Authority is Like a Condom

The Condom is a Cuirass against Pleasure and a Spider's Web against Danger. -- Madame de Staël (1766 - 1817) The authority we possess often distances us from others, making the pleasures of companionship or of even more ordinary forms of social intercourse strained, if not impossible. Yet, authority does not in and of itself, protect us from brute force, as any battered spouse with a restraining order knows full well.

How Does Authority Protect?

All new teachers, like many old-time missionaries, or any person newly thrust into a leadership role, discovers that the reputation of those who bestowed authority upon them may matter very little. Kids, for example, are not impressed with State issued teaching licenses. People raised in one religion, or in older forms of the same religion, are resistant to the new authorizations that have ordained the newcomer.

Authority of any kind is ultimately based on consensus, an agreement to acknowledge the validity of that authority. This consensus may based on traditionally shared beliefs, values and attitudes, or be merely expedient acquiescence or outward conformity.

This is the reality of the moral freedom we enjoy as individuals, if we only think about it. We, each one of us, can choose, if we are willing to live with the consequences, not to acknowledge as pertinent to our lives, any "authority" whatsoever. (The possibility of such disregard is why those in authority try to aggrandize power. See Usurping the Rights of Others)

This is no weird, esoteric practice to be carried out by bald monks on a mountaintop. It is exactly what we do to a great extent when we visit other countries and cultures: we acquiesce in behaving so as to keep ourselves out of jail, or to avoid social opprobrium; even though we disregard whatever other concerns a native of that culture might have. Sight-seeing in a church does not mean you will be a convert.

Not acknowledging as authority what others do may lead to conflicts of many kinds. But accommodating diversity is what makes possible the differences between families, religions, cultures and nations. But diversity, still, is what sometimes makes teaching and preaching an uphill battle. (Especially where coercive power is lacking.)

To examine these issues further, see The Indeterminacy of Consensus

Cordially --- 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

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

Your Authority is an Attitude in the Minds of Others

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. -- George Carlin

Authority of any kind is ultimately based on a consensus, an agreement to acknowledge the validity of that authority. This consensus may based on traditionally shared beliefs, values and attitudes, or be merely expedient acquiescence or outward conformity.

Mentally disregarding authority while outwardly conforming to it is no weird, esoteric practice only carried out by bald monks in mountaintop monasteries. It is exactly what we do to a great extent when we visit other countries and cultures: we acquiesce in behaving so as to keep ourselves out of jail, or to avoid social opprobrium; even though we accord no real respect whatsoever to other concerns a native of that culture might have. Sight-seeing in a church does not mean you are a convert.

The authority we exercise often distances us from others, making ordinary forms of social intercourse strained, if not impossible. Yet, it does not in and of itself, protect us from brute force, as any battered spouse with a restraining order knows full well.

All new teachers discover that the reputation of those who bestowed authority upon them may matter very little. Kids are not impressed with State issued teaching licenses. People raised in one religion are not very impressed that a religion different from their own has ordained the missionary.

Not acknowledging as authority what others do is what makes the differences between families, religions, cultures and nations. It also is what makes teaching and preaching an uphill battle. Especially where power is lacking.

To examine these issues further, see The Indeterminacy of Consensus


Cordially
--- EGR

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

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

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

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

Cordially
--- 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


Cordially
--- EGR

The Functions of Schooling: to Deaden the Mind, to Weaken the Will?

Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. …
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.-- Shelley

Power has many sources: among them, wealth, fear, luck, tradition and knowledge. For those powerful people whose relationship with knowledge is minimal, power is all too often a precarious, fleeting thing.

Despite what the familiar slogan says, knowledge, in and of itself, is not power. It takes the Will to use it to make the transformation.

People in power have long feared knowledge and its dissemination. Will is even more feared. Will can be transformative, damaging, even where knowledge is lacking, although less likely to cause lasting change.

