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Saturday, January 15, 2011

America’s “Vaporeducation” « Teacher Reality

America’s “Vaporeducation” « Teacher Reality

America’s “Vaporeducation”

When I think about all of the hype going on in education, I often connect it to the time I worked in sales and marketing in the business software-systems industry. To compete in that industry, I quickly learned that the name of the game was about how a business portrayed itself in the marketplace. So, often times, the company who had the slickest marketing, sales and PR machines in place were able to position themselves as the “biggest gun” worthy of the millions of dollars in contracts. My job was to help my clients reach the decision makers who controlled the million-dollar budgets and who had a problem that they needed to solve. All I had to do was find out who the decision makers were, what the problem was, how much budget was available, and then turn the potential client over to the sales rep for a meeting. This process is one that happens in business, everyday. Problems are defined, meetings are set up, and business deals are made.

In the industry that I worked in, sometimes the business deals that were set up were not made with the most honest or truthful intentions. In fact, it was well known in those “circles” that many heavy-hitter sales pros landed