HAIL TO A LEADER OR A MANAGER

We are getting ready for a new leader.  January 20^th is fast approaching.  Whom did we elect to be president of the nation:  a leader or a manager?  This writer believes that it is a useful distinction for voters and, in terms of this blog, for high school students to make through their civics instruction.

          A manager is someone who takes existing aims and goals and goes about directing an organization or some sub portion of an organization to achieve those aims and goals using the most efficient method possible.  This aspect of administrating is concerned mostly with short-term goals and processes.

It is, for example, trying to make sure the best person available is placed in the various positions within the organization.  The manager makes relatively small changes in how things are being carried out.  It is the manager whom one looks to for the day-to-day decisions.

          A leader is not so constrained in his or her perspectives.  A leader does not look at carrying out aims and goals, but more about what those aims and goals should be.  John Kotter[1] identifies three basic processes he attributes to leadership:  he/she sets the direction for the organization, he/she organizes the personnel to carry out that direction, and he/she motivates personnel to strive toward the direction or vision he/she has set out.

          What is more important:  managing or leading?  Of course, both are and even if it takes more than one person to fill these positions, an organization needs to have both an overall leader and an overall manager.  What did we get for our presidency?  Since the nation elected a non-politician to run things, the citizenry is ill situated to pass judgement.  It only has reputation to go by without much evidence.

          This lack of knowledge is not new.  Barack Obama was a first term US senator when he ascended to the highest post.  It is the opinion of this writer (the reader might disagree) that this lack of experience was on display during the trying, early days of his administration – quite a few rookie mistakes (a topic for another time).

Presently, the new incoming president does have extensive experience, but it was all in the private sector.  To date, he has been reluctant to share evidence of his business acumen.  Yes, there are a bunch of buildings and resorts with his name on them, but these are mostly the trappings.  The public doesn’t know how profitable all that is.  It is still waiting for those tax returns.

Without that information, the citizenry will wait and see how he does.  Is he a leader or a manager or both?  If he is one and not the other, does he have underlings who can fulfill the missing attribute (although if it’s leadership, that is nearly impossible for an underling to fulfill)?  The public does know how he campaigned; he promoted his candidacy as being a leader without equal.  His management skills were communicated more by implication; that is, anyone who has been so successful in business needs to be a great manager as well.  But the question remains:  how successful has he been?

Two questions arise with this type of inquiry.  One, is leadership or management the same in the private and public domains?  This writer just read an account of how Jack Welch transformed GE, a company that had been very successful throughout most of the twentieth century.  His changes were multiple and profound and he pulled it off.  But he had the ultimate say on what structurally and procedurally would transpire at GE.  This is not the case for a president.

A president is not a dictator.[2]  He/she is the chief executive, but with meaningful restraints on his/her power.  There are both checks and balances and separation of powers the reader learned about in school and hears about daily in the news accounts describing the political realities at any given time.  The rhetoric during a campaign is carried out as if these attributes don’t exist – given the promises being made – but they do.  And, as such, the ability to be a leader, as opposed to a manager, is consequently much more difficult.

The second question is:  can one say either leadership or management is more important than the other regardless of the conditions the CEO faces or is this demand dependent on conditions – sometimes one needs a leader and at other times one needs a manager?  What one knows for sure is that both are needed to varying degrees all the time.  What one also knows is that leadership is more “sexy” than management.

In this vein, one can judge that Hillary Clinton lost the election when she decided to run on more of a management image than a leadership image.  She decided that her candidacy would communicate the following:  as president she was going to further the Obama legacy and secure it from Republican efforts to dismantle it.

Donald Trump ran on a leadership agenda; that is, he was going to make profound changes, in terms of direction, staffing, and spirit, that would regain for the US its lost greatness.  This language is what appealed to those 70,000 (over three states) voters who made the difference.  This blog has already described this dynamic in its explanation of why the election turned out as it did.  The lesson from this election is:  run as a leader, not as a manager.

This distinction will play out over various issues over the upcoming years.  The first will be over what to do with healthcare.  And, on the table, there is not just Obamacare (which has varying levels of support among the populous), but also Medicare and Medicaid.  These other programs, products of the Great Society legislation of the 1960s, are widely popular.  To date, Trump has said he does not want to touch these other programs, but a Republican congress has indicated it does.

These issues are important and affect most Americans.  Do Americans really want leadership today; that is, an executive who seeks such an extensive new direction in our governance?  Or does it want better management of what exists?  Upon reflection, one should be careful about what one wants.  This is especially true when one has the power of the vote.

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[1] John Kotter, Leading Change (Boston, MA:  Harvard Business Press, 1996).

[2] A CEO of a private corporation is not either.  He can be fired at any time by a board of directors assuming they are willing to buy out his contract.  On the other hand, a US president cannot be fired unless he is engaged in illegal activity and is impeached and convicted by Congress.

YOU SAY WHAT?

An aim of this blog, in large measure, is to convince the reader to believe two claims:  one, that federation theory is the best available mental construct to guide the nation’s civics curriculum, at least in terms of content, and two, that the reader should actively engage in the promotion and implementation of this construct.  The blog has dedicated a lot of space to describe and explain federation theory (one can see above the introductory remarks for an overview of the theory) and has attempted to give practical advice about how to change curriculum.

          In terms of this latter attempt, the blog has pointed out that change in how an organization thinks and functions is difficult, complicated, and a long-term project.  This is true if the change is fundamental and what is sought is what is known as transformational change.  Transformational change is not what most politicians such as Donald Trump are after; they speak in terms of transactional change. 

Transactional change is based on external motivation.  That is, a person agrees to change his/her behavior in exchange for something the person wants – a higher paycheck, higher status, a better parking space in the parking lot.  On the other hand, transformational change relates to people changing some behavior not for a reward (or to avoid a punishment), but due to an internal motivation, some change in attitudes or values.  That makes it hard to accomplish.

There is some recent research that sheds light on an aspect of such a dynamic.  The New York Times reports on the work of Robb Willer and Matthew Feinberg,[1] two sociologists who study what it takes to succeed in convincing people to support specific policy proposals, especially if the proposals are associated with an opposing political ideology.  For example, how does one convince a conservative to support same-sex marriage or convince a liberal to support increased military spending?

Actually, this aspect is not complicated, but it is difficult to pull off.  Per these researchers’ findings, what is needed is presenting arguments that frame the newer policy choice in terms of the subject’s, not the proponent’s, values and attitudes.  Here is what one of the researchers had to say:

In one study, we presented liberals and conservatives with one of two messages in support of same-sex marriage.  One message emphasized the need for equal rights for same-sex couples.  This is the sort of fairness-based message that liberals typically advance for same-sex marriage.  It is framed in terms of a value – equality – that research has shown resonates more strongly among liberals than conservatives.  The other message was designed to appeal to values of patriotism and group loyalty, which have been shown to resonate more with conservatives.  (It argued that “same-sex couples are proud and patriotic Americans” who “contribute to the American economy and society.”)[2]

          On the other side, liberals were swayed to support military spending with arguments that point out the role the military plays in offering opportunities, education, and training to low income, minority enlistees.  With a larger military, such offerings can be extended and taken advantage of by more low income individuals.  This is very much in the liberal “wheelhouse.” 

          What is the lesson here?  The lesson is that when one wants to convince others of a behavior or policy shift that on the face of it counters existing values and attitudes, if one frames the change in terms of existing values and attitudes by those who are to be changed or convinced of the change, success is more likely to happen.  When this premise was tested against external rewards, reframing did better.

          As mentioned, this sort of strategy is difficult to implement.  One reason for this is reflected by another finding of this research.  Liberals and conservatives alike were found to be reluctant or unable to think of arguments and presentations that solicit values and attitudes of those who initially opposed the proposed change.  In other words, liberals think liberally, not conservatively, and conservatives think conservatively, not liberally.  These two claims seem to be true even when the subjects are asked to do otherwise.

          This research used a variety of policy change proposals.  It was found that not all liberal or conservative policy positions were amenable to such reframing; some did not lend themselves to these language manipulations.  This writer can speculate that a national healthcare program such as the Affordable Care Act is such a policy area.

So, perhaps what one can say with the new administration coming in is that Democrats, who wish to cooperate with it, should see what areas the Trump team wants to pursue that they also want to advance (infrastructure spending) and which ones Democrats want and can be reframed in language that touts Republican values and attitudes.  For those latter proposals, part of the strategy should be to frame the debate, at least in part, in Republican language.  For the rest, from the Democratic perspective, game on!

As for changing a curriculum in a school, one similarly is confronted with people who initially are disposed to disagree with what is being proposed.  This research by these sociologists suggests certain steps a change agent needs to take if he/she hopes to be successful.

First, he/she needs to discover the values and attitudes the target subjects have.  The agent not only needs to know what these dispositions are, but also gain a sense – an accurate sense – of how much vitality they have, how centered they are to the person being asked to change.

Second, these values and attitudes need to be considered and the language by which they are or can be expressed must be discovered or developed.  Sometimes, these values and attitudes are held at a subconscious level or they are opaque.  This language task is difficult to achieve, but unaddressed commitments do not disappear or lose their influence.

