"This Should Work" Doesn't, But Why They Keep Trying

"This should work" is a construct based on a conditional verb.

As long as proper conditions are in place, than the plan, the scheme, the overarching goal "should work."

If it does not work, then those who claimed that "this should work" can simply argue that conditions were not right. Something was missing, or someone did not do enough.

In the case of public education, this maniacal mantra has given birth to many failed reforms.

More money was needed. Let's divert more tax-payer funds to school sites (and district administration)

The kids needed to be treated with more respect. If the teacher had not sent so many kids out for their misconduct, then they would have been successful in the class.

The teacher, the administration, the school site as a whole is insensitive to the racial background of the students. With enough diversity training, the teacher will know how to better reach the student, past the legacy of hate and oppression of yesteryear, yestermonth, or yestercentury.


The goals of the lesson were not clearly stated. Let's design state and national standards. Why not also tell teachers where and how much they should be teaching during each day and month of the school year. By controlling the curriculum stringently enough, all the kids will get the proper education.

The students did not have textbooks. Let's divert already limited personnel to check that every student has received their own textbook. This inane procedure fails to take into account that even if every student has a textbook, that in no way implies that they can or will ever want to read the thing.

And on and on and on. . . .

If the desired outcome does not come out, if "this did not work", it should work if teachers, schools, and attending bureaucrats from the district office to the state capitol to Washington D.C. do something more to remedy some perceived lack.

Yet after all this doing, after all this spending, after all this energy expended, what do we have to show for it all? Students are not learning, teachers are fleeing the profession in droves, and state governments have no more money.

This thing called public education "should work", but does not work. No amount of tinkering, forcing, and cajoling will not reach students where they are. The whole model is corrupt, wrong, and outdated. If it really did work, it would have worked by now.

Yet for the liberal mind, living in the abstraction of "should", regardless of the failing results, will continue to fall back on the same erroneous assumption that the conditions on the outside are wrong, that the world and its complex, spontaneous order needs to be fixed; yet all the while, these processes, these human beings, cannot be transformed, but must be accepted as they are, and thus the mindset must be changed.

"This should work" is a failed credo, one that fails to live up to facts on the ground.