This is why education for the masses tends to stultify two of the main human impulses to the development of Knowledge and Will: curiosity and assertiveness. Schools, by their very structure, reward narrow focus on “approved goals” and obedience within a hierarchical framework.

To enter the school curriculum, simple ideas have to be made complex, made onerous with pointless memorizations, or castrated of any threatening application. Can you imagine what it might mean if the Declaration of Independence were used by students and applied to the governance of the schools?

You can think and think and think/
Till your brains are numb, 
I don't care what teacher says, 
I can't do that sum. -- V. Herbert & K. Baker

A majority of Americans suffers from a school cultivated fear of mathematics. Ritual and obscurantism are used hide its potential for the experiences of beauty, and of insight and its suggestive indications of power. Only those who have suffered long preambles of tradition, who have shown themselves willing to subject themselves to the arbitrary discipline of academic, i.e. politically safe, pedants, get to see the treasures of the inner sanctums of the discipline.

The goals of constraining knowledge and suppressing will is what makes “science education” in K-12 education less than science, more like a magic show with much preachment, and little critical thinking and interesting exploration.

Are schoolkids -- are adults -- sufficiently curious and assertive to make the most of the knowledge available? Many are. The others might be, if they didn’t live on the brink of economic disaster and ill-health; or in communities of self-perpetuating debilitation.

For references and to examine these issues further, see Evaluating Learner Strengths and Weaknesses: 
the Impediments of Formalism


Cordially
--- EGR

Racial or Gender Achievement Gaps: the Result of Basic School Conflicts?

The school is a complex organization. By their complexity alone, schools run up against four basic internal conflicts. These are

• following policy vs. sensitivity to individual differences, e.g. the conflict of teaching a class according to a standardized curriculum vs. making adjustments according to the readiness of individual students

• delegating authority vs. pursuing authorized goals, e.g., Teachers change the curriculum at will to reflect their personal tastes and priorities.

• process vs. product, e.g. Standardized testing and curriculum vs. the concern for the "specialness" of students.

• power vs. morale., e.g. Student enthusiasm for school sinks as "discipline" is tightened up.

Dealing with these school conflicts is not merely a matter of more dedication or self-discipline on the part of individuals. Nor is it a matter of patience or forbearance or charisma. What must be addressed is the structure of relationships that constitute the organization.

To examine these issues further, see Basic Internal Conflicts


Cordially
--- EGR

Dealing with Controversy: dodging the bullets, if there are any

We live in a culture of controversy, the media shout out at us: Obamacare, School Reform, Global Warming. But are they real controversies, or just ploys to keep us focussed on advertising?

Three things make for a controversy:

1. Those who control resources, powerholders, perceive what they take to be a threat;
2. The powerholders disagree what to do about it; and
3. Publicity

The obvious way to “handle” a controversy is to squelch the publicity, hush things up. This doesn’t handle the threat but it keeps those who “have nothing to contribute” from putting in their two cents.

It also prevents non-powerholders, who may also be threatened, from realizing it and getting involved. (After all, there is always TV for distraction!) This is why hushing things up – in this Home of the Brave and Land of the Free – is so common a practice. Just think of the fuss raised by WikiLeaks – Do you really believe that everything a government agency marks as “classified” deals with a threat to national security?

A second method for dealing with controversy is to convince power-holders that what they perceive as a threat, is not “really” a threat to them or their interests. This explains why many of our legislators show less interest in promoting legislation dealing with unemployment than opposing legislation raising taxes to extend unemployment benefits.

Then, of course, there is actually dealing with the threat. But this takes skill, time, energy and money. It upsets people. So many of them go back to alternative one and practice it on themselves: they hush up their own misgivings and hope for the best.

To examine these issues further, see Controversy Analysis Worksheet


Cordially
--- EGR

Dreams, Luck and Too Many Cooks: American Higher Education

edited 3/28/19

Vivat academia
Vivant professores
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivat membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.

Long live the academy!
Long live the teachers!
Long live each male student!
Long live each female student!
May they always flourish!

