"Here's a news flash: schoolchildren don't like homework! It gets in the way of television viewing and social activities. And some parents don't like it either. When they try to help their kids, they discover they're just as bad at algebra now as they were in the seventh grade. ... Stripped of the usual academic jargon and edubabble, these are in essence the conclusions of Etta Kalovec and John Buell, the authors of The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children and Limits Learning."
—Mike Rosen, "Homework Gets in the Way of Fun," Rocky Mountain News, March 23, 2001
A much older and more popular synonym for
edubabble is
educationese, which first appeared (in print, anyway) in the mid-1970s. Fittingly, it also appears in the earliest citation I could find for
edubabble:
"The irony of educationese or edubabble as some critics have dubbed it isn't lost on Dr. Ruth Steele, director of the state Education Department and a former English teacher.
'I think we educators are unusually prone to use jargon, and of all people we ought to be the clearest in our language,' Steele said."
—Gwen Crownover, "Jargon of education means coming to terms," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, March 17, 1989
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