And third, an appropriate language needs to be formed and, where possible, employed to voice the desired aim or goal with words that are amenable to the listener.  Here, the communicator might be tempted to be dishonest and manipulative.  If he/she is, untold damage can be done to the whole project.  Dishonesty is seldom forgiven or forgotten.

As the Times article points out, this research points out an almost obvious message that people are more apt to agree with what they already agree.  The challenge is in the implementation.

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[1] “The Key to Political Persuasion,” The New York Times (November 11, 2015), accessed December 30, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/15/opinion/sunday/the-key-to-political-persuasion.html?_r=0 .

[2] Ibid.

UNAVOIDABLE BIAS

A topic that all civics teachers will confront at one time or another is:  should he or she convey to the students his/her political beliefs, his/her ideology? It is a safe bet that a civics teacher will have an “attitude” about politics; why would he or she choose to teach civics or any of the social studies if his/her interests were not so engaged?  And if he/she has an interest, as is the case with most things that spur one to have an interest, the person’s attitude(s) will probably not be neutral.

          It is basic attitudinal theory that as one’s interest in a topic or subject becomes more intense, the person will tend toward attitudes that will be more pronounced, either in a positive direction or a negative one or, in some cases, both directions.  That’s why one can love and hate someone at the same time; as a matter of fact, if we love someone who gives us reason to hate him or her, the hate tends to be more intense.  But that’s another angle to this question.

          Here, the topic is civics and political interest and bias.  Above, all social studies were mentioned.  Another field that tends to be political is literature.  A lot of literature has been motivated by political issues.  In college, this writer took a social issues-literature course and the class was assigned such classics as The Prince, 1984, The Grapes of Wrath, Fahrenheit 450, The Fountainhead, and others.  Each of these books argued through its stories and descriptions definite political positions.

          Now today, with issues such as climate change, pollution, nuclear weapons, and others, science teachers are faced with many political concerns.  Again, should a science teacher portray what his/her political beliefs are?  Of course, in the case of science, the mere presentation of such issues says something.  It says:  here is a condition that is bad for us and the implied message is that the nation or the world should do something about it.  That is a political discussion which is directly addressed or implied.

          In this blog, this writer has argued that in choosing a fundamental mental construct that serves to guide civics instruction, a political bias is being expressed by such a choice.  What one can say about that choice is that it does not usually rely on a conservative or liberal bias as is the case with most of our political debates. 

          The blog has further argued that today, civics is guided by the natural rights construct.  This construct has elements that can be associated with conservative arguments but, at the same time, it has elements that can be associated with liberal arguments.  That construct’s reliance on individualism, quantitative research, and systems analysis of social (including political) arrangements tends to have a conservative-libertarian bent.  While that is true, its rejection of traditional/historical strains of argument tends to move its purview to a more liberal bias.

          The one mental construct which this blog has explained that has a left of center – in some cases an extreme left of center political view – is the critical theory perspective.  With its reliance on Marxian thought, one would not accuse critical theory of espousing reactionary political arguments.

          As for the favored construct of this blog, federation theory, it tends to be more conservative than liberal, except for one important aspect.  This construct is basically a collectivist view, albeit with a strong respect for the individual entity that makes up the collective.  That individual is recognized as having a definite set of rights as defined either by the US Bill of Rights or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  This along with its collectivist slant can be considered liberal elements of Federation Theory.

          The blog made the claim that a teacher cannot fully hide from students his/her political bias.  There is a multitude of ways a teacher does this, some quite straightforward and others subtle.  It is useful for civics teachers and other teachers (history, biology, English lit teachers) to be conscious of the several ways that espousing political beliefs are communicated.

          But before listing these ways, it is also useful to review why this is an issue of importance.  Are students sent to school to be “brainwashed;” to be exposed to propaganda of a political ideology?  Most would say no.  Yet, is it unavoidable?  This writer believes that it is.

          Why – because of the different ways that a teacher’s or curriculum’s bias is espoused.  The most subtle way a bias is communicated occurs when a teacher expresses an opinion not of a political idea, but a social one that has political implications.  That could occur when a teacher repeatedly expresses messages attacking laziness, for example, and how it is because of laziness that so many people find themselves deprived or in poor situations.  In trying to get his/her students to be more energetic, he/she expresses a basic conservative assumption that can be questioned on empirical grounds.  That is, poverty is caused by laziness.

          In a less subtle way, a teacher can espouse a bias by the questions he/she asks students about the content they are studying.  Here is where a mental construct functions to tilt the content.  If the content, for example, is consistently asking about how individuals are affected by social policy or events and never how the group or community is affected (a tendency using the natural rights construct), then individualism is promoted and that, in turn, can be political.  This writer believes that is exactly what happens too often in our classrooms today.

