High school journalism funding

By Kevin Gray

Where did many of my students gain an abundance of real life and practical job skills? I know it wasn’t from sitting in a regular class day-in-and-day-out, lined up in rows of desks taking notes or doing textbook assignments. Try hands on planning, writing, photographing, creating the graphic designs and art and selling the advertising necessary to publish their own publications.

Having spent 30 years teaching high school journalism, including advising the newspaper and yearbook, I find the latest discussions under way in Topeka by “education officials” to be disturbing. In a change of terminology from “vocational education” to something called “career clusters and pathways,” those education officials are leaning towards deleting “journalism and broadcasting” as a funded path, when the State Board of Education meets in November. Those same education officials said, according to the Kansas City Star, that “journalism programs are no longer likely to lead to real world jobs.” What was that?

At a time when high school newspapers are already disappearing from the American landscape or popping up in cyberspace, only to be found by those who have the internet or care, the news is clear: Kansas high school journalism programs could see funding dry up and a few are already gone.

My journalism program at Paola High School received limited vocational monies, more so to buy computers and cameras. The board always budgeted around $5,000. That’s the same $5,000 a year for the 30 years I advised the Reporter. As for yearbook, this was completely funded by subscriptions, advertising dollars and any fundraising and begging we could do to bring in needed money. Those kids really learned to hustle to sell and create ads, if they wanted a nice book.

All we had were the two classes, one for the newspaper, the other for yearbook. All training from how to use a camera to how to write stories to creating advertising had to be done “hands on and ASAP” while each newspaper or deadline came together.

There are several districts across the Kansas with the kinds of programs I dreamed about and kept proposing. Those programs provided Journalism I classes and others like photography and graphic arts, online publishing, all leading up to staff positions on either the newspaper or yearbook, allowing more time for producing a quality product and a more in-depth learning experience.

Writing, especially grammar, had been extremely difficult for me. There’s no way I could have considered applying for my high school’s newspaper. It was Kansas State College, now Pittsburg State University, where, having taken a few journalism courses – while training on the college newspaper “The Collegio” – I began to truly learn how to write and do all the hands-on functions of publishing. Now that was worthwhile, call it “real world” experience. With that, I could go anywhere.

I chose teaching first and, now, 34 years later, I am also a journalist. As for my own students from Paola High School, many became journalists like one of my bosses, Jeff Gulley, one of the publishers of this newspaper. He was on the Paola High School yearbook staff. Others went into advertising, magazine writing and publishing – and even those who did not choose journalism continue to use those skills learned from working on student publications.

When I was seeking vocational funding to add a Journalism I class, Paola actually received – from the State of Kansas – funding for a culinary arts program. I enjoy going out to eat, and I’ve always been a cheerleader for whatever will give a leg-up to students. As I was told, the culinary food classes could lead directly to employment. I know that. I don’t blame the school district. They simply took what they could get. Food sells; newspapers are not doing so well, except, well…maybe here in Osawatomie.

At the time, this struck me as odd. I recall thinking, “…and my students, taking a variety of career paths, could be marketing your rising culinary artist, writing feature stories about this person’s kitchen or restaurant, designing that future well-known chef’s restaurant’s Web site, providing the designs for a new kitchen for that chef, right on up to possibly designing and marketing that renowned chef’s own restaurant. Yet, my students were not good enough for vocational funding?

Give our young people credit. Of course – if the economy was healthy – we would not be hearing such talk. This is what happens, when funds have to be cut. With this, I see further reduction in programs, and more and more disappearing student publications and journalism classes. How sad.

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Posted by admin on Oct 13 2010. Filed under Kevin Gray, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry