The Relativity of Exploitation: the overburdened “middleman.”

updated 11/27/19

It burns with a white rage against societies as a whole, from military leaders and chiefs of state to (more common in our time) comfortable civilians in easy chairs, who send rough men out to serve their interests brutally, murderously (what is war?), and then —- when circumstances change and in the exquisite safety and fastidiousness of their living rooms they suddenly find these rough men’s actions repugnant -— and disown them. — Richard Grenier (“The Uniforms that Guard Us” 1981)

A leader without followers is simply a man taking a walk. — John Boehner.

What is Exploitation? Exploitation is not bare-faced fact, an action in and of itself. (See Getting Down to Facts: can we avoid making assumptions?.) Exploitation is a matter of people's perceptions of actions and their judgments about them. These perceptions are about how the benefits and costs of an undertaking are allotted among participants. The judgments are about the fairness of those allotments.

It is important to note right off that even more fundamental value assumptions underlie identifying what to count as benefits, costs and fairness. Although often treated as a tedious diversion from planned action, overlooking who shares such value judgments is often the cause of much unproductive dispute. (See The Nature of Consensus. This preliminary aside done for now, let's get on with the sorrows of middlemen.)

We are all, sometimes, “middlemen.” If we work with people we often act as mediators, even though we tend to think of mediators as outsiders brought into a situation with the specific task of reconciling a dispute. Mediators,especially if by occupation, are usually chosen for their being disinterested or “objective,” i.e. having little personal stake in the proceedings beyond their fees and professional reputation which might bias their judgment.

But when we, working with our fellows, function as mediators, the stakes for us are higher because our mediation affects the people we are involved with. This happens, for example, when we find ourselves "caught" in the middle, obliged to deal with a situation where our actions are constrained by those who obligate us, our superiors, as well as by those we depend on for their cooperation, our subordinates. (It is not whimsy that such a position, if official, is called “middle management.”)

Some examples of such an “informal” mediation-role is often provided by policemen, nurses, teachers, military personnel, office managers and the like. But in fact, being a middleman is relative. Those who give orders may also be required by their higher-ups to follow orders. Those at the relative bottom of the totem pole may also constrain what middlemen above them can do. Subordinates to middlemen can resist by on the spot re-interpretation, mass disregard, or even sabotage of the directives they are given. Policemen, parents, teachers, and business managers, constrained themselves by laws, policies and traditions, yet dealing with subordinates, i.e. the workers, children, patients or public, know this all too well.

Abusing the Middlemen. There is a not uncommon practice where those in charge sit buffered from the “front lines,” concocting or imposing “rules of engagement” which do not take into consideration the realities of the person-to-person confrontations that middlemen, the implementers of rules, regulations, laws and policies face. (See Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?

For example, I have talked with nursing and support staff in mental health services where aggressive patients occasionally harm other inmates and staff. They tell me of the insistence from state-level officials that they, the on-site staff, reduce the use of physical restraints disregarding any complaints about the dangers on-site staff face. Published statistical reports then tend to praise reductions in the use of physical restraints but to ignore increases in patient or staff injuries.

The Disregardful Treatment of Military And Law Enforcement Service People is another major problem. When people are under threat, they are effusively thankful for military or police intervention to protect them. Otherwise, many are very much less than sympathetic for the daily burdens such service people face.

Legislators, fulminating with modish “moral” fervor against some even minor misadventure will pass draconian laws with little consideration for the difficulties of their enforcement or for the collateral damage done to the good community relations those legislators otherwise give such vehement lip-service to.

Service personnel, upon retirement, find that legislatures are often much less ready to fund adequate long-term medical care or pensions than they were placing them in service in harm’s way.

The Emphasis of this essay, however is not on exploitation but on its relativity. Whoever acts as a “middleman” in a situation, and consequently risks exploitation, is not necessarily dependent on traditions or laws, but on contexts. For this reason I will rely on research described in Kenwyn Smith’s book,Groups in Conflict. Prisons in Disguise (1982), in which he analyzes groups as comprised by subgroups he calls Uppers, Middles, and Lowers. His model is more context-independent than something like “Directors-Administrators-Behavioral-Change-Targets” or “Leaders-Followers-Public.”(See Schneider&Ingram. ”Policy design: elements, premises and strategies",(1990).)

Here are some examples of other research fit into Smith’s tripartite scheme:

a. Professor Director - Student Experimenter - Student Experimental Subject (Milgram, 1969)
b. Professor Director — Student Enforcer — Student Prisoner (Zimbardo, 2008)
c. Professor Director — Student Experimenter — White Rat (My experience, 1963 -- EGR))

Outside Academia we can handily find:

d. Club Sponsors - Club Chairperson - Club Members
d. Party Donors — Party Platform Committee — Party Members
f. Mayor — Police Chief — Police Officer ; and important to our discussion below
g. Statutes — Administrators — Target Populations (which effect goals aimed at by Statute Makers.}

Internal Conflict Situations Get Worse as the relationships from uppers to middlemen to lowers becomes formalized, either by tradition or law. There is what seems to be some kind of “social-class” bias in many organizations. The rule-of-thumb in institutions I have observed is:

“If a doctor (or high-ranking member) is assaulted, call in the police and prepare a report. If a nurse (or lower-ranking staff) is assaulted, call in a social worker and make no report.” This seems to reflect a well-established encasement.

Smith holds that if group members do not have sufficient experience at all three levels, Uppers-Middles-Lowers (not necessarily in the same group) because of legal or traditional practices, they develop attitudinal “encasements” which bias them against other levels with often mythological beliefs in the faults of individuals not in their level. Encasement may generate avoidable, costly and counter-productive conflicts. SNAFU may well be an encasement outcome.

The following is a chart that gives a synopsis of Smith’s research

How do we avoid encasement? It is particularly difficult especially if tradition is strong and supported by law. Groups with rigid hierarchies become what Smith calls "monocratic." Monocratic organizations risk encasement. Jeffrey S. Nielsen in The Myth of Leadership (2004) suggests that organizations press to move from rank-based to function-based governance structures. That will provide members with experience of — and hopefully sympathy for — members participating at levels other than their own.

What About “Chain of Command?” To judge by the media, especially during a political season, one would think that very few people are acquainted with the notion of “chain of command.” On the one hand questions are asked why a president hasn’t raised the GNP; or why terrorists managed to elude the efforts of a homeland defense official. The regnant idea here seems to be command-effect model, like rolling a rubber ball down a playground slide. He who rolls the ball is held responsible for where it rolls to.

Links in the Command Chain are Actors, too. Despite the simplistic command-effect sound-bite model many people know that chains of command can be problematic. For example, without Congress’s help presidential efforts to get legislation passed can be stultified. Each “link” in the “chain of command” can have its own agenda. And not even brutal dictators may be able to long control opposition from within. Historical examples abound. One approach to understanding what connects the links in a chain of command is given by Schneider&Ingram. These are illustrated in the next diagram which begins with Uppers and ends in the actual outcomes effected by Lowers (presumably desired by the Uppers).

From Uppers (assumed producers of the Statute) through Middles (Administrators) to Lowers (the Target Population) exist connecting but possibly fragile threads of rules, tools (available resources) and assumptions resulting in Goals.

What Roles do the Middles Play? It is their task to negotiate to adjust the demands of the Uppers to the realities of using alloted resources and the Lowers as agents for the achievement of goals in an environment whose complexity the Uppers may well have underestimated.

Encasements tend not only to undermine the development of practically adequate, subtle understandings of the casual relations between commands and goals; but, also, overly politicize the tasks of the Middles — in accord with the Peter Principle: every one rises to his level of incompetence. — reducing their expertise to the crudest kind of amateurism and the opprobrium that it produces.

To see expansion on these issues, See LEADERSHIP AS USURPATION: the Grand Inquisitor Syndrome and Morality in Rank-Based Organizations

Cordially
--- EGR

Pseudo-Planning: Disguising Leadership Weakness?

edited 082018

Both teachers and students want science to be authentic, challenging, and engaging. How do you make this happen?   -- ASCD Twitter entry, link to source.

Noble aims no doubt: the kind that warms the hearts of the technically challenged in any field. Leadership cadres are not infrequently composed of no minute proportion of those once-upon-a-time competent persons elevated -- according to the Peter Principle -- beyond their level of competence. Such governing groups tend to rest confident of having done a day’s (a meeting’s) work when they formulate goal statements that ring of sound public relations planning.

The Blind Leading the Blind. (P. Bruegel, the Elder)

Who would reject as undesirable -- using the ASCD examples -- such outcomes as authenticity, challenge, and engagement as goals for school curriculum? But two problems tend to be sloughed off as merely technical, i.e. to be left to subordinates whose burden it will be to try to implement the pursuit of such Holy Grails without knowing their targets or the unavoidable costs involved in achieving them.

Of course, should these technicians threaten to spend more than a pittance of resources researching these problems, i.e. target consensus and feasible implementation, budgets can be restricted to what is politically possible, i.e. to levels that will not raise objections from external powers, equally technically challenged, whose objections might threaten the continued incumbency of the leadership.

So, for example, the “American public” -- read “strong political influencers” -- is concerned about terrorism and lawlessness, but apparently more concerned about the high costs, both to budgets and individual convenience, of technically efficient approaches to dealing with them, e.g. intensive surveillance and inconveniences to personal freedoms. (For more on problems with the formulation of goal statements, see Achieving Educational Goals: The Basic Model)

This situation illustrates the Rule of Imminence: the more distant the threat, the greater the cost discount (unless the more distant cost is vastly greater than the nearer, e.g. nuclear conflict vs. loss of control over a market.). So it is that defense industries exaggerate imminent possibilities of US involvement in foreign armed conflict, while their competitors beat warning drums about domestic infrastructure failures.

Educational and political leaders play this out as, for example in the recent past, a matter of trying to raise graduation rates by changing curriculum for fear of loss of national competitiveness. Forget about other so-called more important influences on a child’s school success. Those are likely cost-enhancing technical quibbles by politically insensitive squints. Defining school goals are the leadership’s task!

Wadoo, zim bam boddle-oo,
Hoodle ah da wa da,
Scatty wah !
(- 1935, Ira Gershwin, It Ain't Necessarily So)

For a list of related essays with links dealing with educational goals. see More on Educational Goals


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--- EGR

Mutually Cost-enhancing Objectives (MCEO’s): hiding the “Elephant-in-the-Room.”

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict. -- Saul Alinsky

Mutually cost-enhancing objectives," MCEO’s, are objectives which are operationally or politically unlikely of being fulfilled simultaneously, because progress made toward one tends to undercut the progress made toward the other. Pursuit of MCEO’s is the mechanism of cost-benefit conflict.

People in most undertakings have encountered such beasts, and not infrequently, for example:

a. you often can’t gain speed for a particular vehicle and cut fuel costs at the same time;

b. you can’t achieve both great muscle strength and running speed; and

c. on a fixed budget, you can’t accumulate savings and also spend profligately.

However, MCEO’s tend to be the “invisible bugs” in educational or other social programs. Particularly in situations where there is a delicate political balance needed to maintain organizational stability, MCEO’s tend to be the “elephants in the room” that are deliberately disregarded, discussion of which participants are dissuaded from pursuing -- “We don’t go there,” is the warning given. (To see how this may work, see Reconstructing Assumptions.)

Is your political candidate’s opponent a womanizer? If your own is, also, “you don’t go there” -- in public at least. Less newsworthy, of course, is the conflict between the objectives of having all kids achieve a high school diploma and college entrance; or between graduating college and finding high quality employment, or, even, providing adequate medical care without reducing those who provide or need it to poverty.

Some MCEO combinations seem unavoidable: e.g. every birth predicts a future death; every option exercised means others are foregone. But perhaps many MCEO’s can be softened by innovative procedures that avoid ultimate mutual cost generation. That hope has long sprung eternal even in the face of hard experience. But such hopes must not rest solely on mere assumption.

For more on this, see MCEO's: Types & Treatments:
Handling Special Means-Ends Conflicts.

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--- EGR

Usurping the Rights of Others

Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Lord Acton

Does power tend to corrupt? How exactly does this happen? Power does so by changing our perceptions of the people over whom we have power or who have power over us. This tempts us to deal with them in ways that may undermine both our personal and our common values.

Long ago John Dewey argued that democracy perfected itself the more its members communicated freely with one another. This jibes with what many researches indicate it is that brings people to mistreat others: communicating on a "need to know" basis.

Those who arrogate knowledge to themselves, who believe they have the right to define other people's needs, tend to see them as mere tools to serve either the personal ends of the arrogators; or, more important, to serve what they understand to be their organization's mission.

To examine these issues further, see Leadership as Usurpation

-- EGR

Belief, Disbelief, Truth, Falsehood and Faith

I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong. -- Bertrand Russell

It seems simple common sense that a person’s belief is no guarantee of its truth. Nor does that person’s disbelief by itself establish any falsehood.

However, we use the verb “believe” in an interesting variety of ways. It need not merely indicate some person’s state of mind relative to a possible fact or falsehood, but in many contexts morphs into an expression of confidence; or, even more strongly, a declaration of commitment -- often called “faith.”

In some parts of our multicultural USA, prefacing a statement with "I believe that..." serves as a warning that a somewhat "Sacred Value" is being expressed and is not to be challenged. (See Thumper's mother on this etiquette at Goodspin.)

Compare this first set of expressions, (call it group A):

a. John is out taking a walk
b. John will keep his promise to us.
c. The God of the Bible exists

Consider, now, the following group B

a. I believe that John is out taking a walk.
b. I believe that John will keep his promise to us.
c. I believe that the God of the Bible exists.

Why use these longer forms? Prefacing a sentence with “I believe that…” seems to be hedging our bets. We are already somewhat on the defensive, since merely asserting something from group A would normally be understood to be something we believe.

Now, the group B expressions vary substantially in their relation to the following disclaimer: “…but I might be wrong.” They range from expressing almost throw-away facts (So what if I’m mistaken. Big deal!) to possibilities of disappointment (I hope John doesn’t let us down!) They can go even further into the area of deeply held convictions, where it is difficult for many to imagine adding Russell’s complement, “… but I might be wrong.”

For example, take a statement held by some community of believers (whether theistic, philosophical or secular) to be fundamental. (See Sacred Values) Let FB symbolize some fundamental belief. Anyone who would say “I believe that FB, but I might be wrong,” would not likely be perceived by that community as a member, especially if community members expressed their belief as “I believe in FB." (Even such as Credo quia absurdum est.) Just as Hope tends to deprecate Experience, so Fidelity does Truth.

