South Park, the crude, offensive and occasionally brilliant cartoon series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone has been poking its finger in the eyes of the complacent and self-righteous since 1997.
The show follows the surreal adventures of four potty-mouthed elementary school boys living in the euphonious Colorado town of South Park.
I’m a policy wonk with a bit of a juvenile streak and I’ve been watching South Park for years. One of my favourite episodes (number 217) takes on a problem familiar to business and government and at the same time explains why underwear seems to vanish between washings—it’s all the fault of underpants gnomes.
The relevant
segment of the show has the boys tracking the underpants-stealing gnomes to their underground lair. When asked to explain why they’re raiding underwear drawers across the United States, the gnomes outline their three-phase plan. Phase 1 is “collect underpants”; Phase 2 is, well they’re not quite sure; Phase 3 is “profit.” Even if the gnomes have no idea how collecting underpants will ultimately make them money, they have absolute faith in their plan.
The episode was broadcast in 1998 at the height of the dot-com bubble. When the bubble finally burst a couple of years later, it became clear that many of the businesses that had generated soaring stock prices immediately before their collapse had been operating using the underpants gnomes’ model. They had no way of successfully monetizing the services they were offering and, absent profit, went broke.
When I look at the formation of education policy around the world, I can’t help but see underpants gnomes at work. Every jurisdiction has similar policy tools at its disposal: curriculum, testing, legislation, accountability and governance schemes. Of course, every jurisdiction wants to improve student results (however that is defined). The problem is that the link between the two—that is, between policy tools and student achievement—is tenuous at best. It is the educational version of the underpants gnomes’ Phase 2.
What is so often forgotten is that, in education, Phase 2 involves teachers. No bureaucrat or politician anywhere has ever taught a student anything: the hard, hands-on work of public education is the responsibility of teachers. Would-be reformers must remember that unless their schemes support and facilitate teachers in the classroom, they will all be for naught. Teachers, too, must recognize that they have a responsibility to take advantage of every opportunity to actively participate in the formation of the policy that will govern their professional practice.
In this issue of the
ATA News, we report on Alberta Education’s most recent consultation process, which arises out of
Inspiring Action on Education. I encourage you to visit the engage.education.alberta.ca website and to participate in the online dialogue about the future of education in Alberta. If teachers fail to provide advice and direction to policy makers, students will be short changed, and teachers, like South Park’s poor little Kenny, run the risk of being “squished like a bug” by well-intentioned but misguided initiatives tumbling down from above.
I welcome your comments—contact me at dennis.theobald@ata.ab.ca.
