As our youngsters continue to be outscored by Asians and
Europeans in basic subjects like math and reading, some middle
school teachers are resorting to a seemingly desperate measure —
allowing chewing gum in the classroom as a performance
enhancer.
Chewing our way to better grades? Is this the end of
civilization I keep hearing about?
In my youth, gum was banned from the classroom and any
girl chewing gum on the playground was considered cheap, low, and
dangerous to know.
A friend of mine backs me up. “I rather think gum chewing
would lower the IQ,” he said recently over lunch. “The chewer gets
that vacant look in the eye, like ruminants in the
farmyard.”
Now a mother in the Boston suburbs tells me her children
are openly encouraged to try gum as a way of gaining academic edge,
specifically improving concentration and memory skills. Some
teachers supply the gum and pass it around before the
annual all-important MCAS test, the local version of the federal No
Child Left Behind program that measures the school’s performance —
the test that tests the teachers. Some nervous self-interest there
perhaps?
But is there any truth to gum’s alleged magical qualities?
For decades, gum manufacturers have been funding dubious health
research to try to prove it — then use the results to sell more
gum. Something called the Wrigley Science Institute dispenses
grants to impoverished academics looking for well-paid projects
that are not too complicated.
Junk science is of course nothing new. To my shame, I once
ran a Burson-Marsteller program to spread the word for Philip
Morris that second-hand smoke was less harmful than drinking tap
water. It isn’t.
“The only reason to fund this gum research is to sell more
gum,” one nutritionist told CNN recently.
Somehow this attempt to gain edge through gum seems to fit
our era of instant gratification and our search for shortcuts as
opposed to actual effort.
It is instructive to look abroad and note that Europeans
and Asians do not need to chew for performance, nor are they
influenced by the large advertising budgets of the gum makers.
Singapore banned chewing gum and bubble gum from its territory for
12 years yet their children were always among the highest
achievers. Under pressure from U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and
George W. Bush plus a gaggle of lobbyists, Singapore has now agreed
to allow gum to be imported, but only medicinal varieties and made
available only in pharmacies that require the purchaser’s ID. The
Wrigley people who pressed for this change are
delighted.
American children can hardly escape the gum and
breath-freshener culture spread by B-list celebrities such as Larry
King in ubiquitous television commercials. The King, alongside his
seventh wife Shawn Southwick, warns young and old alike to do
something about their halitosis. Here we have another depressing
fact in Larry’s long list – he has bad breath.
As if the advertisers were not enough, we now face the
elongated climax of the baseball season on television featuring
role model players in their pajamas blowing pink bubbles as they
wait for something to happen on the field. One of the Arizona
Diamondbacks, fresh out of bubble gum when he needed it, was caught
on TV chewing on the crucifix he wears around his neck for good
luck. It failed him this time. The Brewers went on to the National
League playoffs.
But in the gum-chewing world, it was the recently sacked
Red Sox manager Terry Francona who wins. Boston was aghast when an
alert cameraman caught him rolling a wadge of double-bubble around
a tobacco chaw and stuffing it in his mouth. The camera came back
to him during the game for an update and observed him working the
mess all the way down to his thrapple.
“I knew Terry was going to blow it,” said my lunch
companion, “and he did.”
Boston will try again next year but without Terry’s
bubblegum.
We may hope that gum will also disappear from our schools
as teachers realize they have been misled by public relations and
advertising.
