Sometimes being a symbol of the American education system can backfire.
I few days ago, I read an article about a third-grader who had distributed to his classmates bags of heroin that were stamped with the words “Trust Me.” But this post is not about the frightening facts of the case but, rather, the imagery I discovered a day later when I found an updated article on the incident on CNN corespondent Anderson Cooper’s “360” Web page.
The story included a photo of a row of school buses. At first, I thought maybe the student was passing out drugs on the school bus, or maybe he did it while he was waiting at the bus stop, or maybe a school bus driver noticed the activity and reported it — something that would deem the use of a image of school buses. But there was no such connection. The yellow buses were an easy out for the intrepid writer or editor who decided that a picture of school buses was good enough.
This is not the first time I’ve seen this. My only hope is that readers take the time to realize the misuse of the photo and have the same reaction I did.
When I first started at STN, founder Bill Paul would talk about how school buses evolved into a symbol for education. Around the turn of the century, it was the little red schoolhouse, then the apple became an overall educational icon. Now, within the last couple of decades, school buses have come to represent anything that has to do with K-12 education. It is an important role, one that people need to be more responsible with.
