Don’t smile until Christmas. If you are a teacher, I’m sure you heard this suggestion concerning classroom management early in your career. Here’s another one told to me as I began my career as a school administrator. “In leadership, make sure teachers and staff either love you or fear you.” Of course, this is similar to what Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince where he advises, “better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” Both of these “leadership tips” focus on using fear as a way to control the actions of those we lead founded on a rather pessimistic view of humanity.

Fear and Learning Don’t Mix

It’s pretty obvious these tactics do not lead to improved learning experiences for our students or better results from our teachers and staff. Threats and fear may increase our control and yield compliance, but, as this edutopia article states, “fear and learning don’t mix.” We are noticing an increasing number of students experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety as this NEA Today article describes at levels of “epidemic proportions.” Students are not alone. This recent study found “over half of Australian teachers suffer from anxiety and nearly one-fifth are depressed.”

W. Edwards Deming, in his book Out of the Crisis, understood how fear affected people and organizations. He developed his 14 Points for Management, and believed these actions were “the basis for transformation of American industry.” In his eighth point, he exhorts leaders to do the opposite of managing by fear. Instead, he instructs leaders to “drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.” I do not believe he was only referring to the behavior of tyrant bosses. He meant for leaders to go much deeper. In my opinion, he was referring to sources that cause fear within the system. Many of these sources of fear are accepted and unchallenged practices of Western management hiding in plain sight within our system, especially our overdependence on extrinsic motivation. Below is a diagram from The New Economics showing forces of destruction from our prevailing style of management and their effect on individuals over a lifetime.

Deming describes other sources of fear in his 7 Deadly Diseases of Management found in Out of the Crisis. Below, I posted a video of Dr. Deming describing the first five Deadly Diseases. It’s an older video, but very appropriate today. Deming explained The Deadly Diseases in the context of business. However, I believe we can see these same practices in our public schools today.

If you did not have time to watch the video, the first five Deadly Diseases are listed below. Again, I believe these Deadly Diseases are acceptable practices today in our public school system. Description of how the Deadly Diseases relate to education are written in italics, and are my own idea of how they apply.

Lack of constancy of purpose to plan product and service that will have a market and keep the company in business, and provide jobs. In our schools and classrooms, what is our purpose, and do all of our actions align with this purpose? Are our actions meeting the current and future needs of our students? By the way, when thinking college and career readiness, college should not be thought of as a destination, but as a means to meet future needs of the student, just like elementary/secondary school. Can we serve our students well, whether they attend college or not? Emphasis on short-term profits : short-term thinking (just the opposite from constancy of purpose to stay in business), fed by fear of unfriendly takeover, and by push from bankers and owners for dividends. In education, think of this as an emphasis on the short-term results from state standardized testing and other yearly measures. Also, the comparison of schools and school districts with each other is a source of fear (think comparison is the thief of joy). Lastly, the rating and grading system of schools. Because a school’s rating is determined yearly, emphasis is focused on yearly plans, and not long-range (5-10-20 years into the future). Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review . Applicable to both business and education. Mobility of management ; job hopping. Commonly happens in schools every year. Management by use only of visible figures , with little or no consideration of figures that are unknown or unknowable. Education example: Can you quantify the effect curiosity has on student learning? Y ou can read more in my blog post Avoiding the Testing Factory Trap: The Importance of Unknowable Figures .

In my opinion, fear, stress, and/or anxiety are threats to joy and better learning and work experiences for our students and teachers. Deming was emphatic that fear must be driven out. We must actively search for sources of fear within our education system and eliminate them. For that reason, I have this important request from you, the reader. Consider your state, school district, school, and/or classroom. What sources of fear, stress, and/or anxiety exist (to students and/or educators)? Specifically, what systemic sources are you aware of? Notice, I’m not asking for specific people (tyrant bosses), because those are special causes that should be handled like a special cause. Instead, identify systemic sources of fear in the school system and please share as a reply below. The more sources of fear we can identify, the better we will be able to transform our education system to drive fear out.

Share this:

Tweet





Print



Like this: Like Loading...