The super teacher (a political parable)
Anyone who has been in education for a reasonable length of time can tell you that it can be somewhat fad driven. Integrated math vs non integrated math (both have come and gone in my time). Science of reading vs whole reading (not my area but they have also come and gone and in the case of science of reading come again) It is sensible to wonder why this occurs. That is where the super teacher/school comes in.
The fact is there are some exceptionally gifted teachers in the world. And if one of them uses some method, and gets the good results a gifted person tends to get, then people start saying the method is the thing, not the teacher. Because we all know, that not everyone is going to be the best at their profession. Teachers, even in Lake Woebegone, some of them will be average, some will be good, and others great. Hopefully very few will be bad. And equally hopefully the average teacher will still get good results. But we constantly forget that, and attribute some crazy amount of success that a truly gifted teacher gets to the method they have chosen to adopt. Then the method becomes hot and the results, when it spreads to the rest of the teachers, invariably winds up being across the spectrum.
So what does that have to do with politics? Well candidates, similarly range from bad, to truly gifted. Occasionally a gifted politician gets elected on platform x and instead of recognizing the talent of that particular politician we attribute the success to the platform. In part, because the vast majority of people who are involved in politics actually do care about issues. So we then assume that the voting public does too. And while they do, they also care about candidates.
Mamdani is an amazing candidate. Frankly, I think he is likely to the left of even the median NYC voter, on Israel Palestine I suspect he is also an outlier. His age and lack of experience also would likely be handicaps. While we don't want people who every thinks are about to keel over from old age, we also want people who have some amount of managerial experience and don't look like they might be carded at the local bar. But with all of that, he won the primary decisively. He also won the general (against a very flawed candidate) by more than many thought he would. But his undeniable talent, is a huge part of why he won. We need to acknowledge that.
So back to teaching. My department kicked butt last year in terms of test scores. And while we do teach the same curriculum at roughly the same pace, we do so in our own ways. I adopted many different technologies. I love me some desmos (I can't wait to try the 3D stuff), I find applets that do stats, and other tech stuff. The person next door to me is very old school. She uses graphing calculators not desmos. Both of us get good results. I doubt mine would improve using her methods, and she wouldn't be comfortable using mine (though she is gifted enough that her results would be great). In short, we realize different teachers have different methods working with different students studying different things.
Politically we need to recognize the same thing. Former governor Cooper is no Mamdani. You aren't going to see viral videos of him with constituents like those of Mamdani. But Cooper wins elections in NC. He has been elected state wide 6 times (4 as AG, 2 as Gov). He is, by far, our best shot of winning this senate seat. He should be favored in this environment. Just like in teaching, we need to recognize that within a certain set of values, candidates can and will have different emphasis and maybe slightly different positions. Mamdani, as talented as he is, would not win a senate seat here. Cooper likely wouldn't win in NYC. Don't fall for the super politician. Instead, let us have a bunch of politicians that do the best they can with the resources they have. Let many flowers bloom. Mamdanis where they do the best, and Coopers where they do the best.
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