Mediocre Teacher + Jargon = Modern Teaching

I read with interest reports on education from other countries, especially if those countries have advanced farther into this giant experiment we now called public education. I look with interest on how progressive they have become, at how modern they have become, at how poor the education has become, and at how stupid the students have become.

For example, I just read this post and took the title and main ideas from it.

One aspect of education that has always pissed me off is the extreme reliance on jargon in the education world. Because teachers study only education (high school to education degree with few credits in other subjects in college to student teaching to education), they become very specialized in it, and forget how to teach math, English, spelling, reading, social studies, gym, music, or anything else. Instead, many teachers cloak their extreme ignorance of real knowledge behind made-up words that supposedly mean stuff- they turn insular and defensive and use alien languages to hide the fact that they are morons.

Not all teachers do this- there are good teachers out there. The truth is that the good teachers are the ones that don't use the jargon, the ones that didn't get indoctrinated in their education colleges, and who still know what the real world is like. They transcend the education world, and don't get sucked into it.

For example, in England, spelling isn't spelling any more- it has become “decoding” and “encoding”. A teacher now will spend time learning about these concepts and mastering what decoding and encoding is, instead of learning how to teach spelling. They will teach children how to decode and encode print, but forget that they are supposed to be teaching students how to read.

Bad teachers will rigorously apply the rules handed down by ministers and officials to groups of baffled children, and stick rigidly to any script they are given, carefully ticking all the little boxes of jargon that they are supposed to do, and it is the kids who suffer the whole time.

My administrator asked me in my last review if I was designing my lessons to appeal to a broad selection of learners of different intelligences and whose learning styles are differentiated. I think I am- I have the highest scores compared to other teachers of the same subjects on our common tests, I have the highest AP scores in the district, and I have students transferring into my class. Do I really care what different intelligences are? Not really. What exactly is a differentiated learner? Not quite sure.

In a way, I feel I am a better teacher because I reject the jargon the state preaches at me.