Last Edited: July 25, 2018
FROM A LEARNERS’ VIEW (ALV), educators use an argot that fails to unlock the steps learners use while learning during instruction of lessons. Argot consists of words and phrases that intentionally or unintentionally misdirects attention away from increasing learning promptly and sometimes dramatically, the primary reason education and schooling exist. When strung together, argot of educators appears to form “word salads.” We’ve started compiling a list of the argot of educators and from what that vocabulary directs attention, so it can be studied through experimental empirical research designs.
For example, educators use terms that describe people who don’t learn in schools and attribute this failure to something about the person ( “he can’t learn,” “he’s retarded,” “he’s a second language learner”) rather than to what teachers can do to increase learning of all students to learn every lesson at an internationally acceptable level.
It is unclear why this pattern of speaking and writing persists in spite of over a century of experimental behavioral and social science descriptions of how people learn. Is education argot self-serving, blind acceptance, a political necessity for public support, or something else?
At the same time, the use by educators and their supporters does appear associated with rationing of learning by educators of those enrolled in public school classrooms.