Diagram of the Brain of a Reformer

February 16, 2014 //

These two teachers have discovered the brain of a reformer and can demonstrate the comparison between the brain of a reformer and the brain of those who need reforming. Very impressive.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers

14 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Hannah says:

February 16, 2014 at 9:11 am

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Stop! Stop! Uncle! Oh the satire… hahahahahahahaha!!!!

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artseagal says:

February 16, 2014 at 9:38 am

Loved this piece but could not comment directly on their blog! Here is my response:

I am sorry.. I read this through once. Now I will have to get my yellow sticky notes and a highlighter and print this out so that I can follow the proven methods for making me into a careful reader. I will start by noticing the text features. Then I will scan the page looking for words I might not know and underline them. I will put yellow stickies at points I think are important. Then I will read before and after each underlined word to see if I can put them into context… Speaking of context, I will question if there is a self to text concept that will further my understanding… One minute… I am checking my manual for what I am supposed to do next in the process… Oh wait, what was the subject I am reading about??? Guess my brain must be a “b”….

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Rosemary says:

February 16, 2014 at 10:30 am

Growing up the B team was the team that had all the fun while playing the game they loved. If they lost, they shrugged it off, went out during the next game and tried again. When one of their players who hadn’t scored all season scored, they cheered him or her. The A team on the other hand was the team that thought too much of themselves. They thought they were unbeatable and when they were defeated they were taken down more than a notch. I am a B team player.

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donasonora says:

February 16, 2014 at 12:02 pm

Funny!!! And I found this interesting:
“Like an old-style Soviet bureaucrat, micromanaging a command economy because he and his common-core comrades know best”

Decades ago I remember hearing/reading that corporate capitalists really prefer an authoritarian style of govt. So I find it very interesting that people like the Kochs, whose father helped found the anti-Communist John Birch Society, act in ways that mimic the Soviet style.

I almost think that subconsciously they are jealous of the control offered by such a style. “We should have that control, too!” Seems so totally unAmerican. Well, I guess that’s one reason why American corporations in the 1980s wanted to shed their “American” association and become known as multinational instead.

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- KrazyTA says:
  
  February 16, 2014 at 1:21 pm
  
  donasonora: I do not think your comments are far-fetched.
  
  It is sometimes funny, often frightening, how much the current charterite/privatizer movement—composed in great part of the same folks who in public were die-hard opponents of the now-vanished Soviet Union—
  
  Act as if yesteryear’s scathing take-downs of Potemkin Villages came not so much from disagreement and disgust as from envy and jealousy.
  
  Think of charterite/privatize descriptions of, and visits to, “outstanding” charters and feel your skin crawl. The staged pageantry. The forced gaiety. The massaged numbers and tortured stats. The scripted testimonials. Fantastic claims covering up very modest or meager accomplishment. The cover-ups of inappropriate and even impermissible behaviors.
  
  I don’t use the term much, but I do not think “eduappartchik” is inappropriate when applied to such folks as John Deasy or Michelle Rhee or Paul Vallas or John King or John White or Wendy Kopp et al.
  
  Just my dos centavitos worth…
  
  Thank you for your comments.
  
  😎
  
  Reply
  - Ang says:
    
    February 17, 2014 at 12:31 am
    
    eduappartchik
    
    Love it!
  - donasonora says:
    
    February 17, 2014 at 11:15 am
    
    “eduappartchik”, indeed! lol
    
    A few years ago, I wrote that vampires were so popular, because they represented to the American psyche the financial industry’s sucking of money and wealth from the Middle Class.
    
    Zombies today represent the re-animation of what was once thought to be dead: the John Birch Society, the David Koch’s 1980 Libertarian Party, voodoo economics. “Brains!”, they cry, we must have your “Brains!”, either to brainwash or buy, as in education.
Gordon Wilder says:

February 16, 2014 at 1:10 pm

Interesting. I was beginning to wonder if some of these reformers had, or ever used their grey matter.

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Cap Lee says:

February 16, 2014 at 1:58 pm

Actually you are probably right about differences in the brains. However, not like you portrayed. Dr. Temple Grandin talks about this in more detail. http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html

Many of those reformers are thinking what I call linear. A + B always equals C. But they don’t realize the significance of all b rains being different. Take a listen to Dr. Grandin and realize most in silicon valley are mild autistic, not a bad thing, a necessary thing. Great at developing their business but suck at developing education

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Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

February 16, 2014 at 2:05 pm

This is too great! LOL…LOL…LOL.

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Harlan Underhill says:

February 16, 2014 at 2:59 pm

If only this wisdom would be applied to the rest of Washington, starting with El Presidente. The ACA is CCSC on transformer steroids.

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Arabella says:

February 16, 2014 at 4:44 pm

Corporate Reformers are people who have big bank accounts. The list of them go on and on and on.

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21st Century Poet says:

February 17, 2014 at 4:52 pm

Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.

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Joseph Herzog says:

February 18, 2014 at 10:47 pm

Actually I’ll bet you might find a difference between the brain of reformers and the brain of teachers. Reformers don’t seem to give a damn about what is best for kids and of course teachers dedicate their professional (and often their personal) lives to them. Not all brains process emotion and empathy in the same fashion, and some barely do it at all (psycho-paths and socio-paths). Might be an interesting study to look at brain scans of the amygdala of a representative selection of both groups. Do a brain scan and ask appropriate questions and see whose brain lights up the most.

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