Teach & Serve V, No. 35
The Greater Fool
April 1, 2020
It seems to me to refer to those people who are radicals, who are undaunted by conventional wisdom, who are fearless.
It is April Fools Day. Obviously.
I run hot and cold on April Fools Day. This year, in light of what the world is dealing with and how life has been interrupted for most and irrevocably changed for many, is definitely a colder year… but, perhaps, it’s a year I should lean into some frivolity. We will see how the day goes…
Some years, I revel in light pranking and wordplay and, some years, I completely let the day pass me by without notice. At a prior job, one of my responsibilities was editing our weekly staff newsletter and, within the offerings of my colleagues, I would embed harmless untruths to see if anyone was reading or paying attention to what was being said. It was fun, harmless stuff.
Today – even in light of what we are confronting (perhaps because of what we are confronting) – I got to thinking about the term “the Greater Fool” to which I was first exposed on Aaron Sorkin’s HBO series The Newsroom.
The Greater Fool is an economic term which I understand to refer to someone who is willing to take a risk against all logic and odds, to a person who goes out on the edge and jumps into an unknown fate, to a person who stares into the future and walks confidently forward.
It seems to me to refer to those people who are radicals, who are undaunted by conventional wisdom, who are fearless. We need those who are willing to stand in the gaps, to let people deride them, to say the right thing at the right time. We need those who challenge convention wisdom and bust up the room. We need those who speak truth to power.
Now more than ever, we need them.
In education, in order to move our profession, forward we need greater fools. To become better schools, we need to listen to them. To become better for our students, we need to often turn our backs to conventional wisdom, to the knowledge of the collective and to the manner in which we’ve always done things. We have to embrace a future we do not know.
We have to have greater fools.
Today, on April Fools Day, I salute all the greater fools with whom I’ve journeyed and thank them for their wild aspirations.
And, frankly, I hope to one day be one.