Deep Question of the Day

In lieu of journaling this week, I will be posting a Deep Question of the Day.

Why do teachers find it so easy to turn on one another?


One thought on “Deep Question of the Day

  1. Well. If you’re basing the premise of the question on an internet blog post and the ensuing comment flame wars, you’ll always see people turning on each other regardless of profession, political party, gender, etc…

    It’s human nature to point to others within the group when your group is under a lot of scrutiny and criticism, as education is right now. And let’s face it, there’s always a few idjits that are easy targets – Lord knows I can give some examples of social workers who definitely don’t deserve the title IMHO. 😉 It’s also a lot easier when the group is based on squishy science, like education and social work and all other sciences that are focused on human behavior and cognition. Evidenced-based practices only get you so far, because no matter how great they are, they will not work for every person and every situation (e.g., your computer-phobic student who can’t use the computer-based instruction easily). Geoffrey Canada’s project (the Harlem Children’s Zone) shows promise, but will it work in rural areas? Will it work with lower funding levels? Will it really show the long-term gains they anticipate? Will ALL the students graduate and go to college? When folks start looking at models like that and say “Well obviously we should be doing it here,” it’s not really “obvious” that it will work… and then the professionals turn on each other. “You’re stuck in the past!” “You want to implement change that may not work!”

    Rambling answer to say it happens, especially when there’s a lot of criticism and calls for sweeping changes. Sucks but true.

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s