Educational Quicksand

I know it's Friday and I'm supposed to do another installment of my funnies, but I have a beef. It's the Friday before our thanksgiving break, but all I can think about right now are management issues in education. Since I'm sure these issues are mirrored in industry I will simply label them as management issues in the general sense. However, I will speak from particular perspective that is education.

I had a group of progressive political science professors at TCU, but everyone's favorite professor in the department was Dr. Riddelsberger. I hope he is still there for the current generation of political science students to enjoy. He specialized in American politics and methadology. He had a way of putting things in simple terms that I still recall to this day. He talked about bureaucracy like a car driving in the snow. As long as you kept a steady rate of speed everything was fine. If you tried to stop, speed up, or turn then the car would go off the road. The same was true of bureaucracy he said. I wish more principals and administrators took his class.

I have been a part of too many campuses that have made the same mistake. They come a few students shy of their goal of recognized or exemplary. So, instead of doing the logical thing (staying the course and making a few small changes), they put the pedal to the metal and go all out. They change everything around in an effort to really get things over the top. The ending result is what I like to call educational quicksand. Luckily, we don't have quicksand around these parts, but I have been told it is nasty business. Supposedly, the more you struggle the faster you sink. Thus, the analogy is apt.

Education is fundamentally a human endeavor. You can have the best curriculum, the best campus plan, and best plans for success, but people must implement that plan. One principal told us that if we weren't going to get out and help push that we needed to at least walk beside the wagon. We all knew the wagon was going over the cliff, but he was the last to know. The plan was too good to fail I guess. The problem is when people decide they don't want to be a part of that plan. They decide that because they had experienced success before and were not consulted on the new plan.

Of course, I don't want to go into detail at the moment, by my current campus is in the midst of a similar mistake. All the plans in the world forget the other human element: the children. Sometimes, the best you can is all you can do. As the expression goes, you can't get blood out of rock. I've always preferred the notion that you can't make Filet Mignon out of SPAM. Good or bad, incremental change is the best way to go. It's also good to keep in mind that people can give only so much before they get fed up.