Promoting "Good Citizenship" Over Political Ideology, Religion & Social Class

The key consideration for the conduct of interpersonal affairs is that the activities of people can harmonize without their ideas about ends and means being in agreement – Nicholas Rescher Pluralism (1995. Oxford. Paperback) p.180

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none." ― Thomas Jefferson

The (Assumed) Basic Agenda of the U. S. Public Schools has long been baptized "promoting good citizenship." The fundamental mission of the public schools in the multicultural, putatively democratic society of the United States of America is to forestall or ameliorate conflict between different cultural and social subgroups, quite independently of whether such conflict is morally justifiable.

Clearly, "good citizenship" is seen as the fundamental, if not sole, goal of public schooling; especially when one considers that very few people would be willing to disregard conflict among groups in order to pursue any of the other vaunted aims of public education, e.g. acculturation and skills development.

Indeed, the very possibility of the public school structure serving its functions presumes such conflicts are under control. Consider the present proliferation of posters in public schools that declare, "No Place for Hatred." (Effective? Perhaps; disregarding student and public behavior at pre-game sports rallies.)

This subordination of many of the "obvious" goals of schooling to those of "stifling conflict," "getting along" or "respect for authority" is anything but a sign of irrationality, irresoluteness, ignorance or perversity, even though honored intellectual and social goals might suffer from emphasis on good citizenship.

In a society that imposes some form of primary education on all, "public" education by default, the rock-bottom demands for order and for the recognition of easily recognized value commitments, e.g. obedience, manners, timeliness, patriotism, etc., become the only foundations for functional mass education. This is particularly the case where great variations in family income or religious commitment are prevalent and likely to be persistent.

Also, this mission of pacification has supported commercial interests to exploit the vast territorial expanses and abundant natural resources of North and South America (and the world) resulting in the development of industries and patterns of settlement that tend to stabilize expanding local and national governance systems.

Persistent warfare, in the long run, dissipates wealth and threatens the stability of governing groups. War can be fatal to commerce. Conversely, commerce has played a substantial part, historically world-wide, in restraining military ambition, whether fed for the sake of domination, ideology, wealth, or religion. (But this perspective is greatly complicated by many other factors. See Berman in references.) In time, of course, commerce itself, since it minimizes the often substantial collateral damage caused by military action, may become a preferred means of pursuing domination, ideology, wealth, or religion. (See Downs in references.)

The preceding comments, I take it, are relatively common knowledge, discussed by many, many others in far more detail and exactitude than I have taken to present here. Those comments are not intended to identify heroes or villains, or to judge either militarism or commerce to be morally better than the other. Clearly, they fail to include mention, much less detail, of the millions of human beings who have fallen victim over the centuries of human history to their processes.

Our interest here is to understand how the public schools in the United States of America have fit in with the governance and social control processes of our society by pursuing their main goal of promoting good citizenship, even to the extent of often giving little more than lip service to other worthy pursuits.

Public education has been promoted and controlled to domesticate the populations who are be compelled, either by law, custom or poverty to accept its ministrations. The standard curricula of public education reflect the mission of producing "good citizens."

a. this mission is served by policies which promote "passive valuing", i.e. some kind of esteeming which does not involve the pursuit of that which is esteemed -- typical of so-called "appreciation" courses or of values clarification classes, smatterings of much, little of depth;

b. this mission is also served by policies which gainsay any of the conditions necessary to connecting action with value, i.e. the conditions of rationality, knowledge, ability, opportunity and consistency.
Since it is active valuing, the pursuit of values, which might cause conflict where values are not shared, certain policy directions can be drawn immediately from the above formulations. (See Constricting Social Ideals: breaking the values-action link to ensure "stability.".}

Thus, a rational school policy serving the social goal of reduced conflict could well promote -- with studied disregard:

a. irrationality, by letting evanescent preferences - whether of governance, organizational or student bodies - determine study options, rather than bias toward longer term considerations. (Universities and private schools, also, do this in favoring religious, social, or disciplinary traditions over scholarship);

b. ignorance, by granting certificates of completion without adequate testing for knowledge;

c. incompetence, by giving credit for "life experience" without clear definitions of skill obtained;

d. unequal opportunity, by tracking students by family background, or inadequate funding of educational programs; or

e. inconsistency of conduct, passing grades for "effort" or to satisfy school board demands for "higher achievement: -- read "higher recorded grades."

Hardly anyone would think such aims educational. Our considerations are suggestive, however, as to the persistence of these ills despite continued exhortation to eradicate them.

Final misgivings (from the political dimension of schooling): who decides what "operable" criteria of "good citizenship" are to be? Might they not come biased by political ideology, religion & social class?

To examine these issues further, see The Desired Ideal: a Docile Citizen? Or...?


Cordially
--- EGR

REFERENCES

Harold J.Berman, Law and Revolution. The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983 (See "citizenship", throughout.)


Jacques M. Downs "American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800-1840" The Business History Review, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1968), pp. 418-442

Engaging Conflict: a Leadership Necessity?

War is Peace1984 -- George Orwell I would rather have a general who was lucky than one who was good. – Napoleon Bonaparte.
	The Epee of Europe

Dilemmas. Leadership offers an incumbent realms of opportunity; and, also, realms of temptation. It is in the interests of the followership (and, also, of the disinterested) to hold leadership in rein. But it is natural, even necessary, for leadership to strain against it. The priorities of leadership and followership not infrequently butt heads. (See A Leader's Primary Pursuit: Incumbency)

Leadership as “Service.”

"The king is foremost the servant ... of the State.“ -- Frederic II, King of Prussia (1712 - 1786)

Incumbent candidates of all kinds support their proposal of incumbency with often not too subtle threats. A traditional approach is to claim a “servant’s” role to some widely “honored”, if fuzzy, goal or person, for example, Servant of God, Servant of The People, Servant of Justice, Servant of Peace.

As such, a Servant-Leader, the proposed incumbent promises to clarify, pursue and actualize the “Will” (or “True Meaning”} of God, People, Justice or Peace.

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Matthew 7:21

Why “God” Needs a “Devil.” It is the real or imagined threat of conflict that disciplines a “distractable” followership into supporting incumbency. The normal inclinations of people to go about their own business, giving only lip-service to the proposals of authority, tend to undermine that authority or lower its esteem.

