UTSA
Faculty Member's Commentary Featured In "The Chronicle of Higher Education."(Excerpts)
Who Wants to Be the Weakest Link?
By Steven G. Kellman
To cure the ills of American education, insists George W.Bush, we need testing
-- every grade and every year. And as if to test the president's hypothesis,
tens of millions ofAmericans are gawking at an exhibition of educational testing
transformed into television drama.
Two quiz shows -- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Weakest Link -- have captured the public imagination as well as the highest ratings in their time slots by, in effect, transforming the SAT into a spectator sport. They have made compelling theater out of an examination in cultural literacy. Lucrative franchises that have revived the fortunes of competing networks -- ABC and NBC, respectively -- the two shows also exemplify diametrically opposed styles and theories of education.
"Who is an embarrassment to the American educational system?" Anne Robinson, the English martinet imported to serve as host, queried her contestants on one of the first broadcasts of Weakest Link in the United States, in April. Rude and ruthless, she does not suffer fools gladly and seems more than glad to humiliate those who flub her interrogations. Out of eight initial competitors on each episode, all but one is eliminated by the end of the show, dispatched into oblivion with Robinson's disdainful signature adieu: "You are the Weakest Link. Goodbye!" Dressed in black, like some academic dominatrix, she revels in ridiculing participants' pretensionsto enlightenment. She presents herself as an educational absolutist for whom schooling makes no concessions to the frailties of the individual scholar. Knowledge exists independently of the knower, and aspirants, at risk of mortifying failure, must overcome their natural sloth to acquire it.
Comparing herself with Regis Philbin, the genial host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Robinson told an interviewer: "Regis is the Boy Scouts. This is the Green Berets."If Weakest Link presents the deployment of knowledge as mortal combat, Millionaire follows Jean-Jacques Rousseau in assuming natural human benevolence. In its very title, the show tenders itself as an invitation, whereas Weakest Link is a taunt. While Robinson's trademark line is a contemptuous dismissal, Philbin is best known for offering assistance. "Is that your final answer?" he asks, allowing contestants to retract their first responses. No one on Weakest Link is allowed a second chance.
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