How Good Is Good Enough?
In the quality world, there is much discussion around the topic of "how good is good enough?" There have been many books written about this concept, most recently- Good to Great by Jim Collins. In his book he talks about how the enemy of greatness... is being good. What does that really mean? As educators focused on continuous improvement, our goal is to be better tomorrow than we are today; better next week than we are this week; better next month than we are this month; better next year than we are this year... you get the picture.
In the poem titled "Pretty Good" by Charles Osgood, he illustrates what could happen when we are content with being "pretty good". The poem begins with
"There once was a pretty good student
Who sat in a pretty good class
And was taught by a pretty good teacher
Who always let pretty good pass."
I'll save the suspense and share with you the last few lines of the poem...
"If you want to be great,
Pretty good is, in fact, pretty bad."
Quality and continuous improvement is never "done", therefore, pretty good doesn't fit our paradigm. How good is good enough in your District, school or classroom?
Comments
In life there is nothing like constant. In our national language Urdu, a poet once said something like," The only event in the universe that is constant is variation". This is a good idea we need to work hard, always in right direction.
Posted by: Dr. Ejaz Ahmed | July 6, 2006 03:03 AM