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

“Expert Advice” You Can Do Without

A bunch of kids will be playing together in a schoolyard. Suddenly, a newcomer appears and chants, “Oooooooo. Watch out or you’re gonna get in trouble! You’re gonna get in trouble.” What frequently happens next is the children who were playing stop and leave for other places.

If the children are older, one might challenge the newcomer, “How’re we gonna get in trouble?” The newcomer replies, naming a teacher, “Mrs. Smith doesn’t like people doing that. She'll find out and you’ll be sorry.” This will disperse all but the most rarely courageous – generally characterized as “obstinate” -- children.

Take note that the “what it is” that would supposedly get them into trouble was never identified. Neither was the “why” it was unacceptable. Nor was any evidence given that Mrs. Smith in fact would disapprove. And even if she would have, the mysterious “what it is” might be quite acceptable to other teachers and parents.

But these were kids, after all. We wouldn’t expect them to act like little detectives and lawyers. But do adults handle such situations any better?

In a column called “Legal Talk” in the Winter 2011 issue of Educational Horizons the columnist, co-author of a book called School Law for Teachers gives advice to teachers to report suspected child abuse. What is abuse? Physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect are given more or less clear examples. But the category, “Emotional or Psychological Abuse” sounds more than a little bit like “Watch out! Or you’re gonna get in trouble.”

Emotional abuse “is a pattern of behavior that impairs a child’s emotional development or sense of self-esteem.” I have seen many an educator or parent sweat at the presentation of such a definition. I don’t think it was guilt. Rather, it was frustration at the prospect of having to fake a vaguely defined decision.

Is there any science behind this notion of emotional or psychological abuse strong enough and so widely accepted that a jury could determine that

1. a child’s emotional development had been impaired; and
2. the behavior of an accused individual had been the primary cause of that impairment?

And how about the child’s “sense of self-esteem?” Even children can misjudge things. Is this "sense of self-esteem" anything firmer upon which to base a legal argument? One’s “sense” of things, say, of acceptance into a group, can be inaccurate, as proven by later treatment received from members. Self-esteem fluctuates in some people depending upon the advertisements they happen to be watching on TV. Again this brings up difficulties in proving that one or more persons are primary causes of such fluctuations.

Educators are reluctant to intervene in circumstances vague or ambiguous enough to permit their own higher-ups to reverse a decision (for whatever reason.) Nor are educators trained -- as a matter of professional development -- to justify their intervention in the face of such a reversal.

Mere administrative or parental objection will disperse all but the most rarely courageous, or trained – generally characterized as “obstinate” -- teachers.

As a practicing educator, do what thoughtful consideration recommends; but, in order to learn how to construct strong reasons for your intervention, see Rationales for Intervention: From Test to Treatment to Policy


Cordially
--- EGR