Should I Stop Writing About Education?

Some maintain that a person who has never taught has no business talking about how it should be done.

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When I was researching a book about education, years ago, some of the people I interviewed warned me that I would be coming in for criticism. Teachers, they told me, don’t like to be told they’re doing something wrong, especially by someone who is not herself a teacher.

I totally get that—especially because teachers have been on the receiving end of a lot of that sort of commentary over the years, much of it unfair. But when I was researching and writing the book I spent a lot of time talking to teachers. Many cheered me on, telling me they couldn’t wait until the book came out.

A lot of what I ended up writing came from listening to those teachers—teachers who believed there was something drastically wrong with the system they had been trapped in and were doing what they could to change it. They felt they needed someone like me, with a megaphone (otherwise known as a book) that was bigger than anything they had access to.

Of course, teachers are no more monolithic than any other group. And since the book came out, some have made it clear they don’t appreciate my efforts. Some have genuine disagreements with the points I’m making. Others have misunderstood what I’m trying to say—for example, assuming that I’m faulting individual teachers rather than the education system as a whole.

And a few have argued, as I was warned some would, that I should refrain from writing or saying anything about education because I have never taught. (I have taught, but only highly motivated adults, in writing workshops and, as a volunteer, classes in English as a second language. Obviously, that’s a different ballgame from teaching K-12.) I assume there are others out there who agree with those I’ve heard from but are too polite to express their views to me directly.

At the same time, in the five years since the book came out, it’s become clear to me that there are many educators who are eager to hear what I have to say and find it eye-opening, or—if I’m articulating what they themselves have been thinking or saying for years—validating. I’ve been amazed and gratified to hear from many teachers that my book has changed their lives, or even what’s happening in their districts—and I hope, by extension, that it’s changed the lives of many students for the better.

I say this not to blow my own horn but rather to suggest that there can be value in having an outsider to a field try to analyze what is going on within it. Obviously, there’s a limit. If I were a doctor or an engineer, would I want someone who has never practiced medicine or built a bridge telling me how to do my job? Surely not. On the other hand, people who have never written books routinely critique them (including mine). Drama critics aren’t required to have acted in or directed or written plays themselves. And so on.

I don’t think any of those examples quite fit the model of someone who is not an educator writing about education. I see that role as being more like that of anthropologists examining cultures other than their own, or sociologists analyzing other fields of endeavor. Sociologists of medicine, for example, presumably interview and observe medical professionals as part of their research. But they’re considered to have a different and valuable perspective precisely because they function outside the medical system.

We are all prisoners of our own experience—including teachers. While I’ve learned much that is valuable from speaking with and observing educators, I’ve also been able to familiarize myself with the work of scientists who study the learning process and historians who have traced trends in education. I’ve tried to put all that together when looking at what is going on in classrooms, and it has seemed to me that—for systemic reasons—many teachers have been led to believe in approaches that don’t align with what science and history tell us is likely to work.

When you’re inside a system, it can be hard to question practices that don’t work because they’re so pervasive. Teachers, as I say in the title of one of my chapters, may not even notice the “water they’ve been swimming in.” To mix my metaphors, it may take someone from the outside to point out that the emperor isn’t actually wearing any clothes.

Given my lack of teaching experience, I wouldn’t presume to instruct teachers explicitly in how they should teach. When I’m asked to give hands-on workshops or training, I demur. But I do feel I have something to offer in terms of explaining, in light of my research, why standard approaches to literacy instruction haven’t worked well and why others are likely to work better.

Frankly, it amazes me that I still get lots of requests to speak about the book, with no sign they’re letting up, and that the book is still selling briskly. I’ll keep talking and writing about these issues as long as people seem to want me to—not because I’m just trying to make a buck, as some of my critics charge, but rather because, based on what I’ve heard from teachers and seen for myself, I think it’s important to get the message out.

Inevitably, some people will continue to tell me I have no right to express my views about education because I’ve never been a teacher. Sorry to disappoint them, but I have another book coming out next year, in which I’ll try to connect the science of literacy with the science of learning in general.

Anyone who feels I don’t have the right to produce such a book can, of course, choose not to read it.