The current campaign for health care reform is a pedagogical disaster. We need to teach the public what the 1,000 page bill is about. And we need to do it simply and fast! Sesame Street style. Make us a list of items that we can memorize. Tell us what advantages we will get in easy-to-understand language. Help us to comprehend the complexities. Hone them down. Stop lawyering. Don’t use speechy abstractions.
Your eloquent phrases fly right over our heads. Advertise. Illustrate. Animate. Use Ernie and Bert. Slogans. Sound bites. Bumper stickers. Mugs. T-shirts. Bullet points. Make health care reform palatable and fun.
We are both confused about and afraid of how health care reforms will affect our lives. We don’t have the time or the capacity to read a 1,000 page document written in complex lingo. The administration ought to hire a team of pedagogically-savvy folks who can sift through the 1,000 pages and synthesize the bill into ten or twelve short paragraphs. A dozen or so items should be able to explain what the bill will mean to us. You cannot ask people to approve something they don’t understand. Not understanding only makes us more frightened and less certain of our fates if the bill is passed. Talk to us as though you were the most gifted of calculus professors; and we but frightened greenhorn freshmen math students. Don’t speechify and talk over our heads.
Address us in language we can easily comprehend. The point? To make key elements of the reform bill accessible to everyone no matter his or her background or education. Sell the reforms using advertising methods and plain language. Stop yammering on using words and expressions the meanings of which the ordinary citizen cannot easily grasp. Skilled educators know how to present complicated information in simple terms. Get help from them and get this bill passed with the assent and cooperation of a citizenry which has full knowledge of what is planned and can even recite it back to you. That’s education.
Any volunteers? Good. First we get Obama’s attention. Then we find dedicated educators to read and sift through the clauses and changes and come up with a list.