Leaders looking to use their organization as an agency of change have to carefully distinguish between members who are marginal, those who are interested and those who are zealots. It really makes a difference. (See Assessing the Likelihood of Implementing Change )

So it is that “natural” priorities, e.g. attention to personal physical needs, to personal gain, to individual interests, or to ties to family, friends, or neighbors have to be demonized, if only minimally lowered in esteem, as “distractions” from pursuit of “nobler” goals, i.e. those goals “clarified” by the would-be incumbent. People must be “educated” to resist the “temptations” of such “selfish distractions.”

So it is that all over the world, Societies send out Teachers to Educate the Intellectually and Morally Underdeveloped so as to reduce Discord, Crime and Corruption.

The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. Matthew 13:41

Conflict: A Balm for Incumbents? Louis Coser identifies several important functions of conflict.

a. Conflict makes connection. It is a basic form of exchange and interaction. It is a negotiation.

b. Conflict among groups sharpens their exterior boundaries.

c. Conflict among groups revitalizes traditions and norms.

d. Information gathering, reconnaissance, is a function of conflict.

e. Conflict among groups causes their replication of each other, a balance of structure and functions which may encourage formation of similar markets and power centers.

Generally often overlooked issues are several:

1. Who, specifically, benefits from these outcomes of conflict?

2. Who, specifically, pays the costs?

3. Does the leadership and followership share benefits in some fair proportion to the costs borne by them?

4. Why do incumbents tend to resist raising such issues?

The Moral Hazards of Leadership that strives to be heroic are unavoidable. But they can be dealt with. There are enough extant conflicts in the world to provide many an incumbent with opportunities for heroic leadership. (See LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?)

The dangerous temptation is for the incumbent to create conflict merely to protect his or her own incumbency with little regard for those whom he or she leads. History has long shown this to be a not uncommon hazard. Leaders not infrequently tend to seek out, if not create, what they can present to their followers as an unavoidable conflict -- often prettified nowadays with the label, "challenge."

And inept, uninformed leaders generally end up being either just lucky, or, more frequently, losers. Much more so their followers. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?)


For examples and to examine these issues further in a widely presumed less important, less turbulent context, see The Functions of Conflict in the Context of Schooling )

Cordially,
--- EGR

Can Education Be Made A Science?

edited 5/21/20

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong. -- Albert Einstein

Let's specify more precisely what the question of the title, Can Education Be Made A Science?, is intended to mean. It should be understood to ask, Can technology and methods be developed which will give us (human beings) control over the production of outcomes designated by educational goal statements?

We can analyze this question by breaking it into several related questions:

a. Can we cause people (the average person?) to learn? That is
b. Can we cause people to be either moral, skilled, or well-behaved?
c. Can we cause them to be this way whether or not they want to be this way? i.e. against their will.
d. Better yet, can we cause them to want to be this way? (Advertising seem to manage to do this surprisingly well -- check your teenager's clothing,)

The short answer to all of these questions is: it all depends. What might surprise you is what it depends on.
The first big, very big thing an education science would depend on is

1. our conceiving of educational goals whose outcomes would be the effects of solely our actions.

For example, suppose a religious community chose as a goal of education, Being accepted by God into Heaven. If they also believed that it is by an omnipotent God's grace alone that people achieve such acceptance, then, logically they must relinquish the hope of a science of education, since to think that humans have the power to compel God to accept them is incompatible with this belief.

Two other conditions, no small things, either, are:

2. that there be a workable consensus on goal outcomes (and the steps toward them); and
3. that the outcomes be unambiguously defined. (This crucial step is too technical to discuss in a blog. See the article and linked articles given in the reference on the bottom.)

Many an educational reform proposal has died for failing to meet conditions 2 or 3. Just consider the widely encountered goal statement, Prepare the student for the 21st Century. Who knows what is being specified here? And how many people agree on it? Would it have come to be a political issue in the U.S. if much of any consensus existed? (See What does Consensus mean, anyway?)
Recalling Einstein's quote above we might wonder about another issue. How much reliable experimentation would we have to conduct to determine both ends and means of our sought-after "scientific" education? After much fanfare most so-called "Best Practices" research has yielded minuscule results despite grand expenditures! (For a set of pertinent blogs, see Best Practices Search Results.)

If we are desperate to answer yes to the question as to whether education could be made a science, we might wish that the words science and education slip from their traditional moorings and come to be applicable in ways that satisfy us. (Which "us?" Which "ways?")

Advertising campaigns might do the trick. Celebrities might be pressed into service to convince people that educators are primarily scientific technicians, rather than the kind of magician they are often made out to be in the sitcoms. (See Technician, or Magician: Can You Tell the Difference?) Free promotional samples of technology would no doubt be welcomed by cash-strapped school districts whose political governors are almost always happy to concede on the minor matter of language: science? education? Whatever!

I am reminded of the principal in a high school in Philadelphia (circa 1990) who, when directed that all students were to take a course in Algebra -- even as staff ratings were to depend on student success -- did the following. He arranged for the lowest accomplishing students to be given an arithmetic-review course, which was called "Algebra-X." This "reform" was promoted throughout the systems high-schools. And so the superintendent could publicly claim that all students in Philadelphia high schools were studying algebra. (See Reform by Redefinition.)

For references and to examine these issues further, see Can There Be a Science of Education?

Cordially -- EGR

“Data-Driven”: a slogan to distract from organizational disagreement?

“There is a difference between numbers and numbers that matter. This is what separates data from metrics.”-- Jeff Bladt and Bob Filbin (3/4/1) Know the Difference Between Your Data and Your Metrics

Assumptions in using data. A number of assumptions are necessary to turn “raw data” into something useable. What must be developed, if not already on hand, is a workable consensus on Terminology (concepts), Goals, and Methods of implementation. (For short, let us call this TGM-consensus.)

A workable TGM-consensus is one with sufficient depth of agreement on all the items, TGM, to enable control of production. (See The Indeterminacy of Consensus: masking ambiguity and vagueness in decision)

Whether or not TGM-consensus can be developed is highly sensitive to the kind of organization one is dealing with. In many, not all, businesses there is TGM-consensus. The proof is in the pudding, as the old saying goes: do they consistently -- not necessarily always -- produce a saleable product? If so, there is TGM-consensus.

In politics, religion, the “soft-sciences” and all levels of education[1], different agendas compete: widespread TGM-consensus is often lacking. Again, the proof is in the pudding: is there is persistent debate as to what the pudding should look like, the ingredients needed, the production procedures, and the evaluation methods? Then TGM-consensus is likely rare. And, neither vociferous admonitions, nor seductive pleas to become “data-driven” will make up for these lacks.

