Relationships Matter More Than Numbers
I was attending a recent school district meeting designed for the public when I first heard the phrase “human capital”. Then I heard it again. And again. It appears this is a new buzzword administrators and other school personnel are using to describe teachers and other educational employees. However, at a time when we are engaging in such heated national debate about the “value” of teachers and the purpose of unions, I feel a little alarm sounding in my head. For me, that phrase “human capital” evokes images of the scene in Pink Floyd’s The Wall where the thought-controlling teacher is mashing the children through a meat grinder until they come out a worm-like mass. It also brings to my mind thoughts of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factoryfire and high school history lessons about our nation’s industrial revolution era, its legacy of fat-cat industrialists monopolizing markets, getting rich on the backs of underpaid, ill-treated