The Flaky Flowerchild and the Curmudgeonly Coach - Part 2

Usually in a call for reform, the innovator has little concern for individuals. And were it not for today's heavily unionized teaching profession, the innovator would throw certain individuals off the bus--those individuals ill-suited to the desired change. To the extent that it's possible, this approach has ethical merit, especially in cases of extreme teacher incompetency or malpractice.

Our Flaky Flowerchild and Curmudgeonly Coach are no strangers to the chopping block, as are all who reside at the fringes of any spectrum of ideas. And, as I said in my previous post, they are two major foes of mastery teaching and learning, so why not just send 'em packing?

Why not? Because each of them contains a seed of what mastery teaching and learning is all about. Both of them have one part of the truth and, as we saw in my first post, justice is defined as "conformity to truth."

What we have in the Flaky Flowerchild and Curmudgeonly Coach is the thesis and antithesis of pedagogical styles. Rather than eliminating one or both of these extremes, we might instead seek a synthesis, one that involves all that is best from both ends of the spectrum. According to Hegel, this dialectical process results in a higher level of truth.

One virtue these two opposites have in common is zeal. The opposite vice of zeal is lukewarmness, which is even worse than the considerable conflict that zeal from opposite ends of a continuum can cause. In the case of the Flaky Flowerchild it's a zeal for compassion. In the case of the Curmudgeonly Coach it's a zeal for rigor. Mastery learning requires both, and to a greater degree than is expressed in either teacher's style.