Friday, November 27, 2009

Dept. of Education Champions One-Way Communication

Watching a political video from the U.S. Department of Education’s YouTube channel, I was surprised that participants are not allowed to rate or comment upon the videos.

I was going to leave a suggestion on the their YouTube channel that two way open dialogue on the important issues facing education requires a way for stakeholders to communicate back openly, publicly, and interactively; however, their YouTube channel does not allow comments.

I thought that perhaps this control issue was limited to YouTube, but found that even their blog does not allow public comments to be posted to the entries. One can send a private comment, but not engage in an active dynamic dialogue.

The Department makes a very public display of its “listening” tours, but chooses not to engage in an open public dialogue in their internet communication portals. Their communication is really one directional, from the Department to us, while they might deign to repeat publicly what we can only whisper to them beyond public earshot.

Seth Godin has been correct to criticize companies that fail to engage the community of their patrons, who are already talking on-line about their brands. How much worse is it that a public organization, responsible to the citizens, should propagandize while refusing to actively engage stakeholders, but instead pretending to do so?

This reticence by the Department is symptomatic of a couple defects in public education: (1) the bureaucracy is seeking to lead by monologue, and (2) the real, interactive, and public dialogue about education reform occurs in the civil society beyond government.