Last week I watched two 'Big-Society-get-your-arse-into-gear' styled programmes. The first was Channel Four's 'Jamie's Dream School', which I have to say I'd been looking forward to following the teasing ad campaign featuring cheeky chappy Jamie standing in front of a blackboard, telling us all about luminaries such as Simon Callow, David Starkey and Rolf Harris teaching underprivileged kids.
And then I watched it. The kids weren't underprivileged; they just hadn't made much of an effort in school and had left without making much of a splash in academic circles, just like Jamie Oliver himself. Most of them actually seemed bright, witty and likeable enough, if incredibly immature and of the opinion that it's alright: someone'll sort something out for them in the end. And they duly did - in stepped Jamie and his not-so-merry band of celebrity teachers, telling us that "the education system has failed these kids" and that he wanted to do something to engage them. Within fifteen minutes or so there's chaos in the classroom as David Starkey collectively refers to them as "failures" and singles out one chubby Plan B lookalike as being "so fat you can't move". Violins all round at the horrific abuse meted out to these poor unfortunates.
The second programme I watched last week was BBC Three's 'Working Girls', in which Kaycie, a self-styled 'Cheryl Cole of Reading', is taken from her benefits-and-single-Mum-funded lifestyle in which she gets her Chihuahua's nails painted, and is asked to - gasp! - do some work for a week. As the programme starts, Kaycie is convinced of her "men should work for women" attitude. Alas, she's not referring to female bosses.
But it's hard to take Kaycie at all seriously, really. Firstly because although she waxes lyrical about her own devastating beauty throughout the programme, she actually looks exactly like Mark Owen in drag. She's also quite savvy and self-aware; about ten minutes into the programme we learn that she's been dumped by her boyfriend, by her own admission for "being too needy because I didn't have anything else to do but text him all day".
Her first place of work is a rough old Liverpudlian market, followed by Hotel Missoni in London (guess which one she stuck at for longer?) Both establishments are run by "some of Britain's toughest businesswomen"; neither of whom actually seemed like much of an advert for hard work. Kaycie cleans a few tables, washes a few dishes, gets into a few teary arguments (from which we learn that she's been in care and that she used to be a lapdancer) and by the end of the week she's serving Prosecco at a hotel function and we're supposed to be convinced that she's been on "a journey". Though she spent two days of her week at work off sick with a stomach bug, the hard-faced Missoni hotel manager tells her she's "so proud of all your hard work, Kaycie; I really admire your determination".
As lightly entertaining as they were, one of the things that struck me on watching both of these shows is that television seems to be rewarding laziness and a general inability to try at anything by effectively turning it into a cerebral "rags to riches" story. The kids on 'Jamie's Dream School' had as much chance as anybody else to try hard and do well in school. As did the 'Cheryl Cole of Reading'. They will all have had peers who did work hard and make an effort. But they're not getting enthralling history lessons from David Starkey and the like, or a free-pass temporary job at one of the most beautiful hotels in London. Instead they're coming home from work, switching on the telly and feeling as though, in order to really achieve something, they need to throw in their jobs, abuse their families and hope someone from the BBC notices and decides to make a TV programme all about them.
Though I admire his effort, in my opinion Jamie's wrong: the education system hasn't "failed these kids"; that honour belongs to their parents and themselves. But all this fawning and cosseting isn't going to help any of them do what he did, and really make something of themselves.
(Tsk, I feel a letter to the Daily Mail coming on!)
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