BHHS? Merger or consolidation? "Words, Words, Words"

Did Bloomfield Hills Andover and Lahser “merge” or were they “consolidated”?

Lori Higgins and The Detroit Free Press, who seem especially attuned to our local situation in the context of Michigan’s “education reform” struggles, seems to think the former. http://www.freep.com/article/20130828/NEWS03/308280155/Merged-Bloomfield-High-draws-enthusiastic-freshman-class

Does it matter which term the media adapts?

“Words, words, words,” ruminates Prince Hamlet, who struggles to suit his own words to the action, and his actions to the word.

In corporate speak, a “merger” refers to one company absorbing another company, but staying itself intact. Indeed, the absorbing company grows. When two companies consolidate, however, an entirely new entity is formed. It is kind of like the old “compound” v. “mixture” question in basic science.

If I am not mistaken – and perhaps Shira Good or Rob Glass could correct me here – the District prefers consolidation. BHHS is a new entity, created by a very difficult but distinctly local process.

Now Lori Higgins and the Gannett Company and the Free Press might have good reason to say merger, not consolidation.

The Governor, having failed to “unbundle” Districts through open legislation, has now, instead, pushed the state to “consolidate” Districts thus “unbundling” local Districts by another name. This is because – the story goes – local Districts can’t manage themselves and they need Lansing to direct them. All Oakland County schools, then, should “consolidate” as we will be asked to do come Thanskgiving when Pontiac "unbundles" (despite the soothing words of Andy Meisner).

But a poor old local entity could only merge.

Hair splitting? Word “smithing” (a favorite pejorative of accountants and finance folks)?

May be.

Then, again, words matter – and not just in political struggles. Words don’t represent our thoughts, they shape them. Most of the linguistic work is done in metaphors. The best book on this, for those interested, is George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By.

A metaphor, as you all know, is the comparison of two unlike things. When talking about a good soccer player under pressure, for example, we might say, “she is a cool cucumber.” Player=cucumber. Metaphor in less compressed -- and thus less powerful -- form is called a simile. A simile compares two unlike things using “like” or “as”: she is “as cool as a cucumber.” When your kids say "like" all the time it isn't always, like, just a an annoying habit, it is, like, an attempt to understand something by comparison.

If we use similes and metaphors enough – say, a “school should be run like a business” – we can start to think of the school not as being like a business, but a business with profit as the guiding aim.

Our potential state Senator, Chuck Moss, spent a great deal of time telling school boards that “80%” of their budget went to payroll. Now, if the school was a business this is bad. But is the school is a service industry (or pick a new metaphor), well, it is perfectly normal.

Remember the old George Carlin comedy routine? In tough football we “throw a bomb” but in sissy baseball we “run home.”

So did Andover and Lahser merge or was there a consolidation?

Is Hickory Grove now the 9th Grade “campus” or is a majestic, Platonic, baroque, and charterized “academy”?

And who does Lori Higgins get her info from in Bloomfield Hills as she and the Gannett Company and other corporate entities seek to shape the future of your kids’ education in part by shaping the very terms and metaphors we use to understand the school system itself?