Much current promotion emphasizing “data-driven” approaches are little more than ploys to get worried persons to adopt prepackaged TGM-programs without critical pre-evaluation. Such pre-packaged TGM-programs, unless carefully examined for congruence with the TGM-environment to which it will be applied, will likely result -- to judge from past examples -- in a ritual charade of evaluation. (See Causal Charades: organizational rituals of evaluation)

Dealing with “Raw” Data. Here is some “raw” data.

@@&@*$@@&&@@*$$*&@@$$*&*@*@@$&$*@*$@*$*&&*@*&*&$**
What can you do with it (them)? What do you have to know about it (them)? Suppose I let you know that it (they) is (are) “data” gotten trying to measure someone’s physical development? What other information do you need?
Would it matter, if instead of “physical development” I had written “moral development?” Of course it would. The “data” inasmuch as it is relevant data -- some of the symbols might be mere construct effects of the instrumentation -- do not resolve by themselves any questions about development. [2]

A More Everyday Example. A clear example can be given as follows: suppose we have two persons standing together at normal speaking distance, facing each other. Call them Harry and John. Some noise issues from Harry. Consider the following possible descriptions of Harry's behavior:

a. Harry emitted the sound-sequence: /2aym+ gowing+3 hówm1 /.

b. Harry said, "I'm going home."

c. Harry told John he was going home.

d. Harry informed John that he was going home.

e. Harry surprised John with the statement that he was going home.

We can easily imagine a situation where all of these descriptions are true of what Harry is doing. But given a, -- which is the "physical" data of Harry's behavior in b, c, d and e -- neither b nor c nor d nor e need be true. What supporting information do we need to draw any inferences from the data? Here are some possibilities: [3]

1. If Harry is a babbling idiot, a might be true and none of the rest.

2. If Harry is reciting aloud a line from a script, a and b might be true and none of the rest.

3. If John already knew that Harry was going home, a, b, and c might be true but none of the rest.

4. If John is never surprised by anything Harry does, but did not already know he was going home, a, b, c, and d but not e might be true.

Data is the mere tip of an “iceberg.” If you want to trust data, you have to trust a lot more: parts which are usually submerged; and, often hard to fathom.

Why is data often ignored? What may be perplexing is that even in organizations which have long traditions of TGM-consensus, possibly very relevant data is paid little attention to. Why might that be?

Ask , perhaps cautiously, “Qui Bono?” Who stands to benefit, who stands to risk loss, if the data are paid attention to? One reason for the exaggerated drum-beating for “data-driven” undertakings is distraction. The organization’s present TGM-consensus may be either decrepit, or fail to address the burning issues. So, an emphasis on likely irrelevant data draws attention away from deeper disagreement about either terminology, or goals or method. [4] Addressing TGM issues would upset someone’s applecart.

The most vociferous advocates for improvement may be those most wanting to stifle it.

To examine these issues further, see Moral Education: Indoctrination vs. Cognitive Development?)

Cordially
--- EGR

NOTES
[1] See Charades of Evaluation: mis-connecting cause and effect

[2] To see how this code-string can be used as data see the article reference given at the end of the essay, Moral Education: Indoctrination vs. Cognitive Development?

[3] See Measurability and Educational Concerns

[4] Quantification is appealed to especially if it is believed to promote one’s agenda in discussion and investigation. However, Deborah Stone offers some telling criticisms about this practice especially as it is used to squelch open discussion. See for example, "Using Quantitative Procedures Wisely".

Leadership: the Philosopher’s Stone of the 21st Century

the effectiveness of ... symbolic action is enhanced by the confusion of all involved between substantive and symbolic results. -- Jeffrey Pfeffer (1981) "Management as Symbolic Action: The Creation and Maintenance of Organizational Paradigms"

What Are We After? For thousands of years, would-be power-holders have searched for some magic that would enhance their lives.

The philosopher’s stone (Arabic,: al-iksir , or Buddhist or Hindi: Cintamani) was reputed to enable its possessor to transmute metals of lower value into gold. Other rumored powers were: changing common crystals into precious stones, healing illnesses, lengthening life, creating homunculi.

One can find thousands, millions, perhaps, of characterizations of the terms leader, or leadership, in all kinds of media. No less magical is the hope that “true leaders” can be found or created that will transmute any group, corporation or society, even, into something wondrous. The logically and practically prior determination of the targets, i.e. of what it is that most everyone would find to be more wondrous, is generally passed over by those impatient to effect magical transformations. This impatience is often exacerbated by the desire to obscure substantive issues. (For related examples of present-day “magical” practices in society and law, see Same-Sex Marriage: yes or no? A Hypocritical Confrontation?)

Looking for "the Essentials" of Leadership.

"I have plenty of clever generals but just give me a lucky one." -- Napoleon, (anecdotal)

"Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men." -- E.B. White (1944) One Man's Meat

What is interesting about the volumes written about leadership is that many, many of them focus mostly on the personal characteristics of what they call "leadership," ignoring not only the influence of luck, but also the constraints of organizational structure, tasks and goals. Thus, we find books and blogs and newspaper articles on leadership -- as abundant today as love-lorn columns and horoscopes have ever been -- that focus on the behavior of the leader as a monologic actor in a group. What is generally overlooked is the influence, often stultifying, of the context of the leader's actions.

This context of action has long been studied in industrial contexts, but is generally ignored by social, particularly educational, reformers of many stripes -- despite their being well-aware that their markets comprise individuals looking to acquire "generalship" and esteem as "self-made" persons. The irony here is particularly striking when one considers how so many of our present social critics claim to want to make schools and colleges turn out graduates who are more economically productive "in the 21st century."

However, sociologist Joan Woodward's study, Industrial Organization. Theory and Practice (1966) provides an analysis that relates personnel relationships to organizational type, inputs and outputs. Industrial organizations, writes Woodward, fall into three classes depending upon their goal, i.e. the kind of product they make, and the kind of technology they use to produce it.

What is most important for those of us who contemplate promoting change in organizations is Woodward's finding that, in the most successful of the types of organization she analyzes, their goals and technologies affect profoundly both the productive and social relationships between workers. In other words, what we try to do and how we go about doing it affects the way we work together, our productivity and our politics.

