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Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010

Steve Cameron: Teaching moment's lesson

There's a new cliche making the rounds, and I despise it already.

Whenever anything happens -- a mudslide in Sicily, a tax protest, another bill gridlocked in the Senate -- a massive number of pundits, experts, psychologists all seem to be wading in with the same "deep" analysis.

They refer to whatever the hell the topic of the day might be as ... "A teaching moment."

This phrase is now almost a house pet among the "hey-I'm-educated, listen-to-me" crew. Wherever it might have come from, I sorely wish mankind had returned it unopened.

I mean, if some doofus gets killed because he stops his car with the back end on the Union Pacific tracks and a 150-car freight drags the thing five miles, I'm sorry, but ...

That is not "a teaching moment."

That is a "moron moment."

But suddenly, every semiliterate spokesman can find "a teaching moment" around every corner and under every bush.

A plane crash becomes a teaching moment in the sense that we should not take any day (or any 45-minute flight) for granted.

Or from the aeronautical perspective, it's a teaching moment in that stricter guildelines must be placed on pilots getting a proper amount of rest, or airports being required to increase the availability of de-icing equipment.

And so on.

And on. And on. And on ...

What is most annoying about people beating these new little phrases like "teaching moment" to death is that quite often, it robs the language of a genuinely meaningful expression. There are some excellent times and places to use such turns of phrase but, unfortunately, we've all heard the things so often they've become background noise.

I mention this because the Sun-Star recently wrapped up its excellent series on the victims of house foreclosures in Merced County.

Besides bringing this national economic calamity into focus right on our doorstep, the series naturally begged the question of how such a thing could happen -- and perhaps more important for our children and grandchildren: How can we make sure it is never repeated?

In other words, an examination of what began as the sub-prime mortgage boom and ended as deep, gushing wound to the middle and lower classes of America and Merced County truly could be described as "a teaching moment."

You see, teaching implies learning.

The whole point of probing something like the housing collapse -- everything from the pain of eviction to the angst of families who've never missed a mortgage payment yet lost all equity in their homes -- is to find the cause. To see how it started.

From there, the idea is to put structures and regulations in place to ensure that the catastrophe cannot be repeated.

And yet, I have this terrible feeling that we're not "getting it" -- despite all the weeping and gnashing of teeth, we're all so terribly confused by brilliant con artists masquerading as political experts that we've lost the plot entirely.

This truly is "a teaching moment" -- when everyday citizens in the Valley and across the nation could gather information, examine how we were hurled into this housing crisis, and take serious, unified action to limit the current damage and save future generations from a repeat performance.

But who listens to the phrase "a teaching moment?"

It's already been used so often that it's as out of date as the "high five."

Such a shame, because what the foreclosure mess reminded us is that there are opportunities, perhaps even obligations -- for society to gain knowledge at certain critical moments.

As for knocking around these cliches until no one listens ...

We shouldn't waste our language because, as with any other resource, there will be times when we need it.

Desperately.

Oh, and by the way, this commentary was not meant as a teaching moment.

Steve Cameron can be reached at stevecameron1000@yahoo.com.