There will be no “underperforming” schools in Massachusetts, if education officials get their way.
To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure.
Instead of calling these schools “underperforming,” the Board of Education is considering labeling them as “Commonwealth priority,” to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale.
Schools in the direst straits, now known as “chronically underperforming,” would get the more urgent but still vague label of “priority one.”
They must think their administrators, teachers and students aren’t very bright.
I love it when they resort to the use of a euphemism to try to make something seem better than it is. As Shakespeare said: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Or in this case would still stink.
It must be a couple of decades ago now that state colleges began renaming themselves as “universities”. Did they think the general public was stupid? I always assumed so. When I started college in 1961 the University of Missouri did not charge tuition, they said. Instead they had an “incidental fee”. Did they think we were stupid? I always assumed so. A few years ago, living in North Dakota, I learned that the state higher education system was exempt from usual labor laws applying to employers and how they deal with unions. The legislature legally defined the university system as not an employer. At least that’s the way I understood it. Did they think we were stupid? I think the list is never ending if we start looking for examples. Oops, did I say “stupid”. I meant “cognitively challenged”.
Shakespeare was a playwright not a politician. Any competent politician would tell you that it’s better to do something worthless, if that’s all you can do, then to do nothing at all.
I’m sure they’re perfectly well aware that a great many of their administrators, teachers and students aren’t very bright. But it’s not politically correct or, nore importantly, politically helpful to take official note of said deficiencies. After all, a lot of the people running these underperforming schools into the ground are also members in good standing of various public employee unions that always give generously to you know who.
Stupid things like this can actually work. When I was at Ohio State, they had remedial math courses that had been institutionalized so completely that students were given credit for them. In fact, you could get 12 units for completing about half of 8th grade algebra, because they had taken a remedial class called Math 101, and divided it into 4 classes, 101.a.01, 101.a.02, 101.b.01, and 101.b.02. I was told that teaching one of these classes was like watching the hour hand on a clock.
Eventually Ohio State decided that they’d like to reverse the trend and become better instead of worse, so they announced that you could only get 6 units of credit for the 101 sequence. This caused demonstrations by the stupidest of the students, and so the university responded by saying that you could get 12 units, as before, but you needed an extra 6 units to graduate if you did this. This placated the demonstrators…
Our Bonzen in the State House think we’re all stupid. Considering that we continue to elect these theves and poltroons, I can’t really conclude they’re wrong.
Hee hee.
Except that the change makes it a lot easier to take those classes *AND* be credited with enough units/quarter to qualify as a full-time student. Consider being told you had to take 18 units for two quarters. Then the university relents and says that you can take 15 for each of those two quarters, but then can to make up the last 6 in an extra quarter after the normal 4 years. I’d like to have the option. Especially if I’m working to pay my way through school *or* on a sports team and am majoring in football/baseball/basketball.
-Mark Roulo
hardlyb: I find it not unlikely that a college student who requires four class sections to learn about half of 8th grade algebra is stupid.