Why Do We Always Take Things Way Too Far?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses education's pattern of taking good ideas to extremes until they become counterproductive.
Key Takeaways
- Education swings to extremes - A good idea like 'be responsive to students' becomes 'never say no to students'
- Moderation is the enemy of ideology - Nuanced positions don't generate the same enthusiasm as extreme ones
- Stop before the extreme - The best version of any practice is found in the middle, not at the edge
Transcript
i saw a great quote the other day that said as human beings we never seem to be able to go just far enough we always have to take things too far and i think in education that's especially true if maybe it's just a symptom of getting older but you know this is about my 21st year in the education profession and the pendulum swings really start to become obvious after a while right like any good thing can be taken too far and if enough enthusiasm builds up for a good thing you can almost guarantee that it's going to be taken too far and then we're going to have to have a correction right we're going to have to have the pendulum swing back in the other direction like we saw this happen with school safety in the 90s the pendulum swung way too far and we got into zero tolerance and we had some kids get like expelled from school for bringing nail clippers and things like that And now we're seeing that same pendulum swing way too far the other direction, and we're not doing anything even about the most serious safety issues.
And it makes me wonder, like, at what point can we just step back and realize it's okay to do a reasonable amount of something.
It's okay to take reasonable steps.
It's a good idea to take modest steps and say, you know what, this is probably enough.
This is probably far enough to push it.
Why do we have this tendency to push everything forward?
Way too far.
Why do we have this tendency to go not just all in to an adequate extent, but like to overdo just about everything?
And I could come up with half a dozen examples.
You know, one that I've spoken about recently is inclusion.
I think inclusion is a great thing.
But to say that all students need to be fully mainstream for all subjects and no students should ever be in a specialized program, regardless of what their needs are.
regardless of what their IEP team says.
I just can't agree to that.
I just can't agree with that.
What are some examples that you have seen of our tendency, especially in education, but more broadly as human beings, to take things too far and to create those pendulum swings where if we were just a little bit more balanced, a little bit more reasonable, a little bit more modest in the changes that we want to make, we could avoid those dramatic swings.
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