In terms of the professional world, no occupation re-writes its jargon with such wild abandon as education. I do not mean adds to its jargon, by-the-way. I mean changes it, reformulates it, restructures it.
Though I do not know how one accurately quantifies such things, I am fairly certain I am on the top of anyone’s scale of measurement of a person’s fanaticism for Star Trek.
I am more than a fan. Trivia and facts about Star Trek – the shows, the movies, the books, the podcasts – are deeply rooted in my mind. One wonders what thoughts I could think if my brain were not populated with episode titles and quotes and guest stars and alternate reality theories about the crew of the Enterprise and their comrades. I love the show in all of its incarnations (the Original Series and Deep Space Nine being tied in my mind as the best televised versions with Strange New Worlds coming on strong) but I came into adulthood watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. It is not overstatement to say I never missed an episode.
My wife and I have recently engaged (pun intended) in a rewatch of the seven seasons of TNG.
When you watch something as many times as I have watched that show, you begin to notice certain cracks in the veneer. Great episodes of the show are great. Good ones are good and bad ones tend to suffer from the same problems which repeated themselves over the course of the show’s entire run. I will not enumerate them all here (that is a subject for a different column in my blogosphere) but I will note that I was thinking of one repeated flaw just this week when my wife – a terrific and talented high school teacher who has been wowing her students for over 20 years – and I were talking about professional development opportunities.
Star Trek: The Next Generation, when it got in trouble would often get in trouble because of what the cast came to call “techno-babble” or, more to the point, “Trekno-babble.” Techno-babble referred to high science and speculative concepts and long lines of dialogue about technology which, while it typically had some basis in fact, sounded simply fantastical. As the show progressed, techno-babble became as central to episodes as plots and characters. For the actors, it was hard to say. Techno-babble often seemed to illustrate a lack of creativity. If the TNG characters could just “techno-babble” their way out of a problem in a fashion that audiences could not quite follow, where was the dramatic tension?
See? I know way too much about Star Trek.
But back to my wife. “All professions have their jargon” she said. She really said this. She is smart and throws out words like “jargon” all the time. “All professions have their jargon but can you think of any profession that changes theirs as much as teaching does? Every time you turn around, it’s some new edu-babble.”
“Edu-babble.” I love it. That word should trend.
I have a degree in secondary education. I have served my vocation of high school education for over 30 years and taught hundreds of classes and thousands of students. I attended all manner and variety of professional development opportunities – some great, some not, most somewhere in between. I have directed all manner of professional development opportunities for others – some great, some not, most somewhere in between. I have read hundreds of thousands of words on the subject of teaching, given talks and lectures and written articles about it, thought about it with passion. And, of education and the jargon we teachers and administrators use within it, I can safely say this: my wife is right.
In terms of the professional world, no occupation re-writes its jargon with such wild abandon as education. I do not mean adds to its jargon, by-the-way. I mean changes it, reformulates it, restructures it.
I do not mean to knock the shared language of education. I do mean to simply point out that our profession changes its language far too readily. Education inspires great thinkers to think great thoughts. Education knows it should change and adapt. Education understands that it has to be studied, evaluated, written about. Thing is, it seems that every few years, the newest innovation in education (and YAY! for innovating! Keep the innovations coming, big thinkers!) is all too often accompanied by words and language that must be decoded and unpacked (cumbersome, friends, cumbersome). If one is not willing to adopt the new language – and now! – one may feel on the outside looking in. When one experiences enough of these cycles, and is told often enough that they are saying it wrong, one stops engaging.
Why do we put the jargon in the way? Why is the edu-babble so important? It is not that there are not excellent new ways of proceeding in education – great practices supported by new research that should be shared and tried and refined – there are wonderful new things to do as educators. It is just that our profession all too often gets tied up in the words, in the edu-babble.
When the edu-babble does not make sense, teachers – short on time, long on work – resent the effort it takes to parse it out. When edu-babble begins to creep into their performance reports and teacher evaluation tools, those very reports and tools can be weakened.
It is not about the words, friends, it is about the concepts the words represent. It is about the ways to help educate kids better. When we get hung up on the language, on getting the words just right, we surely lose the forest for the trees.
I do not want to have to know a secret code to be considered a competent educator.
Beware jargon that stops making sense.
Beware edu-babble.