Administrators – McManna.com

I’ve received some criticism. A reader says that, while she enjoys my stuff, she believes most of what I write about administrators is “negative in tone.”

Negative Tone Tone Down? — If administrators were to eat as foolishly as they write

She writes, “It’s funny when you take pot-shots, but you should also offer positive suggestions. After all, administrators fill needs. If they didn’t, they would not exist.”

To that last part I say: Prove it. What needs exactly do administrators fill? And if they exist, do they really need to be full?

As for the first part, I’d like everything I write about administrators to be negative. Alas, charity sometimes gets the better of me.

To my knowledge, no administrator has ever read anything I’ve written. But this does not matter, as I do not write for the benefit of administrators.

I write for the benefit of a person: for myself, for yourself, for any person who is capable of sound logic and clear language. If you and I are to live meaningful lives, it will be because we are capable of producing those things within ourselves.

I do concede the following. I would acquit myself differently if administrators were in the same condition as twelve-year-olds.

If you tell a twelve-year-old to avoid the phrase “actual decline” since something is either in decline or not in decline, he/she will take the point and apply it the rest of his/her life. If you tell the same thing to an administrator, he/she will grunt, walk away, and the next day produce a document containing the phrase “real problem.”

Twelve-year-olds, you see, are merely ignorant, and ignorance can be corrected. Administrators are not ignorant. They’re fools, and there is no hope for fools.

Dear reader: I make no attempt at reform where reform is impossible. My intent is to call fools fools. I cannot go (no one can) beyond that. You may, of course, continue to object. But, as you are clearly one who can write, which is to say think, I hope you do not.

I hope you approve of my honest, blunt reply, though I am prepared to accept your dissent. In either event, you surely must appreciate that an answer, or any sort of consideration, that is intended to win approval, is far worse than no answer at all. I do what I can. And I can, and do, maintain that administrators are fools.

Negative Tone Tone Down?
A Manna Nosh message by Matt Manna
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Manna Nosh • Longer than a Tweet, shorter than an article.