During his distinguished
tenure as the United States Secretary of Education, Dr. William Bennett coined the
term “blob” to describe the people in the education system who work outside
of classrooms,
soaking up resources and resisting reform without contributing to student
achievement (e.g. superintendents, district staff and school board members). In The Educated Child the “blob” was described:
The public school
establishment is one of the most stubbornly intransigent forces on the
planet. It is full of people and
organizations dedicated to protecting established programs and keeping things
just the way they are. Administrators
talk of reform even as they are circling the wagons to fend off change, or
preparing to outflank your innovation… To understand many of the problems
besetting U.S. schools, it is necessary to know something about the education
establishment christened as the “blob” by one of the authors (Bennett, Finn,
and Cribb, The Educated Child, 1999, p. 628).
I feel thoroughly
inadequate to “improve” upon Dr. Bennett's terminology, but I am a bit younger than he and just bold (indeed, foolish) enough to offer a
modern “improvement” by suggesting the “blob” be renamed the “Borg” - a term borrowed from Star Trek, the Next Generation.
For those of you not quite nerdy enough to be a Trekkie, you can learn
more about the Borg here. In the world of the Borg,
“you will be assimilated” and “resistance is futile.” I would include teacher union activists and legislators among those “assimilated” by the “Borg” in addition to those identified by Dr.
Bennett when describing the blob.
Unlike the Borg of Star Trek who use a cybernetic connection to plug the assimilated into a system of
connected thinking, assimilation by the “Borg” takes place through regular local, state and national conferences and workshops produced by organizations that represent school board members, administrators and teachers, specific training
programs like the California School Board Association’s “Masters in Governance”
program, and the multitude of professional development opportunities offered
(and sometimes required) for public school administrators and teachers. With proper inculcation, reformers are
quickly plugged into a system of connected thinking that diminishes their individual desire
to press for reform, and ultimately causes the demise of such
thoughts through the collective mind of the “Borg.”
Reformers are those who work,
sometimes closely with the “Borg,” but somehow resist assimilation. Perhaps it’s because they can see through fog
of confusion that obscures clarity of vision and thought when navigating the channels
of education reform but, that is the topic of our next post.
