It is time to stop looking at Education as a character in threadbare clothing who needs a makeover. There is no level of dressing, redressing, or repair that will improve this image or its effects.
Education is sick with a disease.
Education has a bad case of STUPID.
We have to get rid of the STUPID.
The Stupid:
- barriers
- restrictions
- misinterpreted data
- testing as intervention
- technology as intervention
- un(der)prepared educators
- novelty
- over-administration
- under-adminstration
- money pits
- journalists as edreformers
- politicians as edreformers
- apples v/s oranges
- bananas v/s oranges
- most oranges
The field of education needs to reclaim its place. This is not done by lowering standards or hacking off the “bottom X %” of the teaching core based on misinterpreted data. Despite what politicians, journalists, chancers, sheisters, politicians, and the snake-oil salesforce may have you believe, education will be cured by education. And trust.
Trust that administrators can be educated.
Trust that teachers can be educated.
Trust that students can be educated.
Trust that parents can be educated.
Trust that politicians can be educated.
Trust that, yes, even ill-fitted journalists can be educated.
If you do not believe that, you should just quit now.
Edreform happens from the ground up.
I have wanted to quit. Dozens of times. Someone has got to educate the teachers, and I am just the woman to do it. Along the way I have been educated, too, by educators who have taken the time to talk to me about Special Education and what school is and what it ought to be. The difference is, out in the real world, my mission is very personal. This is my daughter’s future at stake, and that has required giving some a whack with an intellectual two-by-four.
After daughter’s wonderful teacher died, her replacement needed a great deal of instruction. She was book smart, but she needed mentoring. After taking a wait and see attitude for a while, I finally had a meeting with her, principal, both assistant principals, daughter’s aide and me. When she balked and started to talk about her classwork, the principal thankfully pulled her up short. Everyone acknowledged that she did need to be mentored. She also needed to understand that, even in the Severe to Profound program, her job was still to teach and not be a caregiver. After that she started to read to our daughter, and she gave our daughter a job to do in the school. Aide assisted, of course, given her limitations.
One of the things I had to do with this teacher was win her over. Show her I was on her side. That met with limited success, but at least I was able to reach out to her, person to person. Not everyone is reachable. Some remain entrenched in their point of view. But when there’s an opening, you need to give someone a chance. Once this teacher could trust me, I had a way to gently instruct her. I did my best to cover up the fact that she did try on my patience. I lost track of her, but I hope she remembered that she was a teacher and that if anyone was a caregiver it was the parent.
Hmm, “can be educated” sounds vaguely Orwellian. What exactly is this “education” you speak of?
No conspiracy theories here. People ‘may’ be educated–at least that what is said. But the belief about whether someone is capable is often in conflict with the structures and procedures. Do our beliefs jive with our actions? Are we in the minority?
We need to challenge, change, and recalibrate.