If you read many articles about schools you’ve probably come across references to STEM and may know what it stands for. That’s one example of something common in the world of teachers, principals and professors: acronyms. Not all of those made-up words or abbreviations seem to be well thought out, as Peter Smagorinsky points out in this article, but there are certainly plenty of them. Smagorinsky, a former high school teacher, is Distinguished Research Professor of English Education at the University of Georgia.
The world of education is notorious for its reliance on acronyms, words formed by stringing together the first letters of a series of words. Radar, for instance, comes from RAadio Detection And Ranging. Well, that’s not quite the first letter of each word. But who needs RULES (Regulations UnLess ExceptionS)?
Some formations that can’t be pronounced as a word are also considered acronyms. CPD, for Continuing Professional Development, for instance.
If you hang around educators, you might hear them say things like, “At the AERA conference, an EO officer from BECTA proposed an EYDCP to support EMA via GM FSM.”
At little risk of being Captain Obvious (CaptO), I'll translate that to mean, "At the American Educational Research Association conference, an Equal Opportunity office from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency proposed an Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership to support Ethnic Minority Achievement via Grant Maintained Free School Meals."
Some acronyms in education are thought up to suggest something positive about what they refer to. When I taught at the University of Oklahoma, for instance, they revamped their teacher education programs, calling them TE-PLUS, standing for Teacher Education—Professionalism, Leadership, Understanding, and Scholarship. PLUS, that's good. It's more than just teacher education. And it's mathematical too. Perfect for a program about training teachers.
And then there are the ones where you've got to think alcohol was involved. Take, for instance, the Currency, Relevancy, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose test. Yes, there's actually something called the CRAAP test, and it's widely used in many U.S. school districts. People use it to determine a source's credibility. I find it incredible that this CRAAP isn't a satire.
But wait. Virginia has established what they call Standards Of Learning, known by the acronym SOL. Where I come from, SOL has a meaning that’s not fit for a family newspaper like the AJC. Let’s just say that the last letters refer to “Out of Luck.”
Virginia actually has a website for the SOL Teacher. We've got them in Georgia, too. They're called "teachers." Because they're the ones who are required to put everyone else's acronyms into practice and are SOL when they can't.
Welcome to education. The eternal snafu. OMG.
