Peter Greene has determined that some people in the world of education are serious and some are very silly.
Serious people understand that words have consequences. They seek some congruity between their reality, their values, and their goals.
Greene identifies a number of people who are very silly. For example:
“The Hedgemasters backing the charter movement are not serious people. Charters are investment opportunities and educational rhetoric is just ad copy. They are no more serious about finding real educational solutions than General Mills is serious about researching what the most healthy breakfast would really include.
“The Data Overlords are not serious people. Or rather, they’re not serious about education. They are serious about data collection, but it really makes no difference to them whether the education delivered is good or not, just as long as it’s all tagged and bagged.
“The Systems and Government pushers are not serious people. They are sure that if they can get total control of the whole system, it will work the way they imagine it will, and they do not want to be distracted by any evidence to the contrary. The pursuit of excellence should never be derailed by facts, or by the puny lesser humans who get in the way.
“The corporate profiteers are not serious people. When Pearson believes their main problem is bad PR, they show such a disconnect from life on this planet that they cannot be taken as serious people.”
Why have so many silly people taken control of a very serious and important enterprise?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, when you say something enough times it becomes true…right?
According to Marketing 101, yes!
Finally, a Florida legislator gets to the heart of what’s really wrong with Common Core… (gosh, it all makes sense now… why anyone hasn’t caught on to this until today, I’ll never know).
Florida State Rep. Charles Van Zant (R) exposes to the world that Common Core, at its roots, is …
… a plot to turn children gay (into homosexuals, not happy 😉 ):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/19/common-core-gay_n_5353629.html?utm_hp_ref=education&ir=Education&utm_hp_ref=education
And no, this is not a joke, folks… a la ‘THE ONION’.
“Van Zant concluded by telling the crowd, ‘I’m sorry to report that to you … I really hate to believe that news, but you need to know.’ “
Reblogged this on SD Educators United.
Yes, much of what we do, and are, maybe “silly” but in a postmodern paradigm were absolute truth and values are denied, they one person’s silliness may be another person’s seriousness. After all, if there is no guiding Truth (as in the Way, the Life and the Truth, John 14:6), then all is blurred in relativism and nonsense.
So, if constructivism (as its own “absolute” reference point) posits that silliness, or its antithesis, are merely socially negotiated constructs that give stakeholders meaning, or futility, then an absolute reference point by which to define “silliness” is impossible.
So, maybe those that call things “silly” are themselves “silly”, unless they acknowledge there is an absolute Truth by which to define things.
Are you being serious or silly?
He’s being religious which is both (or at least the serious part is claimed by the religionistas).
Watch it Swacker, I’m religious. And I am serious about public education.
It is possible to be both.
In the Episcopal church, our Baptism renewal states that we believe in the dignity of all people.
Duane tolerates us as long as we turn the other cheek. (No cheap shots, Duane!):)
It is seriously silly.
2 Old: yes; but religion bashing ain’t cool and Duane should know better. Sometimes he needs to oil his loaded gun because it gets rusty. Point. Shoot. That’s Swacker.
Every once in awhile he has to be reminded.
“. . . in a postmodern paradigm were absolute truth and values are denied. . . . After all, if there is no guiding Truth (as in the Way, the Life and the Truth, John 14:6), then all is blurred in relativism and nonsense.
Bullshit!
No need for an over 3000 year old Mid Eastern tribal myth “god” to tell me what to understand for truth and values.
Please cite the source of that “postmodern paradigm w[h]ere absolute truth and values are denied”.
What is “blurred in relativism and nonsense” are those millenia old tribal religious beliefs.
To each his own.
Perhaps “To each his own” is a part of the problem Joanna.
Betsy–
I suspect you are right on many fronts; but too many to ever pin down. We have to have a conglomeration of “to each his owns” if this American experiment is going to work, don’t you think? What is it that unites us? That we can each be our own. Does it lead to questions and pitfalls? Yes. Is the public education debate about that? Yes, because it is a struggle for whose value system will prevail and, ultimately, it will have to be the value system that leads to the most abundance in terms of resources. This is why I am not willing to bash religions—maybe they were created because they help lead to abundance??
Can’t talk about “abundance” without questioning for whom. The Catholic church is abundant in Rome, not so much in the provinces where poor peritioners are encouraged to contribute to make it prosper though. This is not that different from the Christian fundamentalists here whose religious leaders encourage them to support politicians that promote big business.
I’m with Duane on this. One would think that we would have evolved enough by now to stop all the warring and profiteering that go on in the name of God and Bronze age dogmas and which benefit elites most.
