Several times a year we have a gathering of all district employees to prepare us to serve our students better. This session was about “serving the whole child”. Education is trying to replace the family, church and any other traditional source of stability in the culture. Jim Sporleder was our keynote speaker this time and led us another step down the yellow brick road.
He started off with race and class warfare. He made statements that could only be interpreted to mean that minorities and poor people are helpless victims and too limited to deal with life on their own. He then preceded to pontificate about “evidence based research” that supported everything he had to say. The research has been done. It is conclusive. All we need to do now is fall into step and make “Trauma” our key operative. Does Al Gore and his claim that the science of global warming is settled come to mind?
“Evidence based research” is a new buzzword that I began hearing at faculty meetings a few years ago. It sounds powerful because all research should be based on evidence, right? As someone once said, or should have, “There’s evidence, and then there is Evidence.” When you hear about “evidence based research” it is not based on the scientific method. It is based on the Main Stream Media method. You decide where you want to go. Find some people to interview that will reinforce your position. Interview them with carefully chosen questions. Edit the results and present the profound insights it has given you. It is bogus. It is based on anecdotes by people who have an agenda or are in so much pain that they cannot think straight. It is not based on double blind experiments testing a hypothesis.
What was interesting was that when he began to deal with this awesome research, it all seemed to have been done on affluent white children. What happened to our mantra about people of color and economically depressed populations? He then proceeded to show us charts and graphs that were supposed to convince us that he had the answer to all our problems in education and society.
Welcome to the world of modern educational research.
To be continued...
homo unius libri
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Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.