Despite a not quite comfortable fit, large batch and mass production industries have provided Americans with a modern Factory image of educational institutions at all levels. According to Woodward, the goal of large batch and mass production industries is to produce uniform items for a pre-existent mass market. (See School Image: Expectations & Controversies.)

The technology of large batch and mass production industries, although complex, can be made piecemeal. Causal connections are generally clear. Uniform inputs produce uniform outputs. This diminishes the need for research and development. Management separates itself from, as it controls, low-skilled workers through a variety of highly elaborate sanctions. Communication occurs only to exchange information of interest to management. The technical rationality of the workplace tends to fragment social relationships as these tend to undermine efficiency. In American schooling,for example, this industrial model is reflected in persistent attempts to standardize curriculum, i.e. "teacher-proof" it, testing, promotion and graduation standards.

The large batch and mass production model is disregarded by proponents of the doctrine that the individual needs of each person should be met by the school. It is, ironically, also undermined by "democratizing" the public schools in particular, that is, opening them to all comers, using age as the only prerequisite for acceptance, rather than attempting to standardize admissions criteria in any productively, e.g. pedagogically, relevant way. (See The Capacity to Benefit from Formal Academic Schooling: two ideologies of distribution.)

Process industries such as oil refineries, chemical plants, and pharmaceutical companies are technology-rich. They produce specialized products for hard-to-identify specialty markets. Complex though well-defined causal processes are built into plant equipment so as to minimize the need for workers. Those few workers who are needed tend to be highly skilled technicians who can maintain and troubleshoot the production process. Control by management is of little concern since both the equipment and the technical orientation of the workers assures success. As in the mass production industries, communication is necessary only for exchange of information. The technical rationality of the process does not support -- though it need not undermine -- the social relationships of organization members.

This model is dear to the hearts of all technically adept educators, whose main failing is often little more than the assumption that their successes rests solely on their own pedagogical skill rather than on characteristics, not under their control, of their classrooms or students. The model is actively promoted by teacher accrediting organizations working hard to impose as doctrine on would-be teachers the belief that all children cn learn and that even future adult behavior can be controlled through early school interventions. Unfortunately, little consensus exists that there is scientific support for these propositions. (See Are “Best” Practices Really the Best? What is the evidence?)

Unit and small-batch industries, in Woodward's typology, produce custom-designed specialty items, such as locomotive engines and custom cars. Specialty demands provide the impetus for the research and development of processes and methods which take the very specific characteristics of inputted material and, with much skilled worker attention, transform it into relatively unique outputs. Management-worker relationships tend to be non-hierarchical and communication occurs on an operational basis as the process requires it. Since teaming and mutual support are often necessary, social relationships are as important as technical ones.

The chart to the right summarizes the relationships between inputs and outputs for the different organizational types.

This is what private (and otherwise small-school) education is about, although small budgets often cut into the possibility of hiring highly-skilled teachers or administrators. But parents (especially those of younger students) like to believe that their offspring are getting "individualized" treatment. (In the public schools this dream is responded to by the procedure of the IEP, individualized educational placement, that students admitted to special education receive.)

American schooling traditions make these models problematic in trying to characterize schools as production systems. Progressive as well as "scientific" ideologies tend to see the relationship of technical to social functions of the school to be that of Unit and Small Batch systems. But given their size, the production control of most schools defaults to that of Large Batch and Mass systems. (For more on this, see Productivity, Politics and Hypocrisy in American Public Education.)

Two Classes of Leadership: Role-leaders versus Performance-leaders.

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. -- Peter Drucker

Some leaders are designated as such because of their position in an organization. Job titles, roles, are ranked on organization charts, the higher being superior to the lower. The jobs are bestowed for various reasons, e.g. tradition, experience, nepotism, political connection, friendship, seniority and, (even!) possessing needed skills.

For organizations that rank these role-positions, “leadership” -- so the expectation (the hopes?) goes -- is a function of rank. A given job-holder is in a leadership position to everyone in line of command below him or her on the chart. But a person’s job title may be a poor indicator of competence: some high ranking people may lack the experience, competence or the attitude to be a good leader. They are called “leaders,” nonetheless, gaining unearned a lot of the approval, compensation or deference that the word’s usage insinuates they deserve.

From informal surveys I have conducted over many years, those discussing the characteristics of leaders or leadership to be desired are primarily focused on those of Performance Leadership. They all pretty much agree with Drucker what it is to be a “manager.”

Why is role-based leadership tolerated, even celebrated? Because in many organizations, particularly long-established ones, top-ranking leaders are the most powerful, controlling the organizational resources, particularly through ownership. The top-rankers needn’t have productive skills in terms of which lower ranking members are hired and evaluated. Princes need tend no gardens.

In Jeffrey S . Nielsen’s book The Myth of Leadership. Creating Leaderless Organizations. (Palo Alto: Davies-Black 2004) he treats all leadership as being role-leadership. (The term he uses is “rank-leadership”.) By “leaderless” he means “without rank-defined leaders.” What he does propose is that organizations strive to be run entirely on performance-leadership.

Two Domains of Any Kind of Leadership: Social versus Technical Among those who work in organizations where rank is important, funding is sufficient, and competitive pressures are minimal, it is strange to find that they may still yearn for the kind of performance-leadership that would likely not be tolerated by powerful top-rankers. However, by restricting its range of action, Performance Leadership can be tolerated where Role-Leadership is dominant.

We can distinguish persons, whether they exercise role- or performance-leadership at belonging to one of two different domains of functioning, the social or the technical. Social functioning comprises behavior that seeks to maintain consensus of various forms among organizational members, to protect the organization or its sub-parts against internal or external threats.

Common social functioning examples are participating in advertising, representing the firm at public functions, charity, or attending balls and commenting on public events. The language of social functionaries tends to be cordial, collegial, celebratory, non-committal and vague. It is replete with slogans, truisms, compliments and happy (or angry) ambiguities. It requires little technical training beyond what an undergraduate liberal arts major can pick up.

Common technical functioning requires planning and skillful strategizing so as to maximize the efficiency of social functioning. But -- an important note -- it presumes a context of consensus already established through social functioning. Technical leadership, whether role-based or performance-based is evaluated by its success at achieving restricted aims. The language of technical leadership is about cause-and-effect, cost-and-benefit, and efficiency.

A leader may appear cordial and celebratory, but if this behavior is a strategem believed to secure a desired aim, this leadership is technical-leadership: honey set out to attract more flies than would vinegar.

