Instead? We’re told these hideous NAEP results ought not to be taken too seriously. There’s a vague nod towards the importance of “listening” to school administrators and the kids we’re not educating. There’s also a call for more money for “mental health, staffing and academic resources”—whatever that entails. (For what it’s worth, it sure doesn’t look like big new outlays for mental health have helped arrest declines in student learning.) And there’s a nebulous platitude about helping students “thrive.”
Forget thriving—huge numbers of America’s 17-year-olds aren’t even learning to read or do math.
Look, I’ve always taught my students and assistants that precision in language, whether in writing or speech, is crucial, because it forces us to think clearly. Throat-clearing, gobbledygook, and sloganeering are the enemies of clear thought.
Unfortunately, if there’s anything that education leaders, researchers, and advocates have perfected, it’s throat-clearing and sloganeering. Heaven forbid we talk frankly or bluntly about achievement, failure, or ineptitude. Instead, we get lots of formless yawping about “future-ready skills,” “collective wellness,” “embodied learning,” and learning that “puts humanity first.”
The NASSP missive inspired me to start tallying examples of vacuous edu-speak from that day’s inbox. You don’t need to go hunting for it—it’s everywhere. Trehaus, an early childhood education organization, sent me an email promoting their emphasis on “future-ready skills.” A flack for Harmony Healthcare pitched its mental health services while cheerfully relating that students are “embracing unconventional coping tactics” like “’bathroom camping’ (sneaking away for a quiet mental reset).” You know, kids have hidden in the bathroom during class for decades. We used to call it “cutting class.” I mean, “bathroom camping”?! C’mon, man.
An email announcing a new issue of Phi Delta Kappan touted an article on “Sustaining the Special Education Workforce: Gen Z Edition,” which closes by urging “a collective wellness framework within teacher preparation programs and school settings.” Another PDK article, “Helping Next-Gen Educators Cross the Teaching Tightrope,” casually explains that Gen Z teachers are “deeply committed to social justice” and “culturally responsive teaching that celebrates diversity and promotes empathy.” This caricature may or may not be generally true (narrator: “It is not.”), but such pablum is assuredly a lot easier to spout than asking hard questions like where special ed is falling short or whether these new teachers are good teachers.
I got a back-to-school pitch explaining how “RealSense and Prowise MOVE are enabling gesture-based, embodied learning, which shifts the classroom from passive to active engagement . . . so that students learn by moving, seeing, and hearing, not just reading or writing.” This might be fine if students were already reading. But we know that most do not; and the NAEP results suggest that many cannot. What did the pitch propose in lieu of reading? “Embodied learning” as a “future-ready” way to “make classrooms more interactive and adaptable for diverse learners.”
There was a pitch for a forthcoming book by New York Times bestselling author Tiffany Hammond, which asked if I’m interested in writing about “neurodivergence in the classroom and how inclusiveness in learning puts humanity first.”
