Cartoon gravity and reform logic
Most people who don’t work with them see teenagers as moody, impulsive, and unpredictable. Actually, the opposite is true. Teenagers are completely predictable—that is once you understand teenage logic. Teenage logic is sort of like cartoon gravity; it has its on set of strict rules, that just don’t always happen to align with reality. As a new kid on the block of the education policy blogosphere and twitterverse (really, did I just use those words?) I am beginning to see that education reformers seem to have their own form of cartoon gravity logic. So here we go in no particular order, the most head scratching logical fallacies I have seen so far (this is likely to be a reoccurring series).
- “The public school system is broken because it is horrible bureaucratic and inefficient…lets make that same system give secure high stakes standardized tests…!” Seriously? You give a bureaucratic system a bureaucratic task to do and then try to deflect blame when ridiculousness ensues?
- “Democracy is not working and communities of poverty and color are disenfranchised…so lets break democracy even more and give those folks charter schools with unelected boards and start pumping money into local school board elections to impact the outcome…” So exactly how are those disenfranchised people now empowered? How exactly to they have a voice in their children’s education? Why do you trust their decision-making skills when it Cartoon gravity and reform logic | The Patiently Impatient Teacher: