July 27, 2008
TECHNOS QUARTERLY Summer 1999 Vol. 8 No. 2
Message on Our Failures to Reform
By George Hall
Education
is an old Shibboleth among us.
A tribal Blessing carrying an ancient Curse.
All must Revere it. Demand it. Support it.
Until perforce it has to be Defined.
Then Coherence shatters. Into a Congeries of raging Babbles.
Pragmatists and Intellectuals part company.
Elitists scorn Egalitarians.
Fundamentalists excoriate Secularism.
Traditionalists view with Alarm.
Educationists point with Pride.
The Testing nodes overheat. Trying to Prove this. Or that. Or even Discredit
all.
But never is the fracas fiercer than when it erupts from a Threat of Change.
Doing something New. Or merely Different.
Like using the Telemedia. Sensibly or not.
The warring factions are apt to coalesce.
Around an old Conundrum converging
quite non sequitur from a primal Principle averring that
More of the Same Is Always the Best Reform.
Whatever Education IS must be left as it WAS.
Let glitzy Futurity become a quixotic synonym
for cosy Retrogression. And the obverse too.
Don't dare meddle with the muddle.
Instead apostrophize Fate
when Failure defies us.
Leaving too many Learners Deprived.
Overlooked. And Abandoned.
Our own Lesson flawed by mindless drill.
Like Sisyphus moving the rock uphill.
Raleigh, North Carolina
October 4, 1998
Illustration by Joe Lee