The Beginning
Our schools are fucking broken, and we need to talk about it.
No, it isn’t your fault, any more than it is mine. We are the teachers, administrators, parents, students, taxpayers, and we are all just pieces on the board. While not our fault, we are each complicit in this system of schooling that betrays learning. It is the system that’s fucked, and now it is up to the individuals to fix it.
If you are looking for carefully worded, professional literature providing rational approaches to education system reform, you should point your clicky finger elsewhere. Diyploma is the weed, the dandelion, jutting out of the well-manicured lawn of scholarly text and fully-formed education theory.
Movements that inspire whole system reform begin with a loud “fuck you” of some sort. Those of us who have any stake at all in the advancement of our schools (which is all of us) have uttered these words, even if under our breath. It is time to openly discuss those “fuck you” feelings, and develop them into micro-practices that we can each employ to maximize disruption and create a groundswell of support for actual learning.
This might be a good place to pause and acknowledge that this is never meant as an ad hominem “fuck you.” Finding ways to believe that the individuals in our schools are operating with the best of intentions is critical to progressing toward impactful change. This may not be your preferred choice of language, but sharp language can evoke strong feeling. It’s OK to feel offended. It might even be necessary.
So in an exercise that is at once cathartic and highly intellectual, I’d like to launch by extending a full-throated “fuck you” to...
...a perverse obsession with standards and outcomes identified only because they are easiest to measure and fun for political parties to label and fight about.
...methods of assessment that destroy childhood merely for the sake of establishing hard data. And double-fuck you to weaponizing this data to establish cause for funneling local, state, federal, and philanthropic money to crisis profiteers for shit that we know won’t actually work.
...grading practices. Is there a greater natural enemy to learning?
...institutional structures from bygone eras that have been inherited and sustained over hundreds of years because...well...just because.
...not knowing whether to treat teachers like highly educated professionals or grease-aproned factory workers. In response, we’ve somehow figured out how to meld together the shittiest aspects of each, without granting any of the respect that both deserve.
...the design of a school system that makes all leadership, at all levels, feel and seem like they are sadistic, dark lord worshipping, middle-management bureaucrats ordered to forcibly remove all joy and passion from the learning process.
...making it so difficult to actually discover and appreciate the good in our schools because of all the surrounding bad. When I was a child I swallowed a quarter. We never found that quarter.
This is just a preliminary list, and there is much to unpack here. Let’s talk about it.
I have spent over 15 years working in nearly every type of school setting imaginable. “Rich” schools, “poor” schools, urban schools, rural schools, public, charter, and private. I have been a teacher, a school administrator, and a school system administrator. I have trained and worked alongside teachers, school leaders, and district leaders from over 20 states and several countries. Along the way I have had the privilege to visit and learn from nearly 75 schools.
And I still don’t know shit.
I don’t profess to be an expert, but this isn’t about offering expertise. Let’s reimagine schooling from the ground up. Let’s start from scratch. Let’s have fun and not take ourselves too seriously — even if the work is deadly fucking serious. Let’s share our half-baked ideas and talk about what we can immediately do in our daily lives to make schooling better.
Our schools are fucking broken, and you know it.
What are you going to do about it?