Chaos Magnet

Get MAD, damn it!!!

I'm sitting here filling out my resume for a new online job site I've been invited to review -- it's still in beta, so email me if you want details -- and I've frankly forgotten how much it is that I've actually done. But more importantly, I'm sitting here and realizing that dammit, I'm good at what I do. And what I do is take complex nonsense and turn it into intelligible information that anybody can understand.

But it's hard, and I mean really hard to find other people who can do that, or who even want to try. I've been working with a bunch of writers lately, and a few of them are good at this. They bust their butts to really do a good job, and when they hit a roadblock they bust through it or they find a way to go around it but they don't just sit there and say "it can't be done."

The rest of them are making me nuts.

I'm realizing with a great deal of horror that the people who just sit down and quit and say "it's too hard, I can't do that" are the norm, and not the tragic exception.

So this piece from marketing guru Perry Marshall, Escape the Institutional Straightjacket, has infuriated me with a brilliant explanation of just how the hell this is happening. Starting on page five or so he's talking about business and marketing and such, but the first few pages are a must read. Let me give you the beginning. I don't think Perry will mind:

John Taylor Gatto received the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 1990 and was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1991. When the appointed evening arrived, Mr. Gatto appeared in the hotel ballroom before an audience of well-fed administrators and principals, and delivered his acceptance speech.

It was that night that he publicly turned on them like a mongrel dog.

"The only reason I received this award – the only reason I've been a great teacher for my students – is because I didn't do a single thing you told me to. I ignored your ‘standards,' I thwarted your bureaucracy and I taught unauthorized material. I filled out those forms that said the students were in their desks, when they were really taking horizon-expanding study trips. I had them read real books instead of those inane, dumbed-down textbooks of yours, I taught them real history instead of the porridge of revisionist pabulum you call 'social studies'.

"Your bureaucracy is a mill that grinds up human beings and turns them into consumer fertilizer for a planned economy. Human potential erodes as hungry minds sit in listless boredom, and teachers operate without the tools they need, just so you guys can fill your administration buildings with cushy jobs and give contracts to your cherished vendors.

That's why most of our students can't read after 12 years of education – yes, even though it only takes 3 months to learn how to read. That's why most kids follow the herd into a bleak future instead of thinking for themselves.

I am officially turning in my resignation as of today.

For the record, I wasn't home schooled, but did I work for my parents' business from the time I was 12 until I got my first paying job at 16. (That'll make sense if you read the piece.) I was certified as a high school teacher, but couldn't get a job partly because of economic conditions and partly because I was just too unconventional.

Now I'm a professional trainer and I also teach people through writing you can actually read rather than the unreadable gobbledygook that is unfortunately so common. But why the hell does that seem so hard to find these days?

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