Leadership for a Common Humanity

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr’s characterization of a “genuine leader” is intriguing. To not need to search for a community of consensus either assumes you are already fortuitously embedded in such a community, or that you have an irresistible technique for consensus building. So powerful, in fact is this community-building technique, if it is available, that those who earlier did not agree with you will suddenly drop their resistence and acknowledge that your consensus-molding efforts have worked successfully on them.

I can think of two beliefs of Dr. King, clearly a performance-leader, that he expressed on many occasions:

1. We are all children of the same God -- i.e. we belong to a universal community; and,

2. Non-violent confrontation is the method which will awaken that sense of community and moral consensus in those who right now don’t feel it.

With the first belief King acts in the social domain, proposing a logical foundation for a consensus. The second belief illustrates a technical approach to pursuing King’s aim of racial equality.

Whether we share Dr. King’s beliefs or not, we can concede that they provide a coherent basis for the actions he took to achieve the goals he wanted. That logic stands, even though the problems he faced have been more resistant to his efforts than many have wished.

To examine these issues further, see Sustaining Illusions of Leadership.

Cordially -- EGR

The Costs and Risks of Education: exempting the traditional.

updated 11/21/18

“We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice” -- Henry David Thoreau

Scalpels. If you were to give scalpels to toddlers, you wouldn’t be surprised if they cut themselves. But you wouldn’t -- you shouldn’t, at least -- jump to the conclusion that every person with a scalpel is a toddler.

Toddlers lack foresight and are ignorant of many a cause-and-effect-connection. So, what would you do with toddlers and scalpels; especially, if apparent grown-ups had the minds and emotional development of toddlers?

For example, some people claim to be advocates concerned about “what’s good for the environment” and they feel it necessary to, at least, remonstrate with gardeners or farmers who use weed control compounds, even such as Roundup, which leave no toxic residues in the soil. (But see How Toxic is the World’s Most Popular Herbicide Roundup?)

Toddler-minded dilletantes with weed-killers can create substantial collateral damage. But carefully applied they can help gardeners and farmers reduce otherwise unnecessary weed-control costs.

Gun Control. In the USA an issue paralleling that of our scalpels' example is gun control. With a major difference. Scalpels are not as readily available or as sought with as intense avidness as are guns (or weedkillers).

Toddlers, or toddler-minded people would be, indeed, are, dangerous with guns. But not everyone who has a gun need be a toddler, or toddler-minded, or dangerous. This is simple logic. Partisan fussing and fuming over the controversy does not change that. For stentorian voices to invoke “liberty” or “2nd Amendment Rights” does not practically address the issue of the high rate of death or injury facilitated by easy access to guns.


But neither does the suggestion that laws be passed and enforced to reduce or prevent access to guns: short time gains here may well generate longer term ills. Also, we have to consider the immediate costs of training personnel to enforce such laws and prosecute their offenders. And who is ready to exacerbate our already overgrown penal crowding situations by adding to the prison population? (And see THE COST OF ARMING SCHOOLS: The Price of Stopping a Bad Guy with a Gun)


The pass-and-enforce-laws-and-prosecute-offenders proposal comes up in this context, too, with opponents apparently willing to disregard real damage as inconsequential, e.g. merely a cost of having a “free market.”


It is at this point in the public argument that proposed restrictions are modified to suggest that education can play a role. Just as scalpels are generally restricted to those whose education has prepared them to put them to proper use, so, it is suggested, could guns be made available to those whose education in the proper use of guns has qualified them to be trusted with them. (See Gun Fun or Safe Kids? Must we make trade-offs?)


Overlooked Pachyderms. One elephant in the room is cost. How much would it cost to “educate” all those who want guns, or any potentially dangerous item, to use them carefully? This would obviously be a major expenditure. Would anyone want to have their taxes raised to provide it? And how likely is it that enough people would want to forego using these “scalpels?”

The second bigger and consequently even less talked about elephant in the room is that the possible harms risked to life and limb are, to judge by the behavior of our population, of lower priority than the convenience of maintaining ready “scalpels.”

At this point, usually, some people, holier, in their own opinion, than others, stand up and start wagging their fingers at gun-owners, particularly. Or, they may indulge in berating gas-powered lawn-mower users or loggers or fishermen for despoiling the environment; or, for being unwilling to “reduce their carbon footprint.” (Surely, it is the practice of lemmings to reduce their carbon footprint to the absolute minimum.)

But are these same people willing to give up highways, bridges, sewers and electric lines, automobiles, airplanes, inoculations and police protections to forestall the injuries and loss of lives which are typically, although inadvertently, consequent to their construction and maintenance? (See Schools are spending billions on high-tech security. But are students any safer?)

An easy example is that of a highway on which occurs a certain number of deadly accidents a year. No doubt this number could be reduced using additional safety devices and surveillance methods. But as the cost per life that might be saved goes up substantially, the interest in raising taxes to pay for it does not. This explains the common practice of many a township’s avoiding installing traffic lights demanded by worried parents until and unless some critical carnage occurs at the intersection.

Similarly, it has been the practice in some public school districts, if students show persistent high rankings on SAT’s, to try to induce new teachers to leave -- usually by burdening them with extra duties or less attractive facilities -- before they get tenure and merit substantial salary increases. Who need pay for experienced teachers if the kids do just as well with greenhorns? (See Do We Really Need Better Teachers? What For?)

On the other hand, in schools, “scalpels” frowned on by outspoken community members are often categorized as instruments of “violence.” And “violence,” it is preached, has no place in schools! So, for example, karate or riflery classes, as well as certain kinds of shop classes are unlikely to be found even in high schools. Can’t trust those teen-age tots with such “scalpels!”

But traditionally esteemed activities, as risky as they may be, are OK! Just think football, basketball, wrestling, hockey, lacrosse and even rugby and fencing. Such sports are not even readily characterized by their enthusiasts as violent. After all, they are traditional, school-approved activities! They can’t be violent! (See Permissible School Violence)

Nonetheless, it remains a feeble moral position, indeed, hypocrisy, even, to complain about the collateral damage brought about by the practices of other people while disregarding the risks of one’s own collateral inflictions.


To examine these issues further, see Pursuing Educational Targets: 
What is the Collateral Damage?

Also, see Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making? .


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The Consistently Successful Educator: A Will-o’-the-Wisp?

