Hit Again
April 1, 2013
Education reform needs a Mulligan. A do-over. The opportunity to go back to “Go” and start over. For example . . .
-
Back to a time before the attack on neighborhood schools closed those schools and contributed to neighborhood collapse and community disconnect.
-
Before suburban schools were allowed to prey on and profit from an urban school’s misfortunes.
-
Before large buses lumbered down narrow residential lanes to transport our littlest learners from the shadow of their local school to another across town, where all the other littlest students were gathered for more “cost-effective” education.
-
Before schools shuffled off low-achieving students to alternative schools in order to elevate their ranking on standardized test scores.
-
Before teachers based their lessons more on test preparation than learning.
-
Before education re-segregated through specialized charter schools with non-inclusive curricula.
-
Before public schools were barred from beginning their instructional days before Labor Day, or whenever their community thought it best for the education of its students.
-
Back to a time when pedagogy more than politics planned and delivered education.
Let’s tee it up and hit again.
The Subjunctive
January 3, 2014
As a frequent traveler to foreign lands and also as a college English major and high school English teacher, my ears perked up when a speaker said recently that there are some languages that, unlike English, do not have the subjunctive verb mood or mode. I love the subjunctive!
That’s the mood of what might have been, the speaker said. For example, “Had I studied harder, I would have received a better grade.” And “If I were you, I would have studied much longer.”
The subjunctive can also be the mood of excuses, I thought. For example, “If the official hadn’t made that traveling call, we would have won the game.” But I digress.
The subjunctive verb mood is used for the hypothetical. This makes it most valuable as a mindset before taking any action. It helps one think of unintended consequences.
But the subjunctive mood is also useful for the remedial: “If we had done this or that differently then, perhaps the result would have been better.”
Thinking in the subjunctive mood as we plan before initiatives, and then also as we evaluate after plans have been rolled out, are the one-two punch of effective project management.
What we must avoid, however, is thinking of the subjunctive as the mood of regrets. “If only I had . . .” And then doing nothing to try to change the future.
As we think about the year just past and about the year ahead, let’s use the subjunctive mood for its better purposes – planning and evaluation, not excuses and regrets.