Dear Firearm Safety Guy
I’m glad you are a longtime safety instructor and no doubt my son will learn a lot from you. However, please don’t take my mentioning that I am a public school teacher as an invitation to start lecturing me on what’s wrong with Common Core or graduation requirements or….. really anything on the topic. You see, we are not equals in this discussion.
Here is what I mean.
Me:
· BA in Childhood Development
· Masters in Educational Technology
· 15 Years Teaching; the last 5 teaching Math/Science exclusively.
· Roughly 60 hours this previous year doing after-hours trainings on education-related issues.
· Education-Related books I am reading (on my own time) or have finished reading just within the past 6 months:
-12 Essential Scientific Concepts (a 12-hour lecture series, actually)
-Naked Statistics
-How to Not Be Wrong
-The Smartest Kids in the World
And you, Firearm Safety Guy? Where does your deep knowledge on educating Americans for life in the 21st Century come from? In addition to teaching kids to avoid the explody end of the gun, here is your Curriculum Vitae:
-Your daughter graduated from high school about 15 years ago and…
-You’re married to a schoolteacher.
So…. this somehow means I (a mere poseur) could somehow benefit from your words of wisdom.
Nope!
I have training, facts and experience on my side. You have opinions and anecdotes. (Newsflash! The plural of “anecdote” is “anecdotes”-not “facts”. )
Dunning-Kruger Effect. Please look it up.
And so, next time you feel the need to do some mansplaining to another clueless teacher, please ask whether your expertise comes from this mind-set:
A) I went to school 10, 20, 30, 40+ years ago. I turned out fine so why change a good-enough system?
Here is my standard answer, Jethro.
1) Your school was preparing you for life in the 20th Century. My students will be living/working in the 21st Century. You might have noticed that our world has changed in the past 10, 20, 30, 40+ years. Skills required then are no longer required now. Skills required now were unheard of then. Not sure what the future will call for but I am positive that thinking critically and being able to communicate that thinking will be necessary.
2) Would you want other professions to accept “good enough”? How about your dentist? Can he stick with what worked at the start of this his career decades ago? I mean, it worked okay, didn’t it? You survived your trips to the dentist so why bother with all that new fangled technologies and procedures?
Ledger books worked fine for my dad’s accountant. Why complicate things up with this spreadsheet thing?
3) Final point on whether you are just an all around know-it-all, OR you just don’t think much of the teaching profession, especially the parts which are overwhelmingly female. (Parents are just so much more comfortable sharing their opinions with elementary school teachers versus high school teachers.)
Here is a little litmus test for yourself. Have you said or even feel the need to say something like the following:
Ah, you are an accountant, huh? I just gotta say that I am not a big fan of “fair value accounting”.
Or, maybe something like this?
Ms. Smith here is a pharmacist. I was just explaining to her that the “unit –dose system” is the wrong way to go.
No? You have never felt the need to explain the facts of life to your local optometrist, clergy, nurse, audiologist or architect? Ever?? Ever wonder why? Why you feel qualified to lecture others on this one single profession?
I know the answer but you’ll have to figure this one out on your own. Maybe you can use some “critical thinking skills” but I doubt you will. Either way, I don’t give a rip. Spare me and all teachers you encounter your uneducated, illogical, and fact-free opinions. We don’t care what you think and all have much better things to do.
Yours,
A 5th Grade Teacher