Here’s a Bold Choice

During last evening’s Second Life discussion of Literature Rationales, I offered an analogy to the various processes of said rationalization in business terms: academic sales.  Failing to recall my exact commentary, my exposition behind literary rationales was along the lines of “…satisfying parents… by way of high brow analogy… a considerable number of parents either fail to notice or don’t care… cover your bleep… we educators are ultimately selling parents/students/administrators a text we deem worthy of further study.”  Silence.  More silence.   Not a response was uttered aloud, but the back channel hosted two comments: “exactly, Jill,” and in opposition, “…I don’t think that rationales are like sales…” (no matter how deeply I dug in SL, I couldn’t find the exact quote).  This dichotomy of opinion got me to thinking later that night.

Why do the majority of educators cringe in revulsion at the mere mention of education and business in the same sentence?  To draw a business/academic parallel is akin to calling a Conservative generous.  And this aversion to said analogy is not grounded in currently matriculated, pre-service teachers (although this lot more readily cottons to the notion); in fact, a whole passel of in-service teachers hold the same disdain for corporate-to-instructional innuendo.  I am convinced because I’ve tested the primary and secondary waters.  But ask a college professor what he/she thinks of the enterprise-to-education analogy, and you’ll likely find a cheshire grin bloom from ear-to-ear, followed with a sardonic, “Naw, the university system has nothing to do with big business.  Sport’s programs have no impact on the university’s funding or programming whatsoever,” as the prof tailspins about-face to keep from laughing in your face.

It is easier to draw a synchronous analogy between corporate America and university education than it is in the Primary or Secondary arena for the one simple fact: K-12 doesn’t admit anyone, all students are part of this package.  So the business analogy to public education is more like dollar-store retail than Wall Street trading.  I once heard the wittiest comparison to K-12 education whereby students were blueberries, some ripe and plump, some rotten and spoiled, but the difference between the farmer and the school teacher was that the farmer could throw out the imperfect berries, but the teacher had to dress them up and sell them too.

But I digress.  Maybe the bold choice we educators need to make (or at least confront) is how like free enterprise America’s public education actually is?  Are we teachers not in academic sales, peddling our intellectual wares to an impressionable audience?  This act is not dirty or foul in and of itself, but educators lips curl upward at the comparison.  For some reason, academic instructors believe their sales are benevolent, altruistic, and above the fray.  Surely an insurance, clothing, or other commercial salesperson is nefariously trying to make a sale, intentionally trying to separate the buyer from his money, with self-serving avarice.  But as teachers compete for standardized testing results and merit pay, might we not be calculating and wily in our salesmanship?  The former is regarded a sleaze, the later avant-garde.

Bottle it, package it, anyway you want, but educators need to knock that condescending chip off their proverbial shoulders.  During my former years in the classroom I was a very effective instructor, I even had my groupies who followed me from course to course (and for those of you who know me at all, my academic devotees were not a result of easy grades).  In fact, I received an excellence in teaching award at each of the three universities or colleges that I taught at.  You know why?  Because I was good at the pitch and I knew how to close the deal.  Academic bold choices are not just made in products (read, content), they are made in relationships.  Be a strong marketer, know your buyers, rotate your stock, update your wares, keep your pulse on the trends, discontinue items that don’t sell (or at least repackage these goods and try a different approach), but keep costs low,  and you too, will become a successful entrepreneur, oops, I mean, teacher (wink. wink).  It’s all in customer loyalty!