EDUCATORS USE AN ARGOT that misdirects attention away from increasing learning, the primary reason education and schooling exist. People associate argot with thieves and other criminals who use words and language patterns in ways that conceal something from the general public.
Over the past half century, educators have adopted a similar manner of speaking to discuss schools, teaching, lessons, salaries, funding, etc. They argue for free lunches, ethnic sensitivity, unlimited funding without accountability, and other politically charged topics without relating them to changes in learning.
They use terms that describe people who don’t learn in schools and attribute this failure to the person rather than to what teachers can do to increase leaning of all students to learn every lesson at a internationally acceptable level.
It’s unclear the extent to which this pattern of speaking is self-serving blind acceptance or political necessity for public support.
As important as such services are in human terms, they do not necessarily meet criteria for increasing learning. That qualifies educators’ words and patterns to be examined as argot, not jargon or neutral idioms.
When viewed as argot, they conceal results from over a century of experimental behavioral and social science research that demonstrate ways teachers can use to accelerate, increase, and deepen learning promptly and sometimes dramatically.
This technical-scientific approach to teaching and learning is out of fashion with teachers unions. It’s a literacy of education that has dropped from the desks of educators and their supporters, including those in public and private universities and funding agencies.
This technical-scientific literacy provides the stems of ways to assess and compare teacher and school performance at the lesson level with results of that instruction. It contrasts with the vocabulary that emphasizes so called humanistic words and patterns of describing what people do to learn.
Educators seem to believe that they share the truth about education with their special vocabulary. They mistakenly accept their argot as professional jargon that’s useful for discussions in teachers’ circles.
The result is that few teachers can tell anyone in or out of schools accurately and precisely which words, actions, or other prompts in a 50 minute lesson increase the odds that all learners in class will learn that lesson.
Nor can they say how they could have offered that same lesson in 30 minutes or even 10 minutes with all of the same students learning from the shorter instruction.
Arguably, educators’ argot rations learning in public schools to students with certain personal and demographic attributes. Normal curve distributions of results demonstrate this fact. Such rationed learning is unnecessary.
Rationing results from educators misdirecting attention to what educators do routinely. This has merit, but not necessarily for increasing learning.
Educators’ argot directs attention away from literature and practices that result in 9 or more out of 10 students learning each lesson that meets national standards. All this and probably for less cost to learners and to taxpayers.
Related Reading
- A Learners’ View (ALV) of Learning
- Teachers Do the Hokey Pokey
- The Stimulating Classroom Fallacy of Teaching
Last Edited: 10-15-14
Schools, LPH, are not free. Nothing is free, said WiseOne eons ago.
Everyone pays something to participate in schools. Students pay with time, clothing, and other personal resources like effort to get there; some also pay for pencils, backpacks, notebooks and other school supplies, sometimes from money that would otherwise feed family members. Teachers pay the same toll for themselves, but they get money and promises of more benefits far beyond what students get.
Yes, social critics have opined and theorized for almost a century that public schools in the U.S. sort students into groups with varying probabilities of life styles. That's how public schools work, that's their use in society. Those from a family legacy of education go into one probability group, the most ambitious go into another, etc. JT Rowling captured this image with the Sorting Hat ceremoniously assigning students to various Houses in "Harry Potter".
The purpose, though, of public schooling has been and still is to increase learning, so all students are prepared to participate in the intellectual, political, as well as introduced into the economy of society, in that order.
Educators, by using their argot, direct their own attention and the attention of others away from the mandate that they increase learning. They do not do what has been shown can be done to increase learning, nor do they use vocabulary that teachers use who accelerate, increase, and deepen learning promptly and sometimes dramatically.
Without increases in learning, social function claims victory over purpose. That's arguably not good. It's the triumph of anti-intellectualism and tyranny of the majority, a victory given away by educators whether by ignorance, belief, politics, or for other reasons.
Educators have signed contracts, given their person pledge on their honor to increase learning and to resist social forces against those increases even when it requires more accurate and precise vocabulary and practices based on a technical-scientific literacy. The fight against ignorance and deceit remains honorable.
Let's get pedantic. Yes, things are what they are, including that there is no natural "law of identity." It's a myth and so is that "society" gives students the freedom to pass or fail a class. No one knows where such choices come from. They just exist. Politicians and romantics refer to them as freedom. Society is a technical term referring to clusters of social institutions such as education, which is the only institution that gives priority to learning, whether called socialization, academic performance, or development of personal discipline. Teachers, in the name of society, pledge their honor to challenge and manage choices of students so they become learners who fit into society. The language of teachers is a way to track how teachers exercise their honor. From this view, people who want students to fail are not teachers nor honorable if they signed a contract to teach.