Jessica Simpson?

Thanks, Weber High School, for reinforcing all the wrong messages young people are getting these days. Thanks for letting your students know that celebrity is more important than learning.

If you hadn’t heard, Jessica Simpson visited the school Monday because of a publicity stunt by a local radio station. Students at the school sent 571,795 text messages to win the visit.

This was primarily a student effort. However, many of the messages were sent during school hours. Some, apparently, were sent during class with the encouragement of teachers.

In his book, “Fame Junkies,” author Jake Halpern talks about a survey in upstate New York that found 43.4 percent of middle-school girls would rather be a personal assistant to a famous singer or film star than CEO of a corporation or president of Yale or Harvard.

That may be a natural inclination for young people, but educators shouldn’t lend credence to it. They should be pointing students toward higher things.

Would Weber High students have gone through the same efforts to bring in Muhammad Yunus or Mario Capecchi? Would their teachers have been as encouraging? What, exactly, was the educational purpose of this stunt?