This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
SOS – Save Our Schools
Sep
8
2010
… from their own mission statements.
Of course, no one is perfect. But, if a school district is going to put its mission statement on its website for the whole world to see, you would think they would make it a good one.
For your reading pleasure (and because Arby has me looking for typos now) (and because school is starting so I’ve been looking at official school information), I present to you eight different mission statements from various school districts in the area.
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___ Schools are committed to providing a quality educational experience for all students in a safe, orderly, healthy, and nurturing environment.
Nothing too bad there. Although if I were nit-picking (which I am), I would note that the schools are not committed to providing a quality education. Rather, they are committed to providing a quality experience.
Me: How was school today?
Child: Great! I loved it!
Me: What did you learn?
Child: Nothing! But I had a great experience!Oy.
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Realizing that each child is unique with varied experiences and opportunities, we will strive to promote an intrinsic desire to learn and gain the skills necessary to achieve academically. The ___ school community will nurture a sense of self-worth and self-discipline for all students to provide an excellent educational environment.
A lot of fluff, although I suppose it could be worse. Plus, what else do you expect in a mission statement?
If you look at what they are really saying you see that all the district wants to do is to cause your children to desire. I don’t see that the district wants to actually educate the kids.
We don’t want your kids to learn – we want your kids to want to learn.
No, wait… They don’t want to cause your children to desire; they just want to promote that desire.
No, wait again… They don’t want to promote that desire; they just want to strive to promote that desire.
Let’s see how far we can go here:
- “we aim to strive to promote desire” …
- “we work to aim to strive to promote desire” …
- “we yearn to work to aim to strive to promote desire” …
I think I’ll stop there. I’m sure the committee meant well when it produced that mission statement.
One more thing: the child is going to “achieve academically.” I really dislike the intransitive use of “achieve”. Some verbs can be both transitive and intransitive, but there is usually a good implied object for the intransitive case. Why not “achieve academic success”? Just put a noun in there for an object – the sentence would be much better.
Okay, the sentence would be a little bit better.
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Each ___ graduate is prepared as a lifelong learner to use academic and life skills to be self-sufficient, resourceful, an effective communicator and a productive citizen who contributes to our democratic society within a global community.
That was better than the last one. I think most parents would agree to having their kids be self-sufficient, etc. At least academic skills are explicitly mentioned.
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In support of our community, the mission of ___ Schools is to provide the highest quality educational process, so that all students can excel as individuals, and become contributing members of society.
Break down the sentence structure and you will see that the goal is to provide a process. The goal is not to provide an education; the goal is to provide a process. In theory, the teachers could teach a bunch of lies, but as long as they taught the lies well (in accordance with the process) they would comply with the mission of the school district.
“In support of our community” is superfluous. I don’t see that adding or removing it makes much difference. Also, why should the mission support the community? Just get rid of those first five words.
Another thing that bothers me is the use of excessive commas. A comma is to be used to separate items in a list or to join independent clauses (there are some other uses, but none that applies here). What we have here are dependent clauses joined by commas. I say get rid of all the commas.
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In partnership with parents and community, is to become the best educational system in America so all students demonstrate they are caring, responsible, and knowledgeable citizens.
You may have noticed that is not a complete sentence. However, due to text formatting on the internet, you don’t see “OUR MISSION” as part of that text block. So even though they capitalized “In” to make it seem like the start of the sentence, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say the start of the mission statement is “Our mission, in partnership with…”
I like this one. Aim high – “best educational system in America”.
They want their students to be knowledgeable. Yes, technically, they want the students to demonstrate that they are knowledgeable. But how can they demonstrate knowledge without having knowledge?
Although this is my favorite mission statement so far, I must note one fault with it: knowledge is last on the list of things they want in their students. Maybe my viewpoint is not in the majority, but I send my child to school so he can learn something.
Knowledge is the primary goal – put it first.
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Achieving Educational Goals One Student at a Time.
Yes, they put a period at the end of that non-sentence.
No, I have no idea what the educational goals are.
No, the class size is not one student per teacher. Nor do the kids go single-file through the lessons.
No, I don’t know if they will get to all the students. I hope your last name starts with a letter close to the beginning of the alphabet.
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Our elementary and middle school students are individually challenged to achieve through student responsibility, academic excellence, moral focus and parental involvement.
I couldn’t find an official mission statement, but this was the first sentence in the main paragraph of the “Mission, Values & Philosophy” page.
My main gripe is that intransitive “achieve”. At first I thought it was a typographical error – they inserted the “through” accidentally. Maybe they want the students to achieve student responsibility, academic excellence, etc.
“Achieve” has no object in this statement, so we are left guessing what the object should be: Achieve what? … notoriety? success? average test scores? their dreams?
Give us an object!
My other gripe involves the term “parental involvement”. Parental involvement is good and all, but how do you challenge an elementary-school student to achieve through parental involvement?
I think the parental involvement should be separate from the challenging of the students. I challenge you, dear second grader, to have parents who are more involved. I suppose the teacher could make the effort, but it just doesn’t fit.
Wait! I think I see it – the list of four things is how the school plans on challenging the students. That’s the problem with the passive voice – it’s more open to interpretation.
I think they meant to say “our mission is to use student responsibility, academic excellence, moral focus, and parental involvement to challenge our students so they can achieve individual success” (or something like that).
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EQUIPPING MINDS AND NURTURING HEARTS TO TRANSFORM THE WORLD FOR JESUS CHRIST
I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are implying a beginning of something like “OUR GOAL IS”
At least they didn’t put a period at the end.
Good points:
- Main goal is equipping minds … good thing for a school.
- Aim high – “transform the world”.
- Clarity – you know what you’ll get at this school.
- Brevity – no “process” and no fluff.
Bad point:
- All caps – easily remedied.
The first 6 statements were from local public schools, #7 was from a charter school, and #8 was from a Christian school.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of SOS.
Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?”
John 6:60
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 12:45 am and has been carefully placed in the Marketing category.
September 8th, 2010 at 6:41 am
Wow. That took some research. I recognized one of them, at least! I don’t think #1 can promise healthy, though – kids bring home all kinds of bugs from school. Literally. Head lice. Which one was Chelsea? I don’t think they wasted time on mission statemenmts when we went there. How ’bout “to use the taxpayers’ money in a most economically feasible manner so as to show the government how it’s done.”
September 8th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Chelsea was the short one that teaches the kids one at a time.
It wasn’t too much research. I just browsed to a few of the local school districts’ websites. If they had a mission statement, I used it. And once I started looking at the statements, I just wrote my opinion of them.