Martin Mackey, director of Rethinking Responsive Education Ventures for the Maine Department of Education, has written a Maine Voices column that spells out plans for the future of education in Maine (“Here’s how we build Maine schools that work for everyone,” Dec. 7). Unfortunately, the document is so replete with jargon and ill-defined terms that no reader can come away with any definite sense of what was written.

Consider the following:

“Schools and teachers need the support and permission of their community partners and parents to redesign the school experiences, to take advantage of what we now know about best practices for student learning and development. We need … to support and celebrate shedding the same old routines and practices that have governed schools and have hampered creativity. We need partners and parents to work with educators and demand that schools can and should look differently (sic) for our children than they did for our own 20th-century experiences.”

What is the school experience that will be redesigned? What will it look like? What are those same old routines that will be shed? How have they hampered creativity?

Take this sentence: “We are putting Maine educators on the forefront of cutting-edge innovation by supporting them with professional development, funding and a community of practice as they redesign educational practices and structures to foster meaningful and relevant learning experiences for students.”

And now express the content of that sentence in your own words. If you cannot do that, the author has failed to communicate a meaningful concept.

William Vaughan Jr.
Chebeague Island