The Power in Common Shared Vocabularies
One of the most effective—and unsettling (because it was so manipulative)—advocacy efforts I’ve ever witnessed took place during the 1994 midterm elections. A year or so earlier, Newt Gingrich and his political action committee distributed a memo to Republican candidates across the country. It contained two simple lists: one of words that tested positively in focus groups, and one of words that tested negatively.
Gingrich urged Republican candidates to use the positive terms when describing themselves and their policies, and to use the negative terms when describing Democrats, regardless of the underlying realities. The candidates followed the advice with remarkable discipline.
The result? Over time, values like “family,” “responsibility,” and “strength” became synonymous with the Republican brand, no matter who invoked them. I recall Democratic leaders who had long championed those same ideals suddenly finding themselves on the defensive—as if the words no longer belonged to them.
On election night, Gingrich’s strategy came full circle. His memo instructed candidates to declare each Republican win a “repudiation” of the Clinton administration, regardless of the local issues that in fact drove the outcome. Candidate after candidate repeated the line. By night’s end, the media had adopted the narrative. Though most races had turned on local concerns, the national storyline had been set—and it stuck.
It was a masterclass in message discipline. Gingrich understood what many in public education still haven’t fully embraced: shared language shapes public perception.
Now, whatever your politics, the politics are not the point. The point is this: when large numbers of committed people align around a shared set of terms—and consistently use them to define the conversation—the public’s understanding eventually follows, especially when the terms, like the Gingrich list, already evoke positive feelings.
Gingrich urged Republican candidates to use the positive terms when describing themselves and their policies, and to use the negative terms when describing Democrats, regardless of the underlying realities. The candidates followed the advice with remarkable discipline.
The result? Over time, values like “family,” “responsibility,” and “strength” became synonymous with the Republican brand, no matter who invoked them. I recall Democratic leaders who had long championed those same ideals suddenly finding themselves on the defensive—as if the words no longer belonged to them.
On election night, Gingrich’s strategy came full circle. His memo instructed candidates to declare each Republican win a “repudiation” of the Clinton administration, regardless of the local issues that in fact drove the outcome. Candidate after candidate repeated the line. By night’s end, the media had adopted the narrative. Though most races had turned on local concerns, the national storyline had been set—and it stuck.
It was a masterclass in message discipline. Gingrich understood what many in public education still haven’t fully embraced: shared language shapes public perception.
Now, whatever your politics, the politics are not the point. The point is this: when large numbers of committed people align around a shared set of terms—and consistently use them to define the conversation—the public’s understanding eventually follows, especially when the terms, like the Gingrich list, already evoke positive feelings.
When that understanding is based in truth, all the better.
Public education, by contrast, suffers from a fractured vocabulary. Ask someone outside the field what schools are for, and you’ll hear vague answers like “reading, writing, and arithmetic” or “getting kids into college or a job.” These responses aren’t wrong, but they’re uninspiring. They don’t motivate. They don’t unify. Worse, they are painfully incomplete.
For more than a decade, I’ve asked parents, students, and community members a simple question: What benefits do you expect or hope for in in return for trusting a school? The answers form a remarkably consistent and powerful vocabulary—one grounded in human needs, not institutional jargon.
It’s a beautiful list, full of the very reasons most educators entered the profession. It doesn’t unify people because it was engineered by a consultant or PR firm (and it certainly doesn't manipulate anything). It unifies because it reflects how millions of parents already think about the role of public schools. It represents the positive lenses through which they want to view schools, and that kind of authenticity has immense power.
It’s time we take a page from Gingrich’s playbook—not in its partisanship, but in its precision. Until we unify around a common, shared vocabulary—one that recasts what schools are in truthful terms everyone can rally behind—we’ll keep letting others define the story for us.
Public education, by contrast, suffers from a fractured vocabulary. Ask someone outside the field what schools are for, and you’ll hear vague answers like “reading, writing, and arithmetic” or “getting kids into college or a job.” These responses aren’t wrong, but they’re uninspiring. They don’t motivate. They don’t unify. Worse, they are painfully incomplete.
For more than a decade, I’ve asked parents, students, and community members a simple question: What benefits do you expect or hope for in in return for trusting a school? The answers form a remarkably consistent and powerful vocabulary—one grounded in human needs, not institutional jargon.
It’s a beautiful list, full of the very reasons most educators entered the profession. It doesn’t unify people because it was engineered by a consultant or PR firm (and it certainly doesn't manipulate anything). It unifies because it reflects how millions of parents already think about the role of public schools. It represents the positive lenses through which they want to view schools, and that kind of authenticity has immense power.
It’s time we take a page from Gingrich’s playbook—not in its partisanship, but in its precision. Until we unify around a common, shared vocabulary—one that recasts what schools are in truthful terms everyone can rally behind—we’ll keep letting others define the story for us.
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