“Believe in” indicates a commitment to a presumed consensus, a trust. Such commitments are not evaluated in terms of their clarity, or their truth, but in terms of their fervor, and the strength of the bonds of allegiance they are believed to generate to a community of consensus.

That someone bothers to preface an assertion with “I believe that …” is likely prima facie evidence of the shaky grounds upon which that belief rests. Or perhaps a signal-call for kindred spirits.

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Indeterminacy of Consensus: masking ambiguity and vagueness in decision.

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--- EGR

In Politics (Conflicts of Interest), No Hard Facts -- only Stonewalling.

edited 11/8/20

POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Word Book (1906)

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. -- George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)

When any organizational entity expands beyond 21 members, the real power will be in some smaller body.-- C. Northcote Parkinson

From any practical perspective, Ambrose Pierce has hit it bullseye. Politics is like poker. It doesn’t matter too much what actual cards you hold: no one can see everyone else’s hands, anyway. What matters is bluff, reputation as a player, and betting resources.

If an organization is large enough and has many subgroup interests, even bald-faced lies can be promulgated and survive despite numerous refutations.

Politics is not a search for truth, but an attempt to minimize costly conflict by adjudicating competing claims for resources. Actual engagement in such attempts is directly proportional to the perceived power of the would-be participants. Every person is seen as a partisan, every organization has an agenda. No one is above suspicion of self-aggrandizement.

No better example can be found than in the issue of global warming. Those who perceive it as a threat to what they value, the Warners, contend with others, the Dismissers, who perceive it as of little consequence, as merely a strategem by the Warners to divert resources to their own use.

Scientists who support the Warners are seen by the Dismissers as merely pursuing their own agenda. Science is an interest group. Those who support the Dismissers are seen as blind, and selfish, unwilling to yield their slightest privilege in the face of disaster. So long as there is no person or group recognized by both sides to be credible and disinterested, so long will nothing be recognized as a “hard truth.”

But good ol’ horse-trading among those mutually perceived as too powerful to be ignored will often work to reach some consensus, so long as possible actions -- usually those short of revolution or warfare -- are not thought to be too damaging to the majority interests.

When a politician –indeed, any person -- invokes “hard facts” to support his or her position, what s/he means is “items that I or people whom I trust recognize to be hard facts.” Budget income projections, for example, are not “hard facts,” since the real issues, the political issues, revolve, not only around whom you can trust to determine future income, but on how the money is to be spent.

In a culture where everyone is suspected to be primarily a partisan of one sort or another, there is no authority which all may have recourse to. Actually, what the invocation of “hard facts” means is: “shut up and do what I think is best.” It is a stone-walling tactic.

At this point a supporting strategem is brought in to play: the touting of “leadership”: e.g. “What is needed is ‘real” leadership!” All sides do this, because all persons in positions of leadership are partisans: they have a stake in protecting the perks of their leadership and their status as moral persons. (See Leadership vs. Morality: an Unavoidable Conflict?) In addition, the status of every member of a followership is tied to the status of those whom they follow.

The broadest consensus – especially, the broadest -- tends to be shallow and evanescent. This is because personal and even group perceptions of value, of priority and of need fluctuate often frequently and violently. So it is that any consensus resulting from some personal and group interest has to be frozen, written “in stone” as it were, for lengthy periods of time by employing such practices as promises, oaths, contracts, elections, terms of office, hereditary titles or other traditions. (See The Quest for Loyalty: Oaths, Promises, Contracts, & Vows.)

For references and to examine these issues further, see The Indeterminacy of Consensus: masking ambiguity and vagueness in decision

(Photo courtesy of Petro Vlasenko -- ua.vlasenko.net)

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--- EGR

Institutional Realities vs. "De-Biased" Realities

The limits of your language are the limits of your world. -- Wittgenstein

What is a language? A dialect with an army. -- Old joke among linguists.

Bias is an instrument of institutions to control depictions of reality.
(See Institutionalization) Bias is pervasive. We can’t escape it completely. Even our nervous system biases our perceptions at fundamental levels.

Source: https://goo.gl/images/9xnvjl

Bias is also relative. But this need not be a constant concern. We should only worry about bias when it favors or disfavors those who are making decisions for us. This is why we look to find “disinterested,” “objective,” “unprejudiced” judgments to support our decisions.

Of course, people who are unprejudiced in one situation may be highly biased in another. It is we, ourselves, who need to discriminate when this is so. That is the problem.

Every organization that persists through changes of leadership or mission becomes an “institution.” As an institution it imposes ways of perceiving and thinking on its participants. The benefits of membership, you will be told, outweigh the costs of the conformity expected of you. You may have to subordinate your own judgment to that of the traditions, practices, etc., i.e., residues of former and present leaderships. You will have to learn which “elephants in the room” are to be ignored. Institutions seldom invite the examination, much less the mention, of “de-biased realities.”

