Eat at Joe's... NOT!

An acquaintance (not a friend) of mine ate a local restaurant the other day -- at "Joe's" -- and had a bad experience. And then complained to me about it. The food, the service, the blah, blah, blah.

So, what is my opinion now of that restaurant? In an ideal world, I'd remain free of her input and go and judge it myself. However, all of us have so much going on in our lives that we often reply on the input of others to help us shape our own opinions of matters.

Fair? No,
Intelligent? No
Convenient and expedient? Yep.

And isn't that kinda what I value in this day and age to a large extent? After all, I'll buy milk at 7/11 at a price bump of 25% just because it save me time, effort and energy. And I am not the only one?

Of course not. We are busy people and if you can deflate the amount of items on my "to-do" list, I'll pay you for it and be happy for the honor to do so.

So when it comes to forming an authentic impression of public schools in this country, where do I turn? Primarily, the news and word of mouth.

And since I do not have much if any real word of mouth access to how middle schools in places like Detroit are faring, I simply deduce, based on the media reports I've gleaned or drawn inference from, that middle schools in Detroit are almost absolute train wreck.

And if you work in Detroit Middle Schools... well, it's easy to see why people who are not in this profession think we, as teachers across the country, are doing such a poor job.

They don't see how hard we work. They don't see the effort we give. They don't see how we are doing 10 dollars worth of work with 5 dollars worth of resources.

The media coverage we get as educators is predominantly negative and this negativity is causing less people to support us or want to send their kids to "eat in our restaurants" even if they haven't ever set foot inside the door themselves.

One disgruntled customer can spoil a mighty large pool of people. I mean I'll give most greasy spoon diners a chance, bit I will rarely Eat at Joe's if I've ever been told that Joe's is not doing a good job at what they are supposed to do.

And worse, I'll even tell other people they should be careful about eating at Joe's because I've heard the food there ain't so hot.

So why do folks in the nation want to send their kids to eat at our Joe's? Well, lots of them don't... but they can't afford otherwise. And those that can pony up big bucks for private schools because, as we all know, private schools that charge over $30,000 per year per child don't really survive all that long if they have too many parents walk out of their doors disgruntled.