Everyone is an expert in education. The fact that virtually everyone has attended school sometime in one’s lifetime qualifies us as the judge and jury for the schools. That is not to say that we shouldn’t have an opinion and shouldn’t be concerned about our children‘s schools, but it doesn’t make us an expert. It is tantamount to saying that because I have had two operations over the past few years that I am able to do critical commentary on thoracic surgery. I have the right to make suggestions, but I should leave surgery to the doctors. In fact, in today’s screwed-up world it seems the farther one gets from actually teaching in the classroom, the more credibility and status one derives.
What is more ironic than listening to an entrenched high echelon administrator lecturing a group of teachers on classroom practice. Just once I would like to have a room full of highly paid administrators packed together on uncomfortable folding chairs in a warm room lectured by real teachers who are walking the walk and talking the talk. Even worse is the troubling current trend of districts being forced to contract with outside agencies, or, as one of my colleagues calls it--the “peddlers”, who help schools restructure. I am reminded by the famous Reagan quote that said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Most schools could do without the “help” they receive from the peddlers.
One of the true confounding miracles of nature is the production and use of royal jelly by worker bees to cultivate and sustain a new queen bee for the hive. The goo, which is secreted by glands in the heads of the worker bees, is fed to a generic larva, transforming it into the huge egg laying creature which anchors and replenishes the colony for years. It would seem that some administrators are like that. After years of walking in the same halls, teaching the same students, and using the same bathrooms as regular teachers, the very act of “promotion” to a higher paid, non-teaching position suddenly infuses them with extraordinary abilities, a quasi-omniscience, that qualifies them to make curricular decisions for their former colleagues, often without consulting their former colleagues. They become uber-smart overnight. Part of the morphology is the attendant “puffing-up” of personality which separates them from the mundane workers. Is this true of every one of them? No. But it happens often enough to cause a snicker, raised eyebrow, or a shrug of desperation from the troops in the trenches. The result of making decisions without proper input unfortunately wastes time, depletes precious funding, and almost always alienates the very staff who must carry out the directives.
It is not an out-of-body revelation to realize that the real answers to education’s tough questions are not solely in the domain of enlightened administrators, state department appointees, and self-proclaimed experts. Try asking a teacher from time to time. You may not get the answer you wanted or were looking for, but more than likely you will get the unwelcome truth. We desperately need a truth that the peddlers and royal jelly users cannot provide.
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