The Flaws of Public Schools and Popular Magazines

  It is important that our schools educate their students, but will popular magazines actually assist students academically? Our schools, that already suffer from limited funding, are aiding the media's message that sex sells. Also, though such magazines can be informative of current events, they educate their audience through a biased point of view.

Each day, the bell rings and students march off to class. The limited funding pulls the cord that drapes over scheduled classes and extracurricular activities. Though schools cannot afford these thrilling activities and classes that keep dangerous children off the streets, the ca still spend what little money they have, on expenditures such as popular magazines. Doesn't it also irk you that we can afford to read gossip about Britney Spears shaving her head, but cannot replace our outdated textbooks?

What do you see each time you turn the page in a popular magazine? I have viewed articles and advertisements promoting sexuality and various eating disorders on almost every page. Whether we notice it or not, students are not learning academically, but devouring sexual inuendos like candy. If the school sends its excess profits to support the "sex-selling" magazines, then what is the point of having abstinence programs and STD prevention assemblies? Maybe a counterattack to popular magazines is to have a class interpret the sexual messages and debate how to prevent such exposure through the media.

Popular magazines are relative to high school, in that most of their "lives" revolve on rumors from a biased point of view. The magazines, like teenagers, take sides; some creating falsehoods that teach students to believe what they see and hear without a trusted source. As a student, I have found high school drama in the cover story of popular magazines. If we try so hard to avoid rumors, then why are we so determined to eat up rumors about the rich and famous? Those rumors are just a cry for attention and money, as are the rumors that pollute our hallways and lockerrooms.

     So where does this all end?  Already, we are allowing the popular magazines to mold society with corruption.  If, as students, we wish to clean the plates before us, then popular magazines do not represent a healthy meal.  The popular media acts as a sponge, absorbing our educational money, our time, and our self respect to sexuality.  When we wring out the popular media, we receive a soapy discharge of biased views that barely hold truths.  Take ahold of you lives and money.  Wash the dishes in the sink so that no sponge is needed and so that nobody absorbes corruption through school or media popularity contests.