The Main Premise of TSVOTEP

When journalists ask for a summary of TSVOTEP, I say, “It’s based on the premise that, until we define what it means to be educated, we won’t be able to improve education.”

Several of the reporters have responded with, “That makes sense.”

When I state the same premise to education administrators and professors, however, the reaction is a big yawn. As I explained in the earlier post about the book’s audience, members of these groups are not interested in discussing what it means to be educated.

Administrators are not interested because they are trapped in our current model of education. They are trapped in the sense that, when they accept supervisory positions, they implicitly agree that public schools and school districts should be governed politically, and organized in bureaucratic hierarchy (the second and fourth elements of our current model). Therefore, their job is to enforce local, state and federal policies, not to challenge them. We understand this agreement because we know that administrators who challenge local, state or federal policies are regarded as not being “team players.” They might even be fired.

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