To Everyone Who Was Never A Classroom Teacher, Re Pandemic School Openings
To everyone who was never a classroom teacher but who has some ideas about how school should be reopened in the fall:
Hush.
Just hush.
There are some special categories of life experiences. Divorce. Parenthood. Deafness. Living as a Black person in the US. Classroom teacher. They are very different experiences, but they all have on thing in common.
You can read about these things. But if you haven't lived it, you don't know. You can study up, read up, talk to people. And in some rare cases that brings you close enough to knowing that your insights might actually be useful.
But mostly, you are a Dunning-Krueger case study just waiting to be written up.
The last thirty-seven-ish years of education have been marked by one major feature-- a whole lot of people who just don't know, throwing their weight around and trying to set the conditions under which the people who actually do the work will have to try to actually do the work. Policy wonks, privateers, Teach for America pass-throughs, guys who wanted to run for President, folks walking by on the street who happen to be filthy rich, amateurs who believe their ignorance is a qualification-- everyone has stuck their oar in to try to reshape US education. And in ordinary times, as much as I argue against these folks, I would not wave my magic wand to silence them, because 1) educators are just as susceptible as anyone to becoming too insular and entrenched and convinced of their CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: To Everyone Who Was Never A Classroom Teacher, Re Pandemic School Openings
