Stop Saying "Entrepreneur"
One of the best blogs I've read in a long time--with bonus points for the headline--was written by Katie Osgood, the Chicago special education teacher who penned Paul Tough is Way Off Base. And Stop Saying 'Grit.'Osgood's piece points out that Tough's "new" premise--character matters more than data upticks in eventual outcomes for American kids--is hardly a novelty, or surprising to teachers. And "grit," the buzzword that summarizes student perseverance, is beyond annoying--it's somewhere between disingenuous and offensive.
There are a lot of words like "grit" out there in the market-based pizzazz vocabulary of school reform. It's as if the right innovative plan and the right catchy language would cause our students, rich and poor, to soar to the top of international rankings--the benchmark du jour. Never mind that students in top public schools are already there.
The pitch: once we start thinking of education as an "opportunity culture," where grit and entrepreneurial spirit are materially rewarded, the real cultural surround of inequity and anti-intellectualism will simply melt away. If all
There are a lot of words like "grit" out there in the market-based pizzazz vocabulary of school reform. It's as if the right innovative plan and the right catchy language would cause our students, rich and poor, to soar to the top of international rankings--the benchmark du jour. Never mind that students in top public schools are already there.
The pitch: once we start thinking of education as an "opportunity culture," where grit and entrepreneurial spirit are materially rewarded, the real cultural surround of inequity and anti-intellectualism will simply melt away. If all