Last Week Tonight (LWT) is a 20-time Emmy award-winning HBO production that airs Sunday nights. If you haven’t experienced the vulgar, poignant, and expertly-researched show, it is worth a few episodes of your time. Oliver’s brilliant over-the-top silliness and self-deprecating comedy is matched only by the deep-dive segments that provide empathetic looks into global, national, and local issues. Oliver seamlessly bounces between critiquing local car dealership ads to exploring the nuances of bankruptcy types and how they impact Americans. I have found that the best way to internalize many of the depressing realities taking place across the world is through the well-informed and satirical segments shown on LWT. John Oliver’s show exhibits a fantastic characteristic that strikes me nearly every episode: authenticity. As I work with school leaders and educators to derive more authenticity at the classroom and school-wide level, it is refreshing to see it being done so well on a late-night TV show.
Many school structures have no real authenticity, which quickly results in an enormous lack of student engagement and deeper learning. The traditional content and design of classroom curricula do not extend past the door. Why should students care about class outcomes that do not reach beyond the figurative and literal walls of a classroom? In LWT, most pieces are heavily informative and bring a real element into existence. Whether this means donating to local food banks, sponsoring a marble-racing tournament, getting in fights with a small town to name a sewage plant after Mr. Oliver, offering money for paintings of rat erotica, creating and airing ads specifically targeting individuals on Fox News, selling sacrilegiously expensive personal wipes, baking the world-record setting largest marble cake, or forgiving large amounts of medical debt to Americans, Oliver’s team works to engage with stories instead of only reporting on them. Many episodes also encourage audience members to get connected with the causes as well.
Schools and classes require authenticity. If what you are doing in your class cannot become an authentic article that permeates the classroom into the world, why are you doing it? Are your students working with local businesses? Engaging with local policy makers? Putting on public performances? Creating and implementing change in the space around the school? If you are still creating curriculum around standardized testing or antiquated state standards (I promise kids do not need to learn how to do proofs in secondary math classes), I encourage you to watch some of these LWT episodes and consider how Oliver and his staff make stories real and more tangible for the audience. I understand classroom teachers do not have an expert HBO-salaried staff of researchers and comedians working hand-in-hand to develop 30-min lessons that change lives, but we can start by setting our vision on how to make learning truly authentic, relatable, and connected to the world outside of the classroom.
Learning V. School 