Things Students Don't Know

For the past week my students have been studying propaganda terms. One of those terms is testimonials, which is when you have a famous person in your ad. For part of their quiz, I played commercials for them to analyze. When I was selecting the one to use for testimonial, I picked one of the Hanes commercials with Michael Jordan because I thought everyone knew who he was. Apparently I'm really stupid. In my Honors class, at least half of the girls had absolutely no idea. I said, "That's Michael Jordan." Their response was, "Who's Michael Jordan?" Seriously.

When I teach MLA format for songs, I use an example citation of the Nirvana "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I accepted after my first year that students were not going to know the song or know that Nirvana was a real band. (Although this year, for the first time, I had a student who knew it--it kind of made my day, I'm not going to lie.) But I never thought I would teach students who don't know who Michael Jordan is. In this so-called information age when they get out their phones, go on the internet, and basically get any information they want, I am convinced that students are in some ways becoming more stupid.