Translating eduspeak into something like English
Dear Imaginary Reader,
Perhaps I should have told you this sooner, but I possess a rare and mystical talent. I have the ability to not only read and comprehend reams of educational jargon, but to translate it into something that nearly resembles clear and comprehensible English. Although this ability has been detrimental to my career (because it annoys principals and staff trainers), it has provided hours of priceless entertainment during professional development.
So, I have decided to periodically share this ability with you, my readers who are nonetheless loyal because nonexistent. I will, from time to time, find examples of deliberately opaque educational babble and tell you what they really mean. This week’s gem comes straight from that bastion of obfuscation, Edutopia. While I gaze into my crystal ball of clear language and pick up my magical quill that allows me to write what I mean, you can read the whole garbled mess here: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/deficit-model-is-harming-students-janice-lombardi
Ready? Let’s start making sense from nonsense!
“Students know their shortcomings, and so many — especially minority males — act up, act out, or drop out to rebel against the prevailing, unsubstantiated notion that all one has to do is work harder.”
Students know their shortcomings, and don’t particularly want to work harder. They want to overcome their shortcomings by not working harder. We play into this notion by pretending that hard work doesn’t work. We have been unable to find any examples of people overcoming their shortcomings by working harder. We use fancy words like ‘unsubstantiated’ and ‘prevailing’ so that we can pretend this isn’t all nonsense.
“Unfortunately, some educators work from this deficit model, which means they believe that if underserved students worked harder, they would achieve.”
It’s much better for educators to believe that students won’t achieve if they work harder. Or, alternatively, that they will achieve by working less. Whatever, as long as they don’t think people achieve by working hard. We really love saying ‘deficit model’ because it allows us to pretend that we understand tricky concepts like economics, even though we don’t. Also, it amuses us to call students ‘underserved’ because it makes teachers sound like arrogant, ultra-hip bartenders who ignore your requests for a fifth Jack-and-Coke. We hate it when that happens.
“High school teachers believe that high-poverty, black, and Hispanic students are 53, 47, and 42 percent less likely to graduate from college compared to their white peers.”
High school teachers don’t believe that because it has any relationship to reality, or to well-documented facts. They believe it because they’re mean. Also, high school teachers’ beliefs = fate. If your teacher believes that you might not graduate from college, then you can’t. Your high school teachers are really Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos in disguise.
“Those standards and expectations must have reachable, intermediate acceleration goals for students.”
Students aren’t like humans who need to work in order to do things. They’re like cars who need to accelerate to go places. Adopting a nonsensical metaphor totally changes the facts of how people learn. If you’re a good teacher with high expectations, your student will be able to go 0-60 in 3 seconds. If you are a highly effective teacher, your student will win the Indianapolis 500 on foot.
“We set up mandatory tutoring with teachers during study hall and after school to bridge any gaps. One student with home circumstances that might limit most has been tutored in Algebra 1 for almost the entire year. He’s persevered and, in his words, is finally “getting it.”
Setting up mandatory tutoring is not the same as requiring students to work hard. It’s completely different, because we didn’t use the word ‘work’. That kid isn’t ‘getting’ Algebra because he worked at it, it’s because he persevered. See? Different word. No relationship at all to working hard.
“At Garza ECHS, we scaffold the accelerated learning experiences from the known to the unknown.”
We’ve developed a revolutionary approach to teaching where first we establish what students know, and then we teach them things they don’t know! No one ever thought of doing that before–it’s all ours. We call teaching a ‘learning experience’ because it sounds even more revolutionary. Also, we’re not entirely certain what a scaffold is or does, and may have confused it with a ladder.
There’s more, dear reader, but my eyes are starting to bleed from the strain of finding meaning in that word salad. Mock the rest for yourself!
Aye Carranza! 