Jake starts school next year. Public school. In Nashville. And I’m scared.
The Chief Administrator of the Nashville public school system (i) can’t write, and (ii) has not come to terms with his disability, or he would have hired an editor. From Benjamin Wright’s page:
Mission Statement: To provide guidance and assistance to local schools in effectively fulfilling their administrative duties and responsibilities in doing whatever it takes for all students to acquire the knowledge, skills, and experiences to become productive, responsible citizens.
Lesson 1: Schools no longer teach how to diagram a sentence.
And my tax dollars fund the electrons that make this mission statement possible.[1]
Belief Statements: accept that leaders are responsible for insuring that others are successful.
Lesson 2: Homonyms are a bitch. Or, if your child fails, call Mr. Wright to file a claim.
UPDATE: As Ben Wright might say, I’m even scareder for my son’s future now, after discovering his self-promotion site.
Mr. Wright is a visionary Transformationalist with over thirty-three years experience implementing paradigm and pedagogy changes
Mr. Wright is available for speeches: “He is beyond being a motivational speaker, but rather spiritual, knowledgeable and an action oriented presenter.” Perhaps your ESL group can hire him?
Want a fuller fisking?
UPDATE (June 2008): Fortunately, the web page referenced in my post is no longer Ben Wright’s. Despite apocolyptic predictions that he would eventually be the Director of Schools, Mr. Wright resigned in February, presumably to concentrate full time on his transformationalist pursuits. Back in December, Mr. Wright informed me by email that he “will have the page edited and corrected as soon as possible.” No need to tidy things up if moving out, but the page’s new resident, Assistant Superintendent Sandra C. Tinnon, has redecorated with an editor’s brush, properly distinguishing between “ensure” and “insure.”
[1] The same tax dollars send over these intertubes a 1.4 MB picture of Mr. Wright to every visitor. Note for the twelve year old empowered with the html programming job for Metro schools: setting an image size within the html code does not actually change the size of the image.
Don`t be so worried. The administrators are, by definition, the ones they don`t let teach anymore.
Anyway, what he`ll really learn in public schools is how to deal with a highly structured environment in which the competence of the authority figures decreases with the level of their authority. It`s useful stuff, but very time consuming. In the other 2% of his time at school, he`ll pick up enough of the academic stuff to figure out what he wants to learn, and he`ll catch up on that in his free time. I forget if that is how it`s designed to work.
I knew Ben in Seattle and he is just half a click away from illiteracy. He does not have a PhD.
He can’t even write at the accepted highschool level. If he ever sends you unedited note or email, you’ll be appalled.
He has two personal bankruptcies. I’m amazed that anyone lets him administer a major school budget.
He lies routinely. He beats his wife (she told me). And he’s generally a hardwired asshole.
His psychopathic wife didn’t even graduate from highschool and is in fact a professional grifter. She changed her name so that her past wouldn’t catch up with her. I’ll bet you anything that Ben Wright has filed suit against Nashville schools and I’ll bet you anything it has a racial bias emphasis. This is what the Bakers do. They weedle their way in and then they sue when they’re exposed. The people that hired them without proper vetting ought to be fired.