Jerry Springer Comes To Town

Well it's official; RSU #18 has now enter the reality TV zone.  What was once a mildly entertaining farce with a minority of individuals and a majority of emotional rhetoric; has now become a cause celeb for Central Maine with no end in sight.  Gone is any pretense of working for a mutually agreeable solution.  Gone is the pretense of civility.  Gone is the thin veneer of care and concern for fellow parents, teachers, board members, administrators and especially students.  All of this has now been replaced with yelling, tears, outrage, "anonymous letters", conspiracy theories and more ego centric, uncivilized behavior then has been seen in these parts for some time.

And what is the source of all this "strum und drang"?  Why educational change of course.  As has often occurred with the two hundred year march of education in this country, a new methodology of education is being proposed.  There are some salient differences in this present incarnation than what has been proposed in the past.  Methods of data presentation and retention have final found a willing partner in technology.  With advances in the study of meta-cognition (learning how to learn) and wide spread access to large amounts of knowledge through the internet, old methods of transmitting knowledge that could only be applied on a small local level can now be offered to a much larger audience.  The one room school house has now been scaled up, gone digital and global.

This would seem to be the next logical progression in education improvement and even at the most cursory glance would seem to be worth a second and even a third look.  Unfortunately, this approach is seen as assailing a one hundred year old monolith that is safe, comfortable, familiar and unmovable.  We have innovated and improved on every other aspect of human endeavor except in the one area where it would do the most good, education.

In spite of the efforts of some innovate educational thinkers and some truly gifted and motivated education professionals, a fractured, entrenched, broken system of education continues to thwart even the most minor attempts at modernization.  And who are the greatest allies in this battle of past verse present?  Overwhelmed administrators, sub-pare educators, bloated teachers unions, and well intentioned but woefully uninformed parents.  Spice this dysfunctional stew with political rhetoric, schizophrenic application of measurement data and poorly conceived attachment of funding to bad methodology, stir and viola, an education system that actually fails to educate and a set of professional standards that dis-incentivized innovation, risk taking and professional achievement.

Now bring the farcical road show to sleepy central Maine, release into the wild and watch the sparks fly.  There have been missteps on all sides from the beginning and now a well intentioned and potentially valuable educational realignment that could really reach almost every student in the district and improve not just test scores but actual learning, knowledge acquisition, retention and demonstration is in very real danger of falling apart.

How did this happen, you ask?  That is a very good question.  Here is my observation.  There was a very clear and well thought out articulation of the vision and goals.  There was a great amount of good energy and good intentions.  However there was a fatally slow communication plan and an even more fatal rapid initial implementation without great community buy in or opt out options.  Now is the time for full disclosure.  I was on the Leadership Team that was developing these plans and implementation strategies and was all for charging ahead.  That was before I realized or understood the real lack of diffusion of information into the district communities or the depth of opposition no matter how small that would occur.  In truth, I left the Team, unable to fulfill my obligations but confident that the communication plan would be fully realize very soon and a clear and detailed path forward would be clearly articulated and widely disseminated in a short while.

Neither occurred   District administrators and board members were far too busy trying to craft a budget to allow the district to continue to provide just the necessary services.  While they were fighting just to try to maintain the status quo, vital time was lost on the communications front and when there was finally room to breath, it was too late.  The damage had been done and parents that simply needed the slightest excuse to do something with their spare time decided to interpret the broken communication as a deliberate attempt at stonewalling and some forced agenda.  That they didn't understand the context of the situation was immaterial.  These ego maniacal individuals had no desire to understand.  Their comfortable little cocoon appeared to be (incorrectly) in jeopardy and like a pack of white blood cells they attacked.

So here we find ourselves; three years into an implementation that is facing greater opposition from emotion driven parents with a plethora of individual, personal agendas, cherry picking "facts" from dubious sources, engaging in thinly veiled innuendo and personal attacks, feigned "outrage" at a "betrayal of trust" of elected officials, inflating and misinterpreting data presented to them as it suites their purposes and all done in the spot light of social and mainstream media.

And why is any of this a problem?  Well again social media is, as it has increasingly become, one of "the usual suspect".  The joy of instant communication of thought is also the curse.  There was a time when face to face or verbal communication was not only necessary, it was the best way to convey  information.  Because of the time delayed nature of this type of communication, there was an opportunity for reflection and thought.  The value of this can not be overstated.  Instead of instantly transmitting every single random thought that passes through our heads, the lack of social media required us to think, evaluate, filter ourselves.  What was truly important and needed to be conveyed in the limited time available in conversations became the considered focus of these interactions.  Social media has paradoxically removed the social aspect of personal communication.  Social mores that were once more studiously followed in personal interaction are now gone, replaced by the comfortable semi-anonymity of the internet.

What could have been a civil, valuable exchange of information, ideas, options and alternatives has now degenerated into a giant sandbox fight with "adults" (supposedly) playing the parts of five year olds.  And sadly, as all to often happens, the kids are the ones left holding the bag.  There is no knowing (at this point) how this Shakespearian tragedy will play out.  One can only hope that something good can be salvaged from this self-inflicted debacle.  The ray of hope for any rational individual is continued, constructive interaction between teachers, students and parents with all of these stakeholders working together toward a common goal of true knowledge and a future of limitless opportunities.

We can only hope....and laugh :)