Did You Know...

Calling all plain-speaking, fad-free teachers and other battlers against bad language: Joe Williams, guest-blogging at Eduwonk, has put together a list of pet educrat words and phrases for a new drinking game: Get out your blenders and drink up!

Hat tip: Kimberly Swygert, who notes her favorites: “Differentiated instruction,” “Self-directed learning” and “Higher order thinking.”

I’d add “constructive dialoguing” and “impactful” and “integrating multiple intelligences.”

Blechh.

Update: Reader Andy B. adds…

Speaking of jargon, one of my favorites was one I heard at my step son’s middle school. How about “module?”

Sitting at the back of the cafeteria while the principal and some program developers explained the new math program I kept hearing about “rubrics” and “modules.” Never one to keep my mouth shut I tried to get their attention quietly so I could ask what they meant. That didn’t work so I had to stand up and loudly interrupt from the back.

We know that by rubric they meant “a plan.” (My 1957 OED defines rubric as one of those big, fancy letters at the beginning of a chapter in very old books.) But do you know what they meant by module? Do you? A module is a book! These idiots who were teaching my son were/are so into their jargon that they can’t even call a book a book. And this was in front of a bunch of parents who they were obviously trying to intimidate with their high-falutin talk. Explaining but not really explaining, more like trying to obscure the preponderance of BS in the program.

Needless to say I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice when I requested that for the parents’ benefit they call things by their names instead of making up new words for them.

Oh, by the way, after 3 years in that math program my step son still doesn’t know his multiplication tables!