Monday, August 5, 2013

The different kind of education reformers

The megalomaniac has delusional fantasies of power, relevance, or omnipotence because they continually confuse wealth with understanding and knowledge. Since they are rich they believe they have be the smartest person in the room. They believe teachers are both lazy and stupid because if they weren’t they would be rich too and since teachers aren’t rich they believe teachers can’t possibly understand the nuances of, well teaching.

The self-promoters care mainly about advancing themselves in the national spotlight. I say mainly because if they make a buck along the way then that would be great too. They not the message are what’s important and they aren’t above massaging facts, manipulating data or using self-serving numbers to advance themselves. They are slightly different from narcissists who actually believe they are infallible, because the self-promoter just wants us to believe it.

The sociopath is often well liked because of their charm and high charisma, but they don’t actually care about parents’ teachers and students. They think only of themselves and often blame others for the things that they do. They have a complete disregard for rules and lie and manipulate constantly. They don’t feel guilt or learn from experience because their message utterly and completely defines them. 

The true believer see the school choice movement like a religion and they cannot be swayed by evidence, studies or facts. To them charter schools, home schooling and vouchers are like heaven and public school teachers, especially union public school teachers and the schools they teach at, are well you know. Reasonable people can have reasonable disagreements; these people however have replaced reason with faith they some might call it willful ignorance.  

The profiteer is often your hedge fund operator, real estate mogul and serial charter school operator, you know the person that opens one failed charter school after another. In a way the most honest of education reformer as there motives are pure, profit. They are like the arms dealer who sells the gun and bullet but is able to sleep at night by reasoning they didn’t pull the trigger.