-- Gaudeamus Igitur (vers. C. W. Kindeleben 1781)

Is Facebook a tool, or a distraction? Millions of people would disagree with me on this, because I would vote, “It is a distraction - generally a waste of time.” My productivity is cut into by every minute I spend examining my Wall.

But what is productivity? Which activities are worthwhile? Which are a waste of time and money? If you check to see how people vote with their time and money, you can only come to one conclusion: there is no universal agreement on this issue. What productivity is depends on the kind of life you aim at having. Excepting those who are pathologically envious, people tend to dismiss as “wrong,” or more accommodatingly, “not right for them,” the competing alternatives others have chosen.

What about organizations? Which is more productive? One that focuses only on making PCV sewer pipes, or a typical college or university? There is no easy, if any, answer to this question. The university, unlike the PCV pipe producer is multifunction. There is no one basis of evaluation for it.

Much more important, since the PCV factory is focused on one narrow outcome, it is easier for its management to prioritize activities and respond to market pressures than it would be at a college or university. Colleges and universities, due to accidents of history, contain within themselves a pluralism of competing goals and missions. Power is seldom held by one faction, not even by the trustees.

In colleges or universities near desperation in seeking applicants, market fluctuations provoke not only much face-saving ceremony, but a variety of myths and behavior that strive to maintain internal harmony. Just listen to faculty members chortle, chuckle or giggle at a president’s or trustee’s very lame jokes as they consume a tuition’s worth of food and drink at an annual welcome-to-new-staff party.

Just trying, no doubt, to help out American higher education, ACTA has jumped on the bandwagon of worrying about undergraduates who take longer than four years to complete their degree. But, why should anyone want to rush through college if they can afford to take a longer, more leisurely time to do it? And if they can’t afford it, why isn’t that the issue?

To examine these and other strongly related issues further, see Productivity, Politics and Hypocrisy in American Public Education: 
school organization as instrument and expression



Cordially
--- EGR

How to Control School Kids (and anyone else you want to)

Having management problems in your classroom? Or is it that you have a “friend” that has such problems?

What you are looking for is probably:

Effective Techniques for Getting Students Motivated to Learn!

But why not go whole hog? Learning classroom management “secrets” is as likely and as easy as:

Sure-Fire Techniques for Getting People to Do 
Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want It!

Now, that’s really something! But, do you really want this kind of power? You can have it, if you can live with it. And how you get it is really not so secret.

To examine these issues further, see The Deep Secrets of Motivation

Cordially
EGR

Do Warm Hearts and Gentle People Promote Violence? You Betcha!

A great many people worry about the abuse of authority and the misuse of power in our society; and, well, they might. There is more than enough abuse and misuse.

But it is all too easy to rush to the rescue of people who makes themselves out to be underdogs, particularly if they have given someone with power some justification to use it.

It is not difficult to put those who work on the front lines into a bind. Administrators or other power holders in an organization tell them, for example, that they have to keep order and get things done. Then these big mahoffs tell them that, even in severe circumstances, they cannot use physical force, or coercion to maintain that order. This allows “leaders” of all stripes to appear “humane,” “benign,” and “gentle.” It pushes the dirty work off on those who take orders from them.

In the military, in the police, in government service, in hospitals and in schools, the general rule is this: Do what your superior tells you: period. Get it done, come Hell or high water. This is what justifies your holding the job. This is what shows you have what it takes to be promoted: that you are “sensitive to administrative intent”!

Don’t let anyone know if you have to violate policy, law or morality to get it done. But if you get caught, you and you alone will hang! (Or as they used to say on TV on Mission Impossible, “The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your activities.”)

Many of the warm hearts who make a show of concern to prevent abuse, sanction it for expediency’s sake, so long as they can maintain plausible deniability of their own involvement.

To examine these issues further, see A Letter to the School Board of the School District of Philadelphia
About School Violence (circa 1993)

Cordially
EGR