If you have spent any time working in or around our educational system at almost any level then you will recognize the following responses that are all too often offered by school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, and parents when faced with challenging problems or responding to innovative opportunities:
1. Find a scapegoat. Teachers can blame administrators, administrators can blame teachers, both can blame parents, and everyone can blame the system.
2. Profess not to have the answer. That lets you out of having any answer.
3. Say that we must not move too rapidly. That avoids the necessity of getting started.
4. For every proposal set up an opposite and conclude that the “middle ground” (no motion whatever) represents the wisest course of action.
5. Point out that an attempt to reach a conclusion is only a futile “quest for certainty.” Doubt and indecision promote growth.
6. When in a tight place, say something that the group cannot understand.
7. Look slightly embarrassed when the problem is brought up. Hint that it is in bad taste, or too elementary for mature consideration, or that any discussion of it is likely to be misinterpreted by outsiders.
8. Say that the problem cannot be separated from other problems. Therefore, no problem can be solved until all other problems have been solved.
9. Carry the problem into other fields. Show that it exists everywhere; therefore it is of no concern.
10. Point out that those who see the problem do so because of personality traits. They see the problem because they are unhappy— not vice versa.
11. Ask what is meant by the question. When it is sufficiently clarified, there will be no time left for the answer.
12. Discover that there are all sorts of dangers in any specific formulation of conclusions; of exceeding authority or seeming to; asserting more than is definitely known; of misinterpretation by outsiders— and, of course, revealing the fact that no one has a conclusion to offer.
13. Look for some philosophical basis for approaching the problem, then a basis for that, then a basis for that, and so on back into Noah’s Ark.
14. Retreat from the problem into endless discussion of various ways to study it.
15. Put off recommendations until every related problem has been definitely settled by scientific research.
16. Retreat to general objectives on which everyone can agree. From this higher ground, you will either see that the problem has solved itself, or you will forget it.
17. Find a face-saving verbal formula like “in a Pickwickian sense.”
18. Rationalize the status quo; there is much to be said for it.
19. Introduce analogies and discuss them rather than the problem.
20. Explain and clarify over and over again what you have already said.
21. As soon as any proposal is made, say that you have been doing it for 10 years. Hence there can’t be possibly any merit in it.
22. Appoint a committee to weigh the pros and cons (these must always be weighed) and to reach tentative conclusions that can subsequently be used as bases for further discussions of an exploratory nature preliminary to arriving at initial postulates on which methods of approach to the pros and cons may be predicated.
23. Wait until some expert can be consulted. He will refer the question to other experts.
24. Say, “That is not on the agenda; we’ll take it up later.” This may be repeated ad infinitum.
25. Conclude that we have all clarified our thinking on the problem, even though no one has thought of a way to solve it.
26. Point out that some of the greatest minds have struggled with this problem, implying that it does us credit to have even thought of it.
27. Be thankful for the problem. It has stimulated our thinking and has thereby contributed to our growth. It should get a medal.
Other than the phrase “in a Pickwickian sense” which refers to Mr. Pickwick in Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and refers to being especially jovial in order to avoid offense, chances are you have heard one or many of these excuses used when challenging questions are asked, problems are being pointed out, or innovative opportunities are being promoted.
Perhaps the most sobering consideration about this list is that it was compiled by the progressive educator Paul Diederich in 1942. Deidrich was part of intense discussions with hundreds of teachers during summers in the late-1930s when the Eight-Year Study was being implemented in 30 high schools across the US. The study revealed that graduates of these more progressive schools which offered artistic, political, and social activities did as well academically as graduates from more traditional schools. Unfortunately, these reforms in the schools in the study demished within the next decade and by the 1950s there was a return to the fundamentals and a focus on the mechanics of spelling instead of a focus on the writing assignment as being part of a something authentic or part of the real world. As we face the challenges of moving our educational system from the industrial age to digital information age we must remember that this is a long-term challenge and we should heed Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr epigram:
The more things change, the more they stay the same
The educational historian Larry Cuban offers additional information and links in the post Educator Discussions That Avoid “The Problem” on his site from where I copied this list.
References
Cuban, L. (2018, November 30). Educator discussions that avoid “The Problem”. [Blog] Retrieved from: https://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2018/11/
