{"id":107,"date":"2014-05-04T14:44:57","date_gmt":"2014-05-04T18:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/?p=107"},"modified":"2014-05-04T20:40:24","modified_gmt":"2014-05-05T00:40:24","slug":"can-we-retire-the-phrase-our-education-system-is-broken","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/2014\/05\/04\/can-we-retire-the-phrase-our-education-system-is-broken\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Is It OK To Call Our Education System “Broken”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In conversations informally, or across the web, there are a lot of people saying “our education system is broken<\/a>” or something similar. \u00a0This bit of hyperbole has become so widespread that it is rarely questioned, and neither have it’s effects.\u00a0 I believe that most people in education are proud of their work, and after a hard days work it is unfair for the country as a whole to agree with this meme which implies our\u00a0educators\u00a0are just wasting their time.<\/p>\n

Last fall I was sitting in a room with a bunch of administrators from across New York City and the Principal of the most accomplished school kept using the phrase over and over. \u00a0In a meeting designed to “model professional dialogue” this guy would start each of his comments with some variation of the phrase, and then describe a number of things that sounded like opinion. \u00a0I immediately stood up to this person. “What’s your evidence for this? How can we expect our students to apply critical thinking\u00a0across all subject areas, and we don’t apply the same level of thought to our own\u00a0profession,” I said. \u00a0Ok, that wasn’t exactly what happened. \u00a0I actually remained silent, as did the rest of the room, and that silence\u00a0has bothered me since.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0collective silence of that meeting bothered me personally, because it both approves of that man’s statement, and diminishes\u00a0and dismisses\u00a0my whole career. \u00a0If you accept\u00a0that statement to be\u00a0true, you\u00a0accept\u00a0that any\u00a0and all educational suggestions should be immediately considered and implemented in order to deal with this rampant crisis. \u00a0As people accept these blanket\u00a0statements, they are agreeing that everything currently in place is also broken. \u00a0This tells the world\u00a0that the work that people have invested huge parts of their life in, that have even been successful, should be treated as a failure.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Moreover, the US education is too big and too complex to simply be “broken”. \u00a0In a room full of educators, where people understand the intricacies of the field, we should expect people to step up and use the appropriate language and thoughtful analysis associated with being educated. \u00a0We should call people out on using\u00a0vague, non-statements such as “education is broken” to back up their ideas. \u00a0We should follow up with questions like:<\/p>\n