I ask only
because I’ve come to one conclusion: Maybe
we weren’t listening.
To me, it’s
clear that America is caught in a gigantic echo chamber.
An Election Day Clue
At 4:30 on
the afternoon of Election Day, I was driving home from the airport. I was
listening to the news, and all reports were predicting a Hillary Clinton
landslide. At the end of one segment, the broadcaster mentioned, almost
casually, that 45 percent of those asked refused to participate in exit polling.
I arrived
home, walked into the house, and told my wife, Bonnie that Donald Trump would
win.
A New ‘Silent Majority’
Here’s my
sense of what happened: I think Trump supporters, or voters just leaning towards
Trump, were afraid to say who they supported. Why? Because Hillary’s supporters
would rip them apart! They were afraid to say anything – especially to the exit
pollsters.
A Big Problem for Education
I think we
have a similar problem in American public education.
For 33 years,
since “A Nation at Risk”
was released in 1983, we’ve been talking about school reform. Politicians talk
about it. We all talk about it. Yet nothing gets done. (For those of you who may
have forgotten, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform” was
considered a landmark report which concluded that American schools were falling
behind other countries. It touched off a wave of local, state and federal discussions
about reform efforts.
We talk about
reform, but when it comes time to do
anything, resistance from the educational establishment stops it from happening.
Vouchers, opt-out, charters – you can go down the list. The establishment has
thwarted almost every attempt.
Why? Because
educators live in our own echo chamber. We know each other, we talk with each
other. We mostly think the same way.
Start Listening
The
educational establishment is right where the leadership of both political
parties were before the country voted. No one was listening. Is there a
lesson here? Sure. Start listening. Really
listening.
Some of you
know this story, but it’s illuminating: I like to jog
– it helps keep me centered – so I start almost every day running on a
treadmill for about 40 minutes. For the first 20 minutes, I watch MSNBC. For
the last 20 minutes, I watch Fox News. It’s amazing how each channel so
differently reports the same news event! They clearly don’t talk with each
other!
So here’s my
advice: Start talking to people who are not like you. Start talking to the
other side. Listen—really listen—to
the other side. Don’t instantly write them off.
Finally, a
word of warning. Most people don’t want to get out of their echo chambers. It’s
hard. It’s uncomfortable. It makes you wince sometimes.
But if we as educators
can’t – or won’t – find a way out, we are in danger of losing public education
for good.
Just ask
Hillary Clinton supporters.