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AAE-PACE Board Member Takes You Behind the Scenes of Sacred Elephants: The Catastrophic Crisis in Education
posted by: Alana | April 05, 2016, 07:19 PM   

 

On a cold snowy evening in a large urban district, after experiencing the most frustrating and disappointing day of their work as consultants, Donna Nicholson and Karen Harvey looked at each other and said, “Education is truly broken.” And then they asked themselves, “Is it irrevocably broken?” The perspective that prompted this conversation came from almost 100 years of combined experience in schools across the country and observing the same issues over and over. As their conversation continued, they wondered aloud, “Could public schools be fixed and, if so, what ten things would have to be addressed immediately to fix them?” At that moment their book Sacred Elephants: The Catastrophic Crisis in Education was born.

 

As they outlined their ten critical issues, Karen and Donna realized they were not secrets at all but just ideas never seriously discussed in educational circles. They immediately thought of the idiomatic expression, the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room of course denotes something that is an open secret. They realized these areas were not discussed because they’re part of the system of protection that comes with political pressure and correctness. Thus, they decided that these elephants were absolutely sacred and untouchable in school districts and so the title Sacred Elephants became the best way to describe them. The ten sacred elephants they identified are…

 

Want to know what 10 elephants Karen and Donna identified? Find out in this month's edition of Education Matters and answer our one-question survey of the month for your chance to win a copy of the book in this month’s AAE Prize Pack!

 

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