I am one of those people who dreads educational jargon. It has a way of turning attention away from problems, masking the issues that really matter, and simply confusing even intelligent readers.
So I am always on the lookout for the latest jargon in the student motivation world. And I ran across one recently that seems to be the work of people who have way too much time on their hands and who are way too obsessed with self-esteem.
It is the “3rd Annual Reaching At-Promise Students National Conference.”
Not at-risk, but at-promise. The at-risk label was pretty bad on the jargonometer. But this one takes the cake for caving in to the zealots in the self-esteem movement.
Or am I being a little too mean-spirited here? Is at-promise a label worth preserving?