It's not worth the bisque

Photo by Steve Wheeler

Sat in a fish restaurant tonight, I noticed this tank full of lobsters beside my table. I couldnt miss it really. Throughout my entire meal, two of the lobsters continuously and aggressively fought and barged for supremacy. They never stopped. But the contest was futile. All they managed to achieve was some churned up sand, water and plenty of bubbles. If you look closely at the photo, their claws are taped together so they can't do any physical harm to each other.

It got me thinking about the similarity between the lobsters acting like mobsters, and the sniping and name calling that we see between certain teachers on Twitter. What is achieved? Certainly a lot of churn. But what else? Hurt feelings and anger, and in the worst cases, alienation and despair.

Ultimately, we all share the same confined space - education, and we all have the same aim - to survive (and try to make a difference if we can). In the meantime, instead of fighting, why can't we get along with each other, act kindly and disagree politely? It wouldn't take a lot to shelve the aggression and the 'I'm right, and they're wrong so I can be rude to a complete stranger' attitude, and we'd all be a lot happier as we strive toward the same excellence in teaching, and the supporting our students.

So stop the aggression, and see this for what it is. You're not going to be in that tank forever, are you?

NB: No lobsters were harmed during the writing of this blog, and I certainly didn't eat any of them. It wasn't worth the bisque....


It's not worth the bisque by Steve Wheeler was written in Maribor, Slovenia and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Posted by Steve Wheeler from Learning with e's