Thursday, March 10, 2022

Armchair Educators

In A second opinion from Seth Godin's Blog, Seth Godin states,

“By all means, ask a second doctor before you get surgery. But in just about every public setting, the comments aren’t going to be particularly helpful.”

It seems lately that everyone is second-guessing the education system but the ones doing the guessing are not educators.

Everyone thinks they know the answer to improving the education system but no one is asking the educators.

It reminds me of people we call back seat drivers who think they can drive better than the person actually driving. Or the armchair quarterbacks who think they can play football better than the guy on TV who is actually playing football.

The only problem with this in education is that the decision-makers are listening to these people instead of asking the ones who are actually doing the teaching!

Sure, there are many great ideas out there for an ideal setting in an ideal world but we are working with real children in real situations. Every school and its community are different and educators need to teach the children that attend their school There is no one size that fits every school. Those who are not educators can not see this because they are not in the field working there.

I wish voters would insist that those running for school board spend a minimum of one month helping full days in a school. I truly believe this would change a lot of things that are decided for that school. It is easy to make decisions if you have never had to help in the classroom and think about logistics or federal and state laws/regulations.

How do you feel about armchair educators? Please share.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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