... one way of looking at success patterns ... is that that people who are in high positions have never been in one place long enough for their problems to catch up with them. They outrun their mistakes. -- Robert Jackall (1988) Moral Mazes. The world of corporate managers. New York: Oxford. p. 90

As headmaster of a private school and, later, as a professor of education, I was privy to negative comments and rather scandulous informational items about private and parochial schools that I had never heard in my previous 25+ years as a teacher in the School District of Philadelphia.

Nor did I read or hear about such things in the media. Papers, pundits and politicians seemed only to focus on the ills of public schools. Private and parochial schools -- and, more recently, charter schools -- were presumed to be good, despite what investigators might have discovered if only they had bothered to examine them carefully or think about what they were supposed to accomplish. (See, for example, Cookson. & Persell (1985) Preparing for Power. America's Elite Boarding Schools. See also, The Teacher as Technician.)

This narrow focus away from the private and religious sectors of education can probably be understood partly by entrepreneurial interests in diverting to themselves a portion of the vast and seemingly discretionary public school funds. Normally, private and parochial schools have tight budgets. More importantly, however, is that control of public school budgets is accessible by the clientele of papers, pundits and politicians. (See Control in the School: Illusions and Realities)

So it has come to be that “School Reform” in this USofA does not mean making private or parochial schools better. Public schools, as some Americans have been griping for 120 years, are the ones that need reform. So “reformers” even go abroad to look for cures for presumed public school ills, to find that philosopher’s stone that will turn base public metal into private gold. (See School “Success”: hoping for miracles. )

But why go to other countries? Why not just import the practices and methods used in private and parochial schools to transmute the failures of public education into the presumed superiority of private/parochial schools? Why not sacrifice what may be crucial to public education to the holy grail of excellence -- whatever “excellence” is supposed to mean? (See What Works in Schooling: the “Newfanglers” versus the “Oldfashioned.”)

The ideal of the public school, as a kind of factory with clear goals efficiently pursued, by which public schools are judged by a religiously and socio-economically diverse public results in a misperception of public school failure. This is because there is little practical consensus among papers, pundits, politicians and their clientele as to means and ends the public schools should be pursuing.

The ills of public schools, to the extent they are not imaginative fabrications, are not generally school generated. Rather, they are brought about by hasty practical compromises on broad public controversies over culture, law or economy; for example, over sex education, access to sports and the need for arts/music education. However, private and parochial schools are not public business. Thus, if they are mediocre or worse, they are left to their own devices. (See The School Failure Mythology .)

Practitioners and administrators in public education lack sufficient power to determine what is to be put into practice as an effective method, scientific knowledge or no. Political and economic concerns tend to override technical pedagogy.

In private and parochial education consensus issues are generally kept “in house”. But consensus issues are so important in public education that a language of vague slogans that celebrate as they obfuscate, has been invented to control discourse and decision-making. (See Slogans in Education)

Large amounts of public funds are at stake. This is a real power struggle. (See Power in Schooling Practice: 
The Educational Dilemmas)

To examine these issues further, see Increasing Teaching Efficiency


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Bestowing Trust

Those who control how you trust, control you . (See Related Blogs)

There is much ado, both socially and politically, about which aspects of our society our laws should give priority to, for example, “free markets” or “government control.” Many people pick sides, founding fan-clubs of sorts, and spending a lot of time “debating” the “issues.” This is like a bunch of rabbits tuning in on a quarrel between wolves and foxes as to how those predators should arrange their dinner menus.

Of course, the rabbits have a role to play here. They -- in their massive numbers -- have to trust either wolves or foxes in order to facilitate the carnivores’ meal-making (and not flee or resist their needed participation).

There are seldom, if ever, any “free” markets: there are only people free to manipulate the trust of others. But neither are there, however exalted, any “trustworthy” institutions, in and of themselves: it is our bestowal of trust that makes them so. The very common ideas of “need to know,” or “proprietary secrets,” “name-brands” and “Trust me!” attest to this.

Judgment is regularly and openly diverted from a search for information in order to make a comparison to standards, to the well-encouraged short cut of emotional response to advertising. Caveat emptor -- like many another commandment in our “faith-based” society -- is given lip-service, only, and disregarded in practice.

Much of the expatiation on Constitutional rights and liberty, as well as that on community and tolerance is little more than seduction into trust. But it will likely be the thoughtless bestowals of trust by ill-informed, mal-educated, or distracted individuals that pave the road to innovative (!), modern (!) , 21st Century (!) forms of slavery.

To examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION?


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Do Most People Really Want Power and Freedom?

Oh freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me
And before I'd be a slave I'll be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free -- Lucy Kinchen

Do most people really want power and freedom? A common answer to this question is offered by a rule of thumb:

The more power and freedom a person enjoys, the stronger that person’s belief that those with less power and freedom “really” desire neither.

But is this "rule of thumb" just self-delusion, a hope to stifle competition? After all, unless you have followers, you’re not much of a leader.

Or is it likely true that unfree people seek even less freedom?

To examine these issues further, see Leadership as Usurpation

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Are You A Free Individual? Or Just Deluded?

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.-- Edmund Burke

“If only I didn’t have to work!” is likely said a million times a day.

The reality is that you don’t have to work, if you are willing to accept the consequences of not working. You don’t have to do anything, if the consequences of not doing it are no concern of yours. This is an obvious kind of freedom we all have. This is why some religions preach giving up all connections to other things to achieve Nirvana. But what "sane" person can just stop being concerned about all consequences, all connections?

If you think you can, just try this practice for a day. Deal with your bodily functions the way you did as an infant. See if you can keep that going for very long.

Now, suppose you don’t want to give up connections. Someone might say, “I’m free. I can do what I please. I can just follow my whims and impulses!” This is another kind of freedom, perhaps, but what if other people or things can control what you please? What if things like advertising, or expressions of approval, disapproval, like or dislike, can be used to constrain your whims or impulses? Would you call that “freedom?” Or is your “freedom” a delusion that makes your obedience, your submission to external authority, tolerable?

You have been through years of schooling. You have probably forgotten most math, foreign language and social studies. But you have not forgotten how to raise your hand, to keep your opinions to yourself, to stand in line, to wait until a person in authority is willing to recognize you, and to not contradict what that authority says.

Can you control these responses? Can you extend your internal locus of control over those things that you respond to as authority?

To examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION


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--- EGR

Want Effective Teachers? Serving Whose Purposes?

edited 082118

A lady asked (Benjamin) Franklin,"Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied Franklin, "if you can keep it." -- Adapted from The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 ed. Max Farrand, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 85 (1911, reprinted 1934)

That’s the secret to politics: trying to control a segment of people without those people recognizing that you’re trying to control them. -- Scott Reed, Republican Strategist and Lobbyist (NYT mag. 10-16-11, 47)

In the United States of America, a country where, repeatedly in public ceremonies, much is made of its being a democracy. Here, in the US of A, the idea of “controlling” people is taboo, not to be spoken of, "an elephant in the room."

Rather, most Americans are taught to think that educated, informed citizens, consulting their consciences, freely and rationally choose to vote for the leadership of those people who, in fact, support the values of the voters. This is the professed political ideal.

This ideal helps us understand why a lot of concern is expressed over what is taught in schools, particularly in public schools. (See The Ideal School: What should it be like?) But is that a concern because people fear that teaching is not up to producing ideal citizens?

Or is it, rather, because many people, “important” opinion influencers, feel that the ideal rational citizen of a democracy would be a threat to their interests, political, social and economic?

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Classroom Teacher: Who Wants Experts?

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--- EGR

Intervention: helping, interfering or just being useless?

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. -- Thomas Jefferson

A little power, like a little knowledge, can be a dangerous thing. Some people think of power as though it were a muscle: Use it or lose it. So they easily give into the temptation to “intervene” into others' affairs.

But intervention can easily be seen as “interference” by those who gain nothing from it. Those who welcome the intervention and the advantages it brings will call it “help.” Easily overlooked is the likelihood that the intervention will not have any effect besides producing headlines in newspapers, or hours of comment by media pundits. The fact that an intervention may be well intended does not prevent it from turning out to be a long-term disaster. The wars in Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan were all initiated though interventions based on presumably honorable intentions. Notably, the costs of these interventions were not borne, in the largest measure, by their initiators.

BLOODLETTING The Burns Collection

Educational reform in the United States has been a continuing focus for delusional intervention through more than a century of U.S. history. Why delusional? Because the basic logic of intelligent intervention was ignored or replaced by wishful thinking.

What is this basic logic? It consists of three things. Do not intervene unless…

1. (cue) … you have accurately determined whether the situation that prompts you is, in fact, what you think it is. (Misperceptions and false starts abound.)

2. (concern) … the situation prompting your intervention will, in your best judgment, negatively affect your (whose?) interests. (Is it your “business”; is it worthwhile?)

3. (control) … your actions (or strategic inactions) will generate effects that influence sufficiently lasting changes in the situation. (Will things revert back to the way they were before intervention?)

I worked for many years in a school system with a “zero-tolerance policy” on fighting: students, otherwise peaceable, who offered resistance against the physical assault of bullies were suspended along with their attackers. One particular student, a quiet sort, was admonished by the principal, “Johnny, you’re such a good student; but, you keep on getting suspended for fighting back. I’ve told you time and time again that whenever someone assaults you, to are to come tell me about it.”

Johnny replied, “What’d you do before that has ever stopped ‘em botherin’ me? You gonna walk me home or to school? How’m I supposed ta live in my neighborhood, if I get a rep(utation) for running to a teacher every time I’m in trouble?”

The principal responded with a not untypical intervention: Johnny was sent away to a disciplinary school for being “highly insubordinate.”

“They .. make a desert, and they call it peace” -- Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117)

For references and to examine these issues in detail, see Rationales for Intervention: From Test to Treatment to Policy



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New Teacher’s Troubles? Old Teacher’s Memories

edited 12/16/19

This too shall pass -- Abū Hamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (1145-1146 - c. 1221; Persian: ابو حمید ابن ابوبکر ابراهیم)

So, you’ve been on the job less than a year or two and it’s not as entertaining as you thought it would be. You may be seldom happy; or worse, you dread going into school everyday; but, a paycheck is hard to throw away.

On top of it all, you hear some older teachers and almost everyone who doesn’t work in a school tell you how much better it used to be twenty, thirty even forty years ago when

a. kids did what their teachers told them;

b. parents invariably supported teacher decision, even to the point of corporal punishment;

c. administrators backed up the teachers; and

d. there was general agreement among educators, school boards, politicians and public as to what the schools were about and what could be done in them.

These conditions made teaching a fulfilling profession – heaven, almost – unlike the vale of disappointments it has become. Cheer up, or, at least, don’t feel singled out by fate to languish in a doomed profession.

To begin with, nothing was ever as good as anyone says it was;

Secondly, statements a to d above are generally false owing to either selective memory or ignorance of school history.

There was a time in American history when male schoolteachers had to beat the school bullies, as well as their fathers and brothers, into submission in order to keep their jobs.

To read about a new teacher’s experience in 1964, see My First Classroom Teaching
Experience

Also, for extended descriptions and analysies of a high school teacher's experiences see Frank McCourt's Teacher Man Scribner Paperback (2005)

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-- EGR

Indulging Power, Denying Nurture

Power never takes a back step
-- Only in the face of more power.
---- Malcolm X
(See How New York City Beat Crime in Scientific American, Aug 2011)

My nephew, a psychiatric nurse, once worked for several years in an institution that housed child murderers; that is, children who had intentionally brought about the death of another human being. I asked him how the job was and how he got along with the kids. He answered that they were mostly OK but very occasionally one would try to stab him. I asked my nephew what he thought those kids needed most. He replied, “They need a father.”

One of the most pernicious confusions ever to infect thought and theory in education, psychology and psychiatry is the idea that hurt and harm are inextricable. The current dogma is that to hurt is to harm and to harm is to hurt. (See Hurt, Harm & Safety)

Commonsense examples from the real world disestablish this doctrine: an inoculation, dental surgery, hard exercise and criticism may hurt; they needn’t, indeed, often do not, harm. Radiation, pollution, inattention and gluttony often do not hurt; yet they may, and, not infrequently, do harm.

Recently in Philadelphia gangs of teenagers have been running through Center City streets and attacking uninvolved bystanders, apparently for the excitement and fun of it. They are likely learning -- or know already -- that to the extent no one will or can control you, to that same extent do you have the free exercise of power.

There is a lot of excited babble among the governing classes and pundits as to what to do about it. Because of the hurt-harm dogma, some possible solutions will not even be brought up for discussion.

For references and to examine this issue further, see The Singapore Solution

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Should Colleges Be Made Responsible For Their Graduates’ Earnings?

