The Way It Is: How Walter Cronkite Makes Us Better Educators

by Tom Panarese

category: Education and Technology

Published July 19, 2009 @ 06:04PM PT

I did not grow up watching Walter Cronkite.  I was born in 1977, so when Cronkite stepped down from the CBS Evening News in 1981, I was four years old and spent my childhood watching Peter Jennings; however, being the child of two Baby Boomers and having a genuine interest in what took place in the couple of decades before I was born, I knew who Cronkite was and understood his reputation.  I also understood that in a huge way, he represented an entirely different era of America, one that is long gone.

It seemed, at least on some level, that those Americans who tuned in to watch him weren't just getting the day's news, they were learning something from him.  Now, as a plethora of recent posts on this blog have let us know in recent days, the primary medium in our society is the Internet.  The recent use of Twitter to gather information on the riots following the Iranian election is a world away from how my parents found out about the Kennedy assassination, or even how so many of us watched the attacks on September 11, 2001 unfold.  My students really don't watch the nightly network news (then again, neither do I) and if they get news at all, it's either filtered through their parents or clicked through via friends' Facebook posts or the aforementioned Twitter.

Still, while Cronkite represents the past in journalism, he is still relevant.  Most of the words I've read or heard about him, all positive, center around his objectivity and trustworthiness.  The latter is obvious, as he was once named "the most trusted man in America."  And as an educator who has taught journalism, I still see him as a model for my young reporters.  He had a straightforward approach, delivering often grave news without much attention to the entertainment value of the story, or if what he was reporting made something or someone look bad.  I wonder what his thoughts were on Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier, which has been one of many nails in the coffin for objective student journalism and has all but killed effective student journalism.  Student journalists these days are asked to ignore the bad things that happen in their buildings or with the student body and in some cases their newspapers look more like public relations newsletters (I'll approach the fact that students are still doing print newspapers some other time).

His trustworthiness makes him a model for everyone in education.  Being trusted is at the heart of being an educator, and is another thing that is being taken away from our profession in bits and pieces.  The media runs enough stories about "bad teachers" to do some serious damage to our collective image, making it seem like we're stupid, lazy, or sometimes even criminals.  My colleagues and I all have stories of parents questioning our competence, and I know many who do not receive support from their administrators when that happens.  And while I can point out many shining examples of those who do put their trust in educators to help their children get to know the world in which they live, there are others claiming that I do not teach but "indoctrinate" as part of some evil liberal conspiracy and if they can't get me fired will change what I'm asked to teach.

I'm not going to get too much into this; the parent-teacher-administrator power struggle is a diatribe in itself; however, I will comment how it's sad that the tone has changed.  I still smart at hearing students of mine talk about how their teachers were told not to turn on the classroom television on September 11.  Why?  Because you're afraid that a parent might call upset that you were talking about what was going on instead of teaching subtraction, or because you don't trust us to engage them in a mature conversation about it?  Those students were probably looking for their teachers for some answers, or at least some reassurance, which is part of the trust which is at the core of that student-teacher relationship.

In fact, the words "relationship" and "rapport" are bandied about when talking about classroom management.  We're supposed to get to know our students, just as our students get to know us.  This starts with that idea of trust.  My students should be able to trust me to provide information in a straightforward manner.  Not that I'm supposed to not have an opinion, because I think that knowing a teacher's opinion on something is valuable, but there's a difference between subjectivity and bullshit.  The impression that I get from Cronkite is that he didn't bullshit the public.  He held true to the responsibility he had as a journalist, providing information and (hopefully) getting people to think, just as we hold true to the responsibilty we have to provide information and (hopefully) getting students to think.

photo courtesy of John McNab