Have you noticed the trend for teachers to refer to themselves and other teachers as “educators”? It sounds so authoritative and academic — it’s all about that extra syllable, and as well it doesn’t bring to mind the mundane world of dusty erasers (though everyone seems to use those whiteboards now), homework, and sarcastic sexist songs sung by the likes of David Lee Roth. Now I don’t know whether this practice is confined to the left side of the political spectrum (I happened to find it in Rush Limbaugh’s transcript of a show on Obama’s recent infomercial on the United States of Misery we live in — the person who used it was one of Obama’s Victim-Americans), but that doesn’t matter; I’d just like it to stop. (Full disclosure: my father was a teacher in the Dade County School system in Florida, in the years before it became the Miami-Dade County School district, and before it was de rigueur for teachers to call themselves “educators.”)
(Via Kathy Shaidle.)
One Response to “I just noticed something”
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November 2nd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I think it’s a useful term — it distinguishes those who teach (teachers) from those who derive parasitical nourishment from a taxpayer-subsidized industry euphemistically and deceptively known as “education.”
If persons aware of the latter connotation still prefer to be known as “educators,” I say more pow — er, well, I say let ’em.