Riddle:
What’s the first question that college graduates learn to ask on the job?
”Will you have fries with that?”
-- A sad, current joke.

Many college students go into substantial debt to pay tuition. Yet, they graduate unable to find jobs that pay enough to permit them to live in poverty, even, and pay back their education loans. Education Week reports,

Students at proprietary colleges represent 12 percent of
higher education enrollment, yet they take out 26 percent of
all student loans and represent 46 percent of all student loan
dollars in default. -- Education Week, June 10, 2011

The same article in Education Week, announces new regulations by the U.S. Department of Education that require college degree programs to disclose information about loan repayment rates and graduates’ earnings. The expectation is that if college programs fail to graduate students who can avoid loan default, they will lose federal funds to support student tuition loans.

Is it fair to the colleges and universities to make them responsible for economic outcomes of student career choices?

One argument has it: Yes! Make them accept the burden. Students are strongly encouraged by university personnel into programs on the basis of their “personal interest” with little consideration when they choose a major as to how they will support themselves afterwards. If earning potential were to become a touchstone of desirability, universities might have to, for example, dip into endowments or provide special scholarships to support the faculties needed to maintain certain traditionally highly esteemed programs with low graduate earnings potential.

A counter-argument has it: No! It is a basic moral principle that the burden of one’s responsibility ought be constrained by the range of one’s control. The requirements for and the availability of employment outside the educational institution are not controlled by those educational institutions. We live in a society that has a more-or-less free market economy. This introduces a certain whimsy into the existence and size of job markets.

There is a good argument for exempting K-12 education from later-life employment responsibilities. (See below) However, a college education is not compulsory the way basic education is. And, unlike basic education, it is strongly correlated with a person’s level of economic success.

To examine the argument against basic education’s economic responsibility, see Moral Responsibility in the Education Industry: 
how much can school reform enhance a student's occupational fitness? Can higher education offer the same kind of defense?


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--- EGR

Control in the School: illusions and realities

edited 102719

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom. -- Stephen Vincent Benet (1935)

Back in those many years when I was teaching public school and studying nights to get a doctorate -- I was investigating procedures for predicting human behavior -- an old college chum of mine, an up-and-coming Philadelphia lawyer, asked me why I didn’t go into school administration.

I asked him why he thought I should do that. He replied, “So you can have more power, more control and influence.”

He was almost insulted when I replied that power, control and influence -- in public education, at least -- were only likely randomly related to administrative position.

One of the most boring jobs I ever had was as the headmaster of a putatively academically focused, private school. The most important thing I had to do -- which ate up time, futilely -- was to “lunch” with rarely interesting people whose only claim on my attention was their potential for donorship.

I was supposed to be agreeable to each individual member of a governing board who, in depth, differed greatly among themselves what the school was about. (It was all “hale, fellow, well met” at the slogan level, e.g. “Excellence in All Undertakings.”) Each individual board member tried to enlist me as an agent working for him against his less-insightful fellow board members.

Power, control, influence? Not much of that when the friends of board members could act as solicitors for special interests to have my quite ordinary decisions subjected to time-consuming review and reversal.

Teachers who have difficulty with difficult students are often criticized as “lacking control” or other presumably “normal” teacher skills. This criticism comes not infrequently from administrators who escaped the classroom so their own “lack of control” would not be subject to easy criticism.

Teachers who do have control, on the other hand, have to listen to administrators and fellow teachers tell them how “fortunate” they are to have “such good students.” No doubt such statements are intended to help skilled teachers to maintain a proper humility.

For references and to examine these issues further, see My First Classroom Teaching Experience


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School Reform: High Cost, Low Yield. Why is this?

“..the formal structures of many organizations ... dramatically reflect the myths of their institutional environments instead of the demands of their work activities.” -- Meyer, JW & Rowan, B*

It is what people expect, with good reason or not, that influences their ideas about schools and school reform. Lack of knowledge or competence has seldom been a barrier to participation in school reform efforts.

This is not so strange. Most people who drive cars cannot explain why they work the way they do. Some imagine that just using higher octane gasoline will give them better performance. Others scream at their car when it doesn’t do what they expect. But unlike many a would-be school reformer, few of these drivers imagine they are competent to redesign automobiles just because they can find fault with their own.

Why does the discrepancy persist between the way schools actually work and how they are generally expected to work? Because our expectations line up with how we pay for schools and whom we give the big bucks to.

Basically, in education, as in corporations, government and, to a scary extent in the military, we bribe those higher up in the chain of command to pretend they know what they are doing. It not only helps us keep calm in times of distress, but saves us the trouble of getting too involved ourselves.

To examine these issues further, see Controlling the School: Institutionalization


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*Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony Am. J. of Soc. 83, 2 p.341

Is Getting “Tough” with the Public Schools the Answer?

Everyone loves justice in the affairs of another -- Italian Proverb

Bullies in the schools? Get tough on the bullies!
Low student achievement? Get tough on the teachers!
General chaos in the school building? Get tough on the principal!
Students have a bad attitude? Get tough on the kids, all of ‘em!

We seldom hear:

Get tough on the parents!
Get tough on the School Board!
Get tough on the local (State, federal) politicians!

Why not?
And what is “getting tough” supposed to mean anyway?

Perhaps we prefer the more refined, less “confrontational,” version: “Hold … accountable” For example, “Hold the parents accountable!”

And what does this accountability mean when it comes as well to bullies, students, teachers, principals, school boards, and politicians?

And who is to do it? On what authority?

And whom can we trust to do it right?


To examine these issues further, see Power in Schooling Practice:
The Educational Dilemmas

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EGR

Education for Citizenship in a Pluralistic Democracy

The existential questions confronted repeatedly by each of us in becoming an adult define a locus of authority for each relevant aspect of our lives. These questions are:

1. What authority should I retain for myself (Over what?);
2. What authority should I concede to others (Over what?); and
3. What authority am I forced to surrender? (Over what?)

It is the mission of religious and many secular organizations, e.g. the State, to convince, persuade, seduce, coerce or dupe us to concede authority over certain aspects of our lives to them: these are then called duties and obligations. As children, dependent and ignorant, we willy-nilly concede authority to those who importune us. However, as adults we ought to question -- as Thomas Aquinas reminds us -- whether the faith we concede as a child is appropriate as a free adult.

To examine these issues further, see PERSONAL LIBERATION THROUGH EDUCATION


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--- EGR