President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Department of Education secretary is unconventional. Linda McMahon, who has held key management positions within World Wrestling Entertainment for over 25 years, has little formal experience in education. She was not a teacher, school administrator, or elected school official (although she served for a little over a year on the Connecticut State Board of Education). What she does have, however, is extensive experience in business management and leadership, including serving as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.
As a former teacher who now helps lead an organization that supports educators around the world, I have mixed feelings about this. Even though McMahon and everyone reading these words have spent many years in school, my experience as a teacher tells me that it is difficult to understand how education actually works – and, too often, does not work. not – without knowing what it’s like to stand in front of people. a student lounge, communicating with students’ families, or balancing the many competing demands that educators must juggle every day. At the same time, and as I learned the hard way, the skills required to successfully lead complex organizations are different from those required to teach effectively. The Department of Education is a very complex bureaucracy, and it’s possible that McMahon’s business acumen is actually needed to run it effectively.
There’s a reason we call watching TV “mindless entertainment” and “brain rot” is the Oxford Dictionary’s 2024 word.
There is, however, a reason why I fear that McMahon’s past successes, particularly in professional wrestling, may fail to prepare her for the challenges that lie ahead. Education is not entertainment.
Many people think that it is – or that it should be. When I trained to be a teacher, I was told very clearly that my job was to put on a show. I should stand at the blackboard every day and give my lessons; the more entertaining I was, the more my students would engage and learn. Many of us have had teachers who were also brilliant artists. We love their classes because we know they’ll keep us engaged, and when we think of great teachers, we remember Hilary Swank in “Freedom Writers” or Edward James Olmos in “Stand and Deliver.”
The theory is that if we can make lessons as exciting as these movies – or, say, a professional wrestling match – our students will learn. And you can find online courses today that attract students with the same message: “Take our courses, because our teachers are amazing.”
It’s a compelling argument. But this conception of a great professor as a captivating speaker poses three major problems.
The first is that, unfortunately, most of us just aren’t that fascinating. I know not. That’s what sets actors like Swank and Olmos or professional wrestlers like The Rock apart in the first place: They can hold our attention in a way that most people simply can’t. They also have the advantage of being able to perform with content and in settings designed to hold viewers’ attention, whereas teachers like me must teach writing and math in the classroom. We can’t compete.
Despite our efforts, we also cannot compete with the multitude of entertainment options available to our students on a daily basis. And frankly, I don’t think we should try, at least not on an entertainment level. We can give our students meaningful, inspiring assignments and show them that solving difficult problems or writing poetry is ultimately much more rewarding than endlessly scrolling through TikTok. I’m all for that! But if we try to turn our lessons into TikTok-style bites, we won’t help students gain the deep understanding and critical thinking skills they deserve.
Last but not least, sitting and watching is just not a great way to learn anything. This can be easy and comfortable and may be what many learners are used to. But if you really want to learn something, you usually have to get your hands dirty. You need to solve problems, write, debate, or anything else that activates your brain. There’s a reason we call watching TV “mindless entertainment” and “brain rot” is the word the Oxford Dictionary uses in 2024. Learning cannot be a passive process.
If we want students to learn, we can’t just entertain them. We must engage them instead. We need to provide each learner with sufficiently challenging content and give them the support they need to achieve mastery. We need to connect the content we teach to the issues that concern our young people. And we, as educators, must sit down with the young people we serve, get to know them as human beings, show them that we believe in them, and show them that if they apply themselves, it There’s no limit to what they can accomplish. The potential of our students is endless. We just need to help them unlock it.
Even the most entertaining conference in the world can’t achieve this.
For the sake of our teachers and our young people, if McMahon is confirmed as Secretary of Education, I wish her all the best. I hope she runs the Department of Education as effectively as she ran the WWE. And I hope she remembers that education and entertainment are fundamentally different activities.