At the Tennessee School Boards Association convention, this evening’s keynote speaker (Ako Kambon) threw about some interesting statistics from a University of Michigan study on who, or what, influences children.

There are five basic influences over the past 50 years or so — home, school, church, peers, and tv (or media, depending on the decade).

In the 1950’s, the order of influence was home, school, church, peers, TV.  (All one channel of it?)

In the 1980’s, it was home, peers, TV, school, church.

1990’s: peers, TV, home, school, (insert six more items), church.  Yeah, church fell to 10th place in the 1990’s.

2000’s: Media (encompassing TV, internet, computers, video games, etc.) moved up to #1.

So, when teachers, principals, and school boards say “we have to do more to involve parents in education…” we’re really fighting a losing battle; if family influence had fallen to third place 10 or more years ago, where is it now?

Today’s students, he said, have about a 12-minute attention span — the length TV programming between commercials.  Kids expect faster delivery of information, expect it to be relevant, and tune out if it’s too slow in coming or not presented in a way that matters.

I don’t buy that hook, line, and sinker… but it’s worth thinking about.  Certainly, achieving a 100% graduation rate by 2014 will require that we make all subjects both interesting and relevant for all students.  Oddly enough though, there’s contrasting research showing that the nations where students are the least confident in their abilities, and get the least enjoyment out of school, tend to be the ones with the highest-performing students on international tests.

Much to think about, much to learn in these next couple of days.