When Matthew McConaughey Is Your Education Guru, You End Up with a Mess

Hey, so my hard copy issue of Ed Leadership magazine came in.

I talked about this earlier in the week and how I had ordered a hard copy and I'm excited that it's here, but I'm frustrated by what's in it.

Let me explain what I mean.

On the one hand, there are lots of good articles and there's lots of good stuff even in the articles that have some pretty big problems.

One article that I really liked was this research brief on consistency in discipline.

This article talks about how when principles are more consistent with discipline, it gets fairer.

Racial disparities in suspension go down when principles are more consistent.

But at the same time, I find it a very frustrating issue because many of the articles contain contradictory information or good research-backed strategies coupled with absolute nonsense.

For example, just a couple of pages later, we find this.

The statement that a black and white approach to behavior doesn't work.

We need to differentiate discipline just like we differentiate academic content.

And granted, these articles were written by different authors, but I don't think ed leadership even sees the inconsistency, sees the incoherence in the approaches represented in these articles.

Like, it's mind-boggling to me.

that the importance of consistency, the importance of fairness would be lost on the editors.

And it's really interesting if you look at the editors kind of forward to the issue.

The editor-in-chief says there are no hard and fast rules for meeting this challenging moment in schools.

And if you zoom out, read that whole thing, it quotes Matthew McConaughey extensively.

And look, depending on how much you have heard from Matthew McConaughey, you may have a different opinion than I do about how much he knows about education.

But I'm just going to say he is not an education thought leader.

So it is not terribly surprising to me that there is this level of incoherence in this issue.

And I've already mentioned some of my concerns with the restorative practice article, but look at a couple of these other articles in the table of contents.

Again, here's one that says we should be inconsistent with discipline.

Here is one that says we shouldn't give up on restorative practice.

Here is one that says misbehavior might have cognitive roots.

I think there's something there.

Again, there's a lot of good stuff in a lot of these articles.

Christopher Emden's article on rethinking challenging behavior is pretty good.

And there is one on dysregulated adults.

And of course, there is one on how it's actually your fault.

Is the challenge our behavior?

So again, it's a mix, but I think we've got to draw some bright lines here.

And I think we've got to say, look, there is never going to be a new, innovative, progressive, answer that involves no consequences.

And to their full credit, several of these articles do talk productively about consequences.

But this idea that we can simply figure this out, figure out how to teach how to run schools with no consequences, I think is just never going to get us anywhere.

And I think we just need to kind of watch out for that thinking where it's creeping in.

The second bright line I think we need to draw is around gaslighting, like these constant articles that are telling you it's your fault, that you must be dysregulated, there must be something wrong with you if your students are misbehaving.

I say, as a profession, we have got to stop accepting that as a default answer.

And does that mean that we're always perfect?

No.

Does that mean we don't have room to grow?

No.

But I am tired of seeing educators told the problem with student behavior is you because students are involved in student behavior.

Let me know what you think.