You’d think, wouldn’t you. But where money and power intersect cultural evolution (or as some say progress, ignoring the fact of evolution in which intelligence is merely an environmental adaptation) seems pretty stable over human history, perhaps even including pre history. God favors the successful. God even tells you HOW to be successful (don’t bury your talents—-invest, invest, invest). And then give to God’s representatives on earth. Send your sacrifices to the temple in Jerusalem so the priests can wax fat. YOU stay poor, but make sure your gods, the Obamas, and the Beidens, and the Buffetts, and the Pelosis and Feinsteins get rich. For such true believers, they are happy to see their heroes on the government gravy train. Priests work? Nope. Politicians work? Nope. Golf. Only the business proprietor truly works of those raking in the wealth.
Well of the era of its origin gives something its worth, then we’d best toss out the wheel and some of the other simple machines discovers and developed pre- Bronzian
That would be “if” and “discovered”
Seriously, age of a religion is not a reason to cast out the ideas of previous generations any mote than it is a reason to grasp into them. We have to build on them, after examining them. The Roman Catholic Church is not the only religious institution in global history.
I am not convinced by either of you.
“More”
“Onto”
What if one is a serial seriously silly person???
tago
I think it’s because being serious about education means you have to forsake being serious about making money, at least within education. They can’t choose. So what you get is what seems silly to those of us who were serious about education to begin with. It’s like marriage; you have to commit to it if you are serious about it.
Arne Duncan @arneduncan · 2h
Starting a day in Nashville w/ @TNeduCommish at town hall on Tennessee’s progress w/ support from Race to the Top. pic.twitter.com/isQ8B11w5D
Another cheerleading session for Duncan’s preferred ed reforms. The narrow confines of this “debate” are just amazing to watch. The same tiny group of people, over and over and over. Yesterday was the ed reform-approved campaign trip to Connecticut!
Has Duncan ever met with a state appointee who disagrees with his pre-approved checklist of ed reforms? Does such a brave, dissenting person even exist? 🙂
Profiteers are silly, especially those representing the Big P.
So the question could be, “Are you seriously silly ‘Pearson’ person!?”
Greene has a fresh and interesting way of framing the situation here. He’s right. Sadly, the Academy itself has not been duly serious. Too many of us teachers and professors are ill-informed, incurious, intellectually slack, poorly read… making us vulnerable to these assaults by the unserious. A nasty venture capitalist out here in CA who wants to “disrupt” education claims that education today is dominated by “witchcraft”. While I hate his meddling with education, I have to admit he has a point: there is so much cant, charlatanry, pseudoscience, and gobbledygook in the minds of our teachers. To give just one example, I have yet to meet one teacher who really understands what reading comprehension requires. E.D. Hirsch and others have the key, yet no one reads them. To give another example: cognitive science shows that higher order thinking depends on storing reams of information in long-term memory, yet we still have teachers deploring memorization.
I would like to agree with you, but on this blog I sometimes can’t tell the silly from the serious. Aren’t you being ironical here?
Are you really saying, seriously, that many teachers are just abysmally ignorant even about the central most aspect of their practice—reading?
Silly me, for asking.
.@arneduncan in Nashville: Race to the Top was an investment in state & local leadership–not a gift–and it’s paying off for TN students
Well, that’s nice he at least knows he didn’t give the selected states who complied with his narrow vision a “gift” because after all it is their money.
Glad we at least have that straightened out! “Whose money IS this?” 🙂
Why have so many silly people taken control of such a serious enterprise you ask? Well I’ve read in many news reports that 70% of the U.S. public does not believe in evolution and only about 34% are concerned about man-made climate change. Are we just a silly society?
Yes, we are a Super Silly Society. Here we are 100% of us the product of evolution with 70% of us using those big brains to deny their own authentic history, and at least the 34% (who probably believe in evolution), using their big brains to justify their gullibility in believing that there is man-made climate change.
Notice however, that the two beliefs are the same in one sense. Both positions elevate the importance of and power of human kind beyond what it probably actually is (think lice on a hairy planet).
Thus man-made climate change becomes a religion for the secular minded who have given up Biblical fundamentalism. NO ONE actually “knows” that there is climate change, let alone man-made climate change, although it is a strongly held opinion. Evolution (in my opinion) seems to rest on much more solid ground, but there is still some dispute about whether it is always gradual or can be punctuated by bursts of adaptation.
The climate change believers seem to be the silly in control of education. I wish them well in their fantasies. If they are right that the lice can change the temperature of the dog, certainly perfecting the effectiveness of the education system is within their grasp. Just give them all the money they are asking for, and they’ll get it right—next time. Same for the reformers. Same for the charterizers.
