’t necessarily mean you should go ahead and let it rip! I was never made more aware of this philosophy than in my first year of Journalism studies.

In the famous words of Stan Lee, “with great power there must also come great responsibility”, it is terrifyingly easy for those of us in journalism and the media to forget that we are in a very fortunate, but dangerous position of influencing a lot of people reading and/or listening to our work.

Our audiences are often poles apart – from the aged to the very informative young, those that blotch an entire spectrum of social status & class, and those who (though it may be a little disrespectful to admit, but how we journalists at times dissect our readership/listener base) vary in intelligence and simple, good old fashioned common sense (an increasing rarity in modern times unfortunately!).

Journalists wield a great amount of power that is directly correlated to the magazines, television stations, newspapers and other forms of media we work for. The freedom of speech act is a card pimped around a lot by journalists who often try to cover up what we write/say and as a human rights activist, I strongly agree with the ability to give a voice to those of us who are more often than not, ignored. But what about when that speech is treacherously bordering on inciting hate, discrimination, negativity and the blatant ability to bully an individual/organisation because they clearly aren’t in a position to provide a comeback?

I have been a part of very large Australian based publishing houses (as well as the number one arguably) and as much as I hate to admit it, I cringe at the “stories” that have been reported by some of the big guns I have written/worked for. It would seem that our media outlets are so brazenly deciding what is Gospel now, we no longer have to cloak our “opinions” as “newsworthy stories” for the greater good, because now what we say is what goes, similar to the common bullying antics repeated in the murky corners of the school playground of “it’s right because I say so”.

But it isn’t, is it? Journalism evolved from a noble concept, a strong belief that the people had the right to know, where events were presented as objectively and unbiasedly as humanely possible, where we trusted the integrity and intellect of our audience to shape their own perspectives and viewpoints. What changed? Why do we in the media feel the need to dictate what others think and who/what they should support in a world we pride ourselves on as democratic?

Are our viewers no longer knowledgeable enough to make up their own minds? I would strongly disagree. What I do believe however is that we in the media have, as all humans regretfully eventually do at the first sniff of it, become power crazy, hungry for more, devouring the possibility of ruling those who we can as much as we can.

History is testament to exploitation failing and that is the real reason I believe news is a dying phenomenon, not the reality television shows wrapping their tentacles over unsuspecting viewers’ minds the way some would have us believe.

The cancer attacking “real news” is the need to control, not the diminishing rationality of our potential audience. I would suggest that if we start presenting “real news” the way our virtuous profession set out to do when it started all those centuries ago, news will become cool again.

And until we can do that, could we please learn to think before we write/speak? There is no shame in shutting up sometimes.