An important point: what we imagine to be our "natural" languages are highly institutionally reconstructed means of communication. As we grow out of the sole influence of family and neighborhood, especially as we go through schooling, our languages become refashioned to meet the demands of the institutions we go through. We subordinate our dialects to our institutional languages for the promise of support and protection.

Scientists, even, sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that their professional pursuits purge their working language of institutional biases, that their speech is a neutral medium of communication. This can stifle research by restricting both theory and practice within the boundaries of passing academic or corporate philosophical preferences. (See for example, The Functional Analysis of Human Behavior.)

Just as radical forms of Behaviorism and Empiricism of the last century impeded progress in psychology and economics, (see The Mathematics of Behaviorism: an informal examination), so it is that naive "natural language" notions of conceptualization and abstraction undermine progress in applicational development in AI. To examine this further, see More Related Issues

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--- EGR

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

Buffering: Enhancing Moral Hazard in Decision-Making?

Definition of Moral Hazard: “...any situation in which one person makes the decision about how much risk to take, while someone else bears the cost if things go badly.” -- Krugman, Paul (2009). The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, p. 62

Buffering is any position assumed or action taken by someone in order to protect decision-makers from the consequences of their decisions.

There are a variety of colloquial expressions that identify buffers, i.e. persons who buffer, or buffering, i.e. the protective actions they take: for example, “running interference,” “flak-catchers,” “covering for,” “press secretary,” “security staff,” “administrative assistants,” “receptionists,” “vice-presidents,” “terms of office,” and, even, "transfer" or “promotion.”


Buffering is often both necessary and not morally objectionable. And most organizations have regulations and policies that mandate buffering to protect their decision-makers from being called to defend their decisions on a short-term or daily basis. Judges, policemen, teachers, doctors and lawmakers, for example, are buffered from personal attack on the assumption that they have followed the appropriate procedures in good faith in rendering decisions that affect others. (For an interesting recent court decision, see Can universities claim immunity in misconduct lawsuits?)

However, buffering may have pathological consequences as well.

A very important kind of buffering is an insurance policy, a contract with an insurer who will pay monetary compensation if harm is suffered under certain circumstances. The hazard arises if insured persons relax exercising the caution and forethought they did before they were insured.

For example, driving more recklessly because one has insurance would be an example of a long-recognized moral hazard. Krugman’s idea, mentioned in the epigraph, intensifies the moral aspect by considering that the injury suffered by the insured’s recklessness would likely affect others who were not involved in the decision to act recklessly.

Consider the expression, “fiddling while Rome burns,” i.e. not exercising one’s duties despite an existing emergency. Buffering enables this. A legislator or leader, protected by terms of office and security staff, may well act, or avoid action, to his or her own narrow interests with the consequence that evil befalls the great majority who have little or no say in the decision-making.


Here is a case of buffering through promotion: in studies of several large corporations, Robert Jackal found that it was not unusual for leaders to escape the consequences of their bad decisions by leaving behind the circumstances in which they occurred. He comments,

... 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)

Obviously, those who can’t run away are left to live with those consequences.

But buffering may not only protect a person from some threats, but make him or her multiply vulnerable to others. Consider the situations of military personnel, policemen, and public school teachers. Their positions seem so secure, immune, for example, to threats from market fluctuations and political controversy. There are laws which protect their tenure, income and pensions. But buffers often come with conditions of oversight. And the overseers themselves may be buffered, usually politically, from the consequences of their own bad decisions.

Soldiers are fed, clothed, housed and given medical care. They are also subject to avoidable injury and death caused by faulty military decision -- historical examples abound. Similarly for police personnel who can fall afoul of political interference into their normal functioning.

Public school teachers are a peculiar group. People imagine them buffered by a sinecureal tenure, school law and public esteem, an illusion which many educators themselves harbor. The reality is often different. (See, for example, What Can A Teacher Do? Two Myths of Responsibility )

In fact, public school teachers have very little control over their working conditions, the students they are given to teach, the rooms in which they teach, the materials they must use, the discipline they can enforce, the schedules they must follow, or the grades they must assign for work completed. (See Who Controls Teachers’ Work? )

One accepts buffering to defend against the importunities of one’s potential victims, usually outsiders, only to become vulnerable to the demands of those insiders who provide the buffering. Multiple sources of buffering harbor multiple sources of moral hazard.

For references and to examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?



Cordially
--- EGR

The Worm Turns: Testing the Candidates

The current governmental infatuation with one-size-fits-all standardized testing is a concern of many. But there is a remedy for this illicit love affair. Require every candidate for political office to take a battery of standardized tests. Then we will widely and repeatedly publicize the result. And to make sure no deserving individual escapes the net, we will also require aspiring high level government appointees, such as candidates for Secretary of Education, to also take the tests.

We could require every aspiring office holder to take the same tests he/she prescribes for others. Before being allowed to run for President, for example, Dubya would have had to pass the self-same tests he championed for high schoolers. Imagine him sweating and scratching his noggin.

