Our "strategic plan": a creature of the inane educationist playbook?

     The agenda (available here) for Monday’s meeting of the SOCCCD Board of Trustees (BOT) includes an “information item” (7.3: development of district-wide strategic plan [2011-2014]), which includes a draft of that document. (It’s a three-year plan.)
     Check it out. Arguably, this document is important. Very important.

* * *

     I've begun to read it. I want to say: nothing will ever be right in education until we banish educationists and their idiotic jargon.
     (And I want to say this as well: “poor writing—the only kind found among educationists—is poor thinking.”)
     Here’s the logic of the development of this document—taken right off the page. It’s a marvel of delusion and self-mystification:

First step:
   Identifying CHALLENGES (of next decade). (This is a “DIALOGUE” using “RESOURCES”)

Second step:
   Developing district-wide GOALS [“or institutional goals”(?)] … that articulate … INTENTIONS and AMBITIONS … related to … meeting CHALLENGES

   GOALS are achieved through OBJECTIVES identified in the District Strategic Plan – and the colleges’ Strategic Plans

   In future, district-wide goals will be a CATALYST for, and REINFORCEMENT of, the colleges’ planning [I imagine that this is conceived as a major step in the right direction. I don't mean to question that.]

Third step:
   Developing district-wide OBJECTIVES to identify the INITIATIVES to achieve district-wide GOALS. (Objectives require COLLABORATION and COORDINATION [among various parties])

Fourth step:
   Developing ACTION STEPS to describe ACTIONS to be taken to achieve district-wide OBJECTIVES

     The English language allows its speakers to communicate wonderfully. It is a magnificent thing. Obviously, in some settings, technical terms must be coined and used. Hence, the “mass” of the physicist and the "point" of the geometer.
     But some fields—the notoriously unimpressive field of education is a standout in this regard—seem to generate technical terms unnecessarily, promiscuously, absurdly.
     Educationists will actually stare at you in disbelief if you reveal ignorance of the alleged distinction between, say, “goals” and “objectives.”
     They are clueless. In my experience, they don’t even seem to know that they’ve adopted technical terms. So they impose this idiotic usage on everyone they meet. They manage to be both bullies and dolts.
     Now, suppose that one is reasonably well educated. If so, one will likely be struck by the educationist’s insistence on “the distinction between goals and objectives.”
     Luckily, we have dictionaries. Among other things, dictionaries tell us what we mean by the words we use. An “objective,” according to my dictionary, is “a thing aimed at or sought; a goal." —No surprise there.
     A “goal,” on the other hand (according to my dictionary), is “the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result.” Yup.
     Let’s compare these meanings, shall we?

(objective:) a thing aimed at or sought; a goal VS.
(goal:) the object [i.e., the “thing”] of a person's ambition or effort [i.e., what one seeks]

     These words are usually pretty close in meaning. Obviously.
     Now, I did a little looking, and I came across the website for San Diego State University College of Education. SDSUCE’s Department of Educational Technology (EDTEC) provides a glossary of terms.
     Here’s the alleged “Difference between goals and objectives”:

Goals are broad objectives are narrow.
Goals are general intentions[?]; objectives are precise.
Goals are intangible; objectives are tangible.
Goals are abstract; objectives are concrete.
Goals can't be validated as is; objectives can be validated.

     Obviously, this is not “the difference between goals and objectives.” It is, rather, the difference between these things when one adopts educationist jargon.

* * *

     Well, OK. If this odd way of thinking and speaking helps, then fine.
     But I’ve never known it to help.
     And here’s a case in point. Read the “strategic plan.” Ask yourself (for instance): how are the participants in this process aided by structuring their thinking in terms of the technical distinction between:

The narrow, precise, tangible, concrete, and “validatable” (“objectives”) VERSES
The broad, general, intangible, abstract, and “unvalidatable” (goals).

—Conceived as the first (the “objectives”) achieving the second (the “goals”)?
     This is so confused, I don’t even know where to begin.
     I’ll leave that for another occasion. (No doubt some of you are way ahead of me.) Let me just say that I long for the day when I can arrive at a meeting in this district in which people just think and speak in plain English:

What is our task? (This ain’t rocket science.)
Will our task change, include more, include less?
Do we anticipate that circumstances will make our task more difficult?
What are our greatest failings and our greatest strengths in pursuing our task?
Etc.

     Now, I know that many who are involved in this strategic plan “development” (many are administrators) are bright and sincere people. My guess is that at least some of them are not (entirely) bedazzled and bedeviled by the above abysmal educationist architectonic.
     But I’m here to tell you: if these people have succeeded at all—and maybe they have—it is despite the nonsense with which this project is saddled from beginning to end.
     And don’t forget: everything in the colleges and the district will be done in terms of this document.
     Isn’t our job hard enough? Must we be forever thwarted by the poor thinking of embarrassing pseudo-experts?

Well, here they are. Presented as "info" Monday night.

FURTHER READING:

• Educating Researchers (pdf), Arthur Levine (2007). An excerpt below:

     This study asked a single question: Do current preparation programs have the capacity to educate researchers with the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out research required to improve education policy, strengthen education practice, or advance our understanding of how human beings develop and learn?
     The answer is that a minority of programs do, but most do not.
     There are three major obstacles to creating and sustaining strong programs:

1. The field of education is amorphous, lacking agreed-upon methodologies for advancing knowledge, common standards of quality and shared mechanisms for quality control;
2. Education doctoral programs have conflicting purposes and award inconsistent degrees; and
3. Research preparation programs are under-resourced, with inadequate funding and insufficient faculty expertise.

     The result is a body of research of very mixed quality, more weak than strong, with low readership by practitioners and policymakers and low citation rates by scholars.
     As a nation, the price we pay for inadequately prepared researchers and inadequate research is an endless carousel of untested and unproven school reform efforts, dominated by the fad du jour. Ideology trumps evidence in formulating educational policy. And our children are denied the quality of education they need and deserve. (P. 71)

• The Awful Reputation of Education Research (pdf) Carl F. Kaestle (1993)