I just spoke with a professor who was venting about his frustrations in education. He explained to me that the person responsible for changes in his organization does not share his vision. I pointed out that, for various reasons, the problem is that nobody does. If that guy quits, dies, or takes vacation, there is probably nobody around who can explain why and how he did what he did because he hasn’t connected with anyone else. We are not a team because we lack vision. Our problem in education is the same as in every other facet of society. Education languishes not due to accountability but rather due to objectives. You can tell us all day long we're not meeting benchmarks and not generate any change until we know what they are and believe they can be reached. This young fellow has decided he has a better way, a better goal, than that given to him by my friend because my friend’s superior has not laid out a vision to the entire team and guidelines to help them arrive at the expected destination. Leaders lay out objectives that can be reached and empower those they task with meeting them to make the decisions necessary to meet them with the tools and resources available.
For years, politicians have set objectives that are vague without laying out any kind of roadmap with signposts and benchmarks with which to measure progress towards the goal. They tell us that they want to end poverty and then drive off on a road that will not end poverty, never asking if it's possible to really end poverty without killing everyone. Don't even get me started about the language- we shouldn't be about 'eliminating poverty' as much as we should be about 'increasing opportuniy and prosperity'. Think about the different energies of those two phrases! Even if prosperity is your major goal, you cannot also increase debt, because those two are mutually exclusive directions of travel as a means to arrive thereat.
It has long been accepted that if you improve the economic status of a community, educational status of community members will improve. While that can happen, it is presented in such an post hoc ergo propter hoc that if we change their economic state, their intellectual state must then follow. Education and prosperity are not colligative properties, and the one will not affect the other proportionately if at all. Many of the least educated are the wealthiest and vice versa. Even if it did work, it would work for only some and at different rates for those affected. What ought to happen is that we teach children who return to their communities and use what they learn to transform the economic state of the places where they grew up. Otherwise, it’s sort of a ‘giving a man a fish/teaching him to fish’ argument where we give men fish so we can teach them to fish and then have no need for anyone to learn how to fish as long as we keep feeding them fish without the work necessary to obtain them. After all, Sir Walter Scott reminds us: “All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.” Had Sir Walter been in our educational system, he would have never risen to the heights of literary scholarship he attained. This one-time lame but brilliant student would have been lumped in with other ADA students had he not had opportunity to excel.
Leaders who are serious about accomplishments give people vision. They explain to them where we are headed and how we intend to get there. They listen for hiccups along the way and suggestions of alternatives that might work better. Most of all, they make choices so that we can move forward. I have told supervisors at previous and current jobs that I can accomplish almost anything if I know what you expect and you back me up when I make decisions to meet those objectives. My current administrators have been excellent in that respect, and I have deferred others to them for clarifiation of procedure and policy when I enact their edicts. At Wal-Mart, their decision was to empower me to make the decisions, which was fine as long as they had my back since the right to choose was theirs.
What we really need are people in positions of responsibility who know how to lead and have experience requisite therefor. They need to go to those who will be expected to carry out their vision and say, “This is our vision. These are our objectives. I don’t care how we get there, as long as it is legal, ethical, and moral, but get us there. I will have your back and support you as you do this.” A recent article in New York Times Magazine tells the story of a Bronx Middle School teacher who shows how an empowered principal can transform education (10 April 2011, pg 34). We are not prepared to support or encourage people to excel.
The real failure of leadership is well illustrated by the exchange between General Trimble and General Lee in the movie “Gettysburg”
Yes, sir. Sir... I said to him, General Ewell, these words. I said to him, "Sir, give me one division and I will take that hill." And he said nothing. He just stood there, he stared at me. I said, "General Ewell, give me one brigade and I will take that hill." I was becoming disturbed, sir. And General Ewell put his arms behind him and blinked. So I said, General, give me one *regiment* and I will take that hill." And he said *nothing*! He just stood there! I threw down my sword, down on the ground in front of him! [he stops and regains his composure] We... we could've done it, sir. A blind man should've seen it. Now they're working up there. You can hear the axes of the Federal troops. And so in the morning... many a good boy will die... taking that hill.
Ewell knew the objective needed to be taken. He knew what he needed to accomplish it. Later, his men would know the cost of not meeting it, paid with their own lives. As long as the legislatures, federal and local, refuse to define the true aims of education, as long as the bureaucrats and teachers at every level are not clued into those, allowed to help form them, and empowered to reach them, any effort to reform education will meet the same fate as those good boys who died in a futile effort trying to take that hill at Gettysburg. It will die trying to take ground that no body of men, so hapless and impotent, can take. Pickett’s men were brave, battle-tested, and autonomous, and they still could not take that hill. We have too many leaders who are not willing to set objectives and empower their men to meet them, and so we continue to throw money at education as Pickett threw men at the Bloody Angle with the same results. We take no ground, capture no battle flags, and lose many of our best and brightest educators in the din of battle due to inept leadership and who go elsewhere to work.
What are the objectives of education? What do we hope to accomplish? Can those things be accomplished? How do we measure our progress? What can we afford? To be successful in this fight, we must meet somewhere between what we want to achieve and what we can achieve, tempered by what we can afford and then stretch ourselves to reach those goals. Until we are united in a common objective and supported by good leaders behind, our order of battle will never take the copse of trees at the end of this long, sloping ground, no matter with how much money and manpower we assault it.
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