Similarly we could require every aspiring state Secretary of Education to pass the battery of tests they propose requiring of aspiring teachers. In Pennsylvania, for example, he or she would have to pass separate NTE tests in Reading, Writing, and Listening Skills, (The later would be a tough one for any politician.).

An alternate plan is to design office specific skill and knowledge tests. A candidate for President of the United States, for instance, would be tested on their knowledge of world geography test, US and world history, basic economics, the environment and so forth. We could turn to ETS or the Psychological Corporation to craft the items. And they would be finalized only after a painstaking vetting. Blue ribbon boards would appraise and reappraise every question. Then every candidate’s test results would be announced to the world.

We could also test their moral and ethical views. Admittedly, dishonest answers would be a problem and safeguards clearly are required. One possibility is to administer this particular test while test-takers are hooked up to lie detectors. Imagine a candidate sweating and squirming as the polygraph relentlessly tells the tale. “Is that your actual answer? Is that your final honest answer?” (Philadelphia’s infamous late Duce/Mayor Frank Rizzo once failed a lie detector test while trying to prove the device’s reliability. Evidently the polygraph was more discerning than voters.) Alternatively, we could inject test-takers with scopolamine, a truth serum favored by secret policemen the world over. The test would be administered orally as the subjects drift guilelessly on a tripped out cloud.

Regardless of the method, however, we would have to be absolutely certain that our subjects answer truthfully. And we should keep in mind that most of them would be unaccustomed to doing this.

That, in broad outline, is the plan. But it needs filling in. That’s where you can help. Tell us what you think. Should aspirants for public office take the same tests they prescribe for others, or should they be required to take brand new custom designed tests of character and job-related knowledge. And should we test just once, or every year the person is in office? (Longitudinal testing has the obvious advantage of measuring whether or not the subject is improving while “serving.”)

You also might like to suggest specific test items. They need not be multiple choice. All types of questions typically found on standardized tests are welcome. Rush your comments and test item suggestions to The Worm Turns Foundation, c/o Newfoundations, P.O. Box 94, Oreland, PA 19075, or post them here.

To examine these issues further, see Justice Through Testing .


Best Wishes,

--- G K Clabaugh

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


Cordially

--- EGR

A Leader's Primary Pursuit: Incumbency

Heaven and Earth will disappear,
But our Dear Followership will continue forever.
--- adaptation from Himmel und Erden werden vergehen

Rule #1: Organizations strive for Immortality. Example: Rome’s highly paid and indulged Praetorian Guard, formed in 27 BCE to provide protection for a relatively few individuals, e.g. Augustus Caesar, his retinue and family, eventually came to the point of choosing and disposing of emperors. It lasted until the 4th century when it was dissolved by Constantine.

However, in our reality of rocks and humans and clouds, organizations are not the kinds of entitites that can be said, literally, to strive. They are, in law, merely fictional individuals. It is their their leaders, members and supporters who are the real, flesh and blood, coveting, striving, needful and prideful persons.

Rule #2: Membership involves "sunk" costs, e.g. time, opportunity, prerequisite expenditures, e.g. education or licensing, etc. These may not be costs one can recoup if the organization goes out of existence. Also, because organization members tend to admire and aspire to rank more than accomplishment, members don’t plan for their own occupational demise once the original purpose of the organization is accomplished or no longer viable. There are no "sunset laws" to be obeyed. This is particularly true of those whose basic needs are most dependent on the organizations' continuance. So it was that the Praetorian Guards did not say on August 19, AD 14, “Too bad. Augustus has died. Let’s hike out to the boonies and go back to being regular, underpaid and overdisciplined soldiers.”

Many leaders, particularly, tend to pursue permanent incumbency, having long developed a taste, an addiction, even, to the substantial and psychological rewards of leadership. What the organization was set up to produce, becomes less and less important as leaders participate less and less, operationally, and serve mostly political purposes -- the most important being organizational continuity.

So it is we have corporate-form organizations that outlast their members in the form of churches, industries, armed forces, universities and unions. Along with such corporate organizations we have, over a span of time, successions of so-called “leaders,” less expected to be producers than figureheads, whose often dispensible prerogatives of office are paid for at the cost of those who are compelled to support them.

The upshot of all this is this: it may not matter in the long run what kind of regime installs itself, or what kind government the people elect. It could be communist or fascist, authoritarian or democratic, liberal or conservative, religious or secular. In the long run, unless externally constrained, organizational politics will play themselves out and incumbent dynamics have more to do with who governs and how, than whatever political philosophy is given lip-service to. Only the governed will suffer.


For references and to examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP AS USURPATION?: the Grand Inquisitor Syndrome and Morality in Rank-Based Organizations

Cordially,

EGR

Must Our Leaders Be Scoundrels, Too?

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Is moral leadership possible? Why not? Is there anything which makes it necessary for a leader to act immorally? Or, on the other hand, is there anything about being moral that prevents someone from being a leader?

By “moral leader” some people think of those who call others to some well-defined standard of morality — for example, influential ministers, rabbis, imams or popes: a “moral authority.” Such moral authorities may have no personal power to “get things done.”

Another sense of “moral leadership” is a notion that people can be “real leaders” of organizations, who get things done, as opposed to “mere” administrators, officials, authorities or managers. The hope is that, in addition, such leaders will conduct themselves in a “moral” manner.

To get things done, power is essential. The quest for “moral leadership” is very much the problem of reconciling power with moral authority. Many of those who offer seminars in ethics for organizational leaders seem to think that there are no deep issues to be faced.

To examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?

Cordially,
-- EGR

Schooling Practice: ignoring power-nurture conflicts

“Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing -- Thomas J. Peters

New teachers worry about professionalism. They worry whether their peers, their superiors and even their students and their students’ parents will take them seriously. It’s a worry about being accorded the respect they think they deserve.

Why do they worry about respect? Because it gives them the authority they need to bring their students into the paths specified by the school’s curriculum. So they bolster that authority by following and preaching policies, rules and methods. And, behold, it generally works. They are acknowledged to be “the teacher.” And the students do “school activities” as they are bidden.

But teachers face, every day, day-in-and-day out, young, needy, human beings. The teacher’s inclinations are to slip into the role of counselor, parent, older sibling, friend. But then they would have to loosen, to give up on emphasizing policies, rules and methods. This undermines their authority, little enough as they have, and distracts from the stern demands of curriculum.

There are just too many individuals in their classes. And they confront, perhaps for the first time clearly in their lives, that fact that the idea of an “average student” is less a reality than an abstraction. Abstractions don’t have needs. Real kids do. The amount of individual attention parents want for their individual children is just not a possibility given even a small group.

So, to avoid the appearance of favoritism, or neglect, teachers -- often with heavy heart -- learn to apportion their attentions among their many students, knowing that some will find the teacher’s help hardly -- if at all -- nurturing; and others, almost an imposition.

Complicating this basic tension are official importunities that professionalism requires that teachers concern themselves, simultaneously, for special needs, gender, bullying, ethnic, cultural and personal differences among students. Missing any of these issues might result, during a professional observation by administration, in a less than satisfactory evaluation.

And there is also, the inescapable, often deep, moral dilemma: How much of the individual student’s comfort, freedom and self-esteem should be sacrificed, when necessary, for the good of the group?

For references and to examine these issues further, see Power in Schooling Practice: 
The Educational Dilemmas

Cordially
--- EGR

Free Market Incentives to Educational Monopoly

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. -- George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906)

Let's consider a metaphor, "Organizations strive for Immortality." Rome’s highly paid and indulged Praetorian Guard, formed in 27 BCE to protect a "market" of relatively few individuals, e.g. Augustus Caesar, his retinue and family, eventually came to the point of choosing and disposing of emperors. It lasted until the 4th century when it was dissolved by Constantine.

However, in our reality of rocks and humans and clouds, organizations are not the kinds of entitites that can be said, literally, to strive. They are, in law, merely fictional individuals. It is their their leaders, members and supporters who are the real, flesh and blood, coveting, striving, needful and prideful persons.

Because most organizations are rank-based rather than goal-based, they don’t plan for their own demise once their goal is accomplished or no longer viable. The Praetorians did not say on August 19, AD 14, “Too bad. Augustus has died. Let’s hike out to the boonies and go back to being regular, underpaid and overdisciplined soldiers.”

Leaders, particularly, want permanence, continuance of the substantial and psychological rewards of leadership. What the organization was set up to produce, becomes less and less important as leaders participate less and less, operationally, and serve mostly political purposes -- the most important being organizational continuity.

So it is we have corporate-form organizations that outlast their members in the form of churches, industries, armed forces, universities and unions. In the United States we also have systems of public education which mimic corporate form, even though there is no legal recognition of that status. Along with such corporate organizations we have, over a span of time, successions of so-called “leaders,” less expected to be producers than figureheads, whose often dispensible prerogatives of office are paid for at the cost of those who are compelled to support them.

Some people worry that charter schools will eventually do away with public education. This is like worrying that flea markets will wreck Microsoft. Public schools live on because they create markets and pay for its purchases with public funds. So called-reform-leaders who push charter schools are usually those who only want a place at the public funding trough.

Other educational Chickens Little worry that our university system, opening itself up more and more to all comers, is bound for shipwreck. Unlikely, so long as universities control professional credentials that are believed to secure high-earning jobs. The credentials market can persist for a long time whether or not anyone believes that a diploma is an indicator of knowledge so long as that diploma is hoped to be an admission ticket to a well-paying occupation.

For references and to examine these issues further, see LEADERSHIP AS USURPATION: 
the Grand Inquisitor Syndrome and Morality in Rank-Based Organizations


Cordially
--- EGR

Can Teachers Be Educational Leaders?

“Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self-importance.” -- J. Donald Walters

There are no people more obligated and less likely to lead school improvement efforts than teachers. Teachers have to look the kids in the eyes every day — not kids in the abstract, not kids in the third person, not kids in the future tense, but real, live, honest-to-God kids, and that obligates them in ways that theorists, politicians, and innovators may not even understand.

Teacher leadership can happen, and I believe it should happen, but it may require major changes in the way educators do business, and I’m not sure anybody’s really ready for it.

Teaching is a great calling. But somehow, we have managed to turn a first-rate calling into a third-rate job that hundreds of thousands of bright-eyed young people will find unacceptable.

Maybe Socrates and St. Paul were right to begin with: teaching for a living is really a very bad idea. After all, as a vocation — a calling — teaching is incomparable. But as a profession, teaching is marginal, and as a job, in many places it is the pits. Just think of all the ingenious and adventurous things we could do to educate our students if we weren’t dependent on our teaching jobs to feed our own children.

To examine these issues further, see Teacher Leadership: a likelihood?



Cordially

-- WAC

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?

Cordially
--- EGR

Sustaining Illusions of Leadership

The appearance of moral authority and even a sacred aura at the top of the hierarchy is essential to sustain the privileges of leadership. -- Jeffrey S. Nielsen, (2004) The Myth of Leadership

I find it depressing that we would want to discuss the state of leaderhip in organizations from the perspective of what feels good and uplifting, rather than what the evidence shows to be true. -- Jeffrey Pfeffer (2015) p. 194 Leadership BS

In all-too-many an organization in this U.S. of A, there is often little more that shouts “Leadership!” than a big, big salary. This is like confusing a rectal syringe with a thermometer.

There is a two-way superstition at work here. When organizations are successful, their leadership gets the most of the credit, even when luck plays a major role in that success. (See Marshall Goldsmith on The Success Delusion.) When businesses do not succeed, their leaders are not infrequently sacrificed -- especially in professional sports -- to the misfortunes that have befallen them. (See also, G. I. Kolev, Pay for Luck in CEO Compensation: Evidence of Illusion of Leadership?)

Some theorists have emphasized subordinating purely internal goals to integration into the community where the organization is located. Many business leaders and even leaders of public institutions disagree, emphasizing that the business of their business is their own business: even after they have asked for public assistence.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Philip Selznick, LEADERSHIP IN ADMINISTRATION
Also see Edward G Rozycki (1994) LEADERSHIP vs. MORALITY: AN UNAVOIDABLE CONFLICT?

Cordially
--- EGR

Systems Don’t Do the Work: rear echelon vs front line

edited 072719

'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the soldiers knew

Someone had blunder'd
Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.
-- Tennyson

Generals don’t shoot enemy soldiers. Stock market traders don’t chop onions. School Board members don’t teach children. Logistics is not delivery.

History demonstrates that it is far from unusual for rear echelon people to foul up the front line action. The best any rear echelon person can do is to provide the wherewithal to those who are on the front lines.

On the other had, the best generals can be stymied by the mutiny or cowardice of their soldiers. The best businesses can fall to the stock market manipulations of traders.

What really fouls up a system is when rear echelon and front lines personnel serve competing interests. If superintendents pursue longevity and sinecure, whereas teachers pursue comradely relationships with their students and sinecure, then given the demands most school systems face today, trouble, if encountered, will be swept under the rug, rather than intelligently handled.

To examine these and related issues further, see ON THE VIABILITY OF A CURRICULUM LEADERSHIP ROLE 
Avoiding Confusion of Role and Function


Cordially
--- EGR

Critical Assessment: are educators trained to do it?

edited 5/25/20

Many of the parents who allow their children hours of TV and who read little, if anything, besides the newspapers, contribute nonetheless vociferously to that chorus that decries the schools for failing to turn out readers. This irony is seldom lost on educators.

But even among educators, “criticism” is generally taken to mean “rebuke,” or “expression of dislike” lined up along partisan, usually political, differences. The ancient honorable notion that criticism can be non-antagonistic critique, an objective comparison to some commonly recognized standard, is, more often than not, forgotten. (See The Art of Constructive Criticism)

The deepest, most pathetic irony in education is this: a conference of educational leaders will more often than not turn into a celebration of non-communication, a values-clarification workshop writ large, each person revealing his or her "philosophy," neither expecting nor offering criticism, incapable of even simple rebuttal or defense, respecting each other's right to his or her own opinion, indeed, respecting each other like crazy.

Exercises in civility and understanding "where everyone is coming from" complete the ritual; critical examination is foregone and people finally got down to political "brass tacks."

Are we surprised that our educational leaders, professed "change agents", uplifters and reclaimers, ultimately engage in but one perennial pursuit: bandwagoneering?

To examine these issues further, see CRITICAL ASSESSMENT AND VALUES IN EDUCATION


Cordially
--- EGR