The Swamp

There are four types of people fighting about education. They are:

1. Teachers. Most of them know what they’re talking about, because they’re the ones on the front line. They can be divided into dumb teachers and smart teachers. The dumb teachers are the reason for the debate. The smart teachers aren’t paid enough.
2. Administrators, principals, etc. Once again, these people know what they’re talking about because they were once teachers. Some of them were once bad teachers and are bad administrators, but they just sit around and let the paychecks roll in, so their effect on the debate is minimal.
3. Parents. They can be divided into negligent parents, good parents and outspoken parents. The negligent parents are not heard from, and the good parents nurture their kids and only get in the way of teachers if those teachers aren’t doing a good job. The outspoken parents are never satisfied, are usually jerks, and blame everything on the teachers. They usually don’t know what they’re talking about and don’t understand how education research can distort facts, so they usually end up supporting dumb educational models or just yell a lot.
4. Education researchers. Some researchers (like Isabel Beck) were once teachers and so they focus on the practical applications of education research. The others don’t know what they’re talking about because they’ve spent 25 years in academia and have never seen a 9-year-old before. The latter group is full of assholes.

The first two groups are constantly being chided for accepting “unproven” models for teaching reading by the third group. The fourth group (excepting the Beck-lead subgroup) put out unrealistic or ineffective models that power the third group. And these last two groups are the bane of my existence. That is all.