Rally for NJ Public Education Part 2: Stop Bashing Teachers!
Is it just me, or is everything marketed as ‘sexy’ these days? Almost every bride on every bridal reality show (Ok, I admit it, I watch them all!) wants to look sexy. (Whatever happened to classy?) Cell phones, computers, paint colors, guns, food, tools, toothpaste and a zillion more products are all marketed in some way, shape or form as sexy. I’ll bet somebody somewhere thinks it’s a good idea to market shower caulk as sexy!
Along with “risqué” one of the definitions of sexy is “excitingly appealing; glamorous, as in: a sexy new car.” So although a commercial may not use the word ‘sexy’ in it, the subliminal messaging is there nonetheless. Marketing experts know that the key to opening consumer wallets is to offer the chance of an appealing, glamorous (sexy) life along with their product.
So, what does all this have to do with education? In their efforts to privatize public education and turn it into a multi-billion-dollar, for-profit enterprise, education ‘reformers’ have to market and sell it in slick, messaging that’s ‘excitingly appealing’, aka sexy! Public education advocate, Leonie Haimson, one of the founders of Parents Across America, and head of Class Size Matters in NYC, has assembled a compendium of reformy-speak buzzwords including:
“transformational”, “catalytic”, “innovative”, “bold”, “game changer”, “effective”, “entrepreneurial, “economies of scale”, “instructional efficiency"
“Wow!” you say, “They sound so excitingly appealing and glamorous! Damn it,