Sometimes I think the global warming ‘science’ is completely dependent on government money; end the funding for climate science and you end the purported ‘consensus’. End all the millions Zuckerberg and others are investing in “reform” schemes, and you end all the meddlers and planners and consultants and their grand plans to make things better.
Then we’d have to go back to solving local problems with local people and local money. Would it work? It might if the money were actually getting to school buildings rather than the central administrations and their clerks sucking the blood out of the beast. Simple, uncorrupt honesty.
Did I hear anyone say tea party?
Great points made in the original post, however the reformers are serious about making money and taking full control of all aspects of the public education system
!
I think we have to quit kidding ourselves and come to grips with the very serious fact that the enemies of democracy and public education are deadly serious about their objectives.
Pearson, et al. (a.k.a. the British East India Testing Company) are dragging us back to an 18th Century British-stye education system where the children of the lower classes are tracked into a lower class labor pools and the ruling classes attend state-supported schools where the main thing they learn is the art of hob-nobbery that it takes its takes to keep the lower classes in their place. Middle Class? Fugettabout It …
I like seriously wrong more than silly…..in St. Louis county, the commissioner has come up with something serious in its wrongness…..Missouri has a law passed long ago by democrats, and it has been solid gold for them in contributing to destroying public education. If a district is unaccredited….a process which has turned out to be a subjective thing driven by the need for political power….their students have a right to transfer to other schools. Tuition costs are running the unaccredited schools into bankruptcy, so the state is offering the wealthier schools this trade:…”The bill approved last week reaffirms the right to deny transfers based on class space.
The bill also encourages receiving districts to reduce tuition costs. If they do, the test scores of the transfer students would not be included in the state’s annual accreditation review of schools.” In other words….if they put up money, (reducing tuition costs) out of their funds…..they will be rewarded, by not having their school system, or their teachers judged…..by how they perform with less desirable students.
Many——including Nicastro—-are more than willing to pass judgement on a mostly black school district for being unable to get great results with a percentage of students. Send them to a place that is more white……no such judgements allowed, even though they are not likely to be as low in testing as those unable to make all the necessary arrangements
I know everyone has their problems, but Normandy Missouri needs help from the outside, to raise the constitutional issues of having their voter rights bludgeoned….the Post Dispatch is not going to press the issue. Normandy was ordered to take another underperforming school’s students….their superintendent was promised 3 years before they would be reviewed for loss of accreditation….politics demanded that it be cut to just two years…….this is a district with a high percentage of poor people, of black people. I have lived in Missouri all my life……I have never witnessed institutional racial bullying by a state department of education, with the possible precedent setting st. Louis takeover of 2007. Maybe Missouri’s situation simply does not merit attention, but without it, things are about to become worse. Chris Nicastro, state superintendent of education is beyond belief.
And today, the district was formally dissolved and placed under direct state control. However, nothing was said about the fate of the Normandy students who transferred to other districts, or those hoping to next year. This leaves them (and the receiving districts) once again in limbo–or purgatory, take your pick–not knowing where they will be, unable to plan for the next year (academics, sports, district staffing, etc.).
one thing that was said….I pointed it out in my first post…..while the teachers at Normandy have all had their contracts cancelled…they have to reapply for their jobs………the districts which accept the students transferring from Normandy have been offered a deal….lower the tuition price you charge these Normandy students, (very important to the state, since they are now in charge of finances there)…..and we promise you…..none of your teachers or your ranking in the state will be affected by these students, no matter how low their test scores……..the reason for pulling the plug on the school….low test scores……..god forbid some of these kids still score low in the places with “better” teachers.
Neil deGrasse Tyson takes on deniers of science and climate change AND skewed journalism in Salon today: http://www.salon.com/2014/05/20/neil_degrasse_tyson_slams_cnn_giving_equal_time_to_science_deniers_is_not_%E2%80%9Cfair_and_balanced%E2%80%9D/
At first, it didn’t look like Neil deGrasse Tyson was going to get into it. So glad he decided to throw his hat in the ring and address the problems with journalism today, since education has been seriously impacted by propaganda reporting, too!
Here’s the link to Peter’s piece:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2014/05/serious-people.html?showComment=1400649236236#c4352290804507673892
You ask, “Why have so many silly people taken control of a very serious and important enterprise?” (1) because there is money to be made and (2) because we let them.
Agree with Lisa. Just like rats and moles locate pellets, ed. deformers chase profits.
Until groups like Represent.us are successful in getting money out of politics, no amount of valid research and no effort to counter media propaganda, will succeed. Findings of corporate fraud and failure, are like mallets in a whack-a-mole game, where the number of moles is infinite.
These opponents are deadly serious, silly people do not realize this.
Because money can buy almost everything?