Response to Long Tail Article

Anderson sums up the consumerism system of business today with a series of examples beginning with Simpson’s Touching the Void and Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. This is exactly the kind of marketing ploy that companies are exploiting and using the logic of the phrase PT Barnum appropriately coined, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” I recently upgraded my Itunes browser to include the “genius” sidebar and it continues to encourage me to purchase songs similar to the ones I have in my library. In fact musicians from the classic rock era have been systematically rereleasing older albums through carefully marketed “greatest hits” anthologies while not even recording a new hit single. In fact I know people who have purchased Beatles CD’s that apparently have new digitally enhanced sound for the same songs they have been listening to on vinyl, 8-track, cassette, and CD for the past forty years! The Bollywood example really shocked me because I participate in two very Indian-affiliated groups; The Art of Living Foundation and International Society for Krishna Consciousness. I thought Bollywood was an up and coming phenomenon especially with the latest craze for Slumdog Millionaire, where I was certain that countless well-educated Americans were going to claim to have in-depth knowledge of the social and political situation in contemporary India especially after viewing Deepa Mehta’s controversial film Water.
But one needs only to view the Super Bowl to understand commercialism and its negative effects. I work for a commercial advertising agency called Omni Music and provide original compositions as a side job. Yet I can’t imagine major companies like Pepsi and Budweiser spending millions of dollars for thirty seconds of air time while we are supposed to be in the midst of an economic crisis! The New York Yankees spend over five million dollars on two pitchers while teams like the Tampa Bay Rays make it to the World Series on a fraction of a payroll. It seems to me that American society is always looking for the “quick fix” rather than embracing the hard working values of previous generations. Among my best students no one wants to be a plumber or a carpenter anymore, they just want to have corporate jobs and make lots of money while sitting in an air conditioned office doing next to nothing. Laziness is running rampant in this country and with it comes the issue of obesity. Children used to enjoy a healthy snack after school and then play outdoor games with friends while fostering positive social interactions. Today’s kids are coming home to minimal adult supervision, eating chips and cookies (after having pizza and French fries for lunch), watching exorbitant amounts of television, and communicating with peers online or over the telephone.
As I prepare to conclude this reflection I find myself searching for a response to how this article is relevant to school administration. I clearly see points I agree and disagree with, and as stated above found topics that resonates particularly strongly in terms of my personal knowledge and experience. I even found things that surprise me and make me want to learn more about. Perhaps as administrators we should take this article’s suggestions as a means of finding community support for the budget, or selling the faculty on a set of guidelines, or securing state and federal funds through grant writing opportunities. Successful administrators have to be able to play the marketing game utilized by corporate America. Education is not recession proof and we have to find new ways to maintain our inflated budgets. As we look to the future one can only venture a guess as to where our system of education will be in the long-term. If we are not serving as trendsetters I fear that we will lose our autonomy and allow federal and state regulations to control our every action because we won’t be able to afford any alternative.