          Then there is the case in which, usually in small monocultural communities, teachers simply espouse the accepted political beliefs of that locality.  Those beliefs are transmitted with little or no reservations.  They become the accepted dogma of political thought and students naturally grow to further adopt them as their own.  The home offers little resistance to such indoctrination because what their children is being taught reflects what the family believes to be true and proper.

          So there, one has three levels of transmission that communicate political beliefs with their commonality.  All students are exposed to “propaganda” at one time or another.  What is one to do if one is concerned with this sort of indoctrination?  This blog has argued that recognizing the inevitability of this promotion and adopting strategies that have students question the beliefs they are being given is a responsible way to deal with this issue.  This is done with teachers who are self-aware of their biases and also of the biases of the curriculum they are teaching – and perhaps can see local biases as being just that – biases. 

          Once a teacher is so aware, then he or she can proactively ask the challenging questions about espoused beliefs, not only emanating from themselves but from other sources as well.  By asking such questions, students will more actively approach their subjects (not only civics, but subjects like history, biology, or English lit).  And in the bargain, that teacher might be able to generate the class that is lively and interactive among students and between students and teacher.

DEAL OR OBSTRUCT?

There is a big question among Democrats these days.  Should they in Congress cooperate with the new president if he, in turn, is championing something they want –  federal spending on a large infrastructure program – or should they mimic the Republicans and oppose anything the president attempts to initiate as they did with President Obama?  Deal or obstruct?

          Of course, even if they choose to cooperate, the details of any negotiations are very important.  But before such a strategy would be put in place, more generic questions need to be asked.  With whom should one seek a deal?  What assets would one be willing to give up?  What is a sought-after gain worth to him, her, or them?  What are the time elements of any negotiations and their subsequent consequences?  What third parties are involved and what are their claims, liabilities, assets, and other pertinent interests in any pending deal?

          Most of these questions – and those who deal in this sort of thing could probably think of other queries – while being generic, are concerned with situation specific conditions, but the first one is not.  Negotiations call on participants having trust among them – at least to some level. 

One remembers President Reagan’s famous quip:  “trust, but verify.”  But in most of these cases, verifying happens only after the fact, once the agreement is struck.  For example, the negotiations in North Carolina the other day are a case in point.

          In a one-day special session of the North Carolina Legislature, the Democrats of the state offered to have Charlotte, the state’s biggest city, overturn a city ordinance allowing everyone to use bathrooms in accordance to their gender – how an individual defines him/herself sexually – in return for the Republicans to drop House Bill 2.

House Bill 2 mandates everyone to use the bathroom that anyone’s birth certificate states the person’s sex designation is – a person’s biological designation.  Charlotte dropped its ordinance, but the Republicans, who control both houses of the legislature, did not meet their end of the deal.

So, one can question those lawmakers’ trustworthiness.  Of course, Charlotte can reestablish its ordinance, but one can imagine how the episode damaged the levels of trust among the different political actors in the political arena of North Carolina.  Having to take the time and expense to meet for the one day session will not be soon forgotten.

          Is there a lesson in the North Carolina case?  One can see that it is not only important to know what the other party holds important, but also to know the source of that concern and how, in the priority of concerns, those particular ones are held.  Often, and usually due to representative language that is used to initiate negotiations – made by representatives of one side or the other – the importance of a concern is downplayed.

One needs to be sensitive to this possibility.  It seems to be the case that in North Carolina there is a general sense of betrayal.  In addition to this backtracking on the deal, the legislature just stripped the new incoming, Democratic governor of important appointment decision powers.  The deal breaking is just more salt on the wound.

          Of course, the consequences of this failed deal are that North Carolina is apt to be further punished by national organizations that have been boycotting the state for different functions such as sporting events, business considerations, and entertainment concerts due to its “bathroom” policy.

The fallout from the law, which the General Assembly passed in March, has been impossible to miss. The National Collegiate Athletic Association stripped North Carolina of its right to host seven championship events this academic year. The Atlantic Coast Conference pulled its football championship from Charlotte, and major companies, including PayPal, abandoned or paused plans to expand in the state. Cultural figures like Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr canceled concerts, and the United States Department of Justice brought a civil rights lawsuit, which is still pending.[1]

This account indicates why Republicans were motivated to deal; the existing law was costing businesses significant revenues and promises to keep doing so.

          But back to the national scene and the pending question Democrats are asking – should they deal or obstruct? – it is easy to judge that “dealing” is the more patriotic thing to do.  To obstruct is merely a partisan move; it caters to the party’s base and energizes it to support and, when the time arrives, vote.  Given the last voter turnout numbers, this would be a good thing for Democrats. 

          On the other hand, dealing and finding common ground would more likely further the national interest.  But in judging whether the strategy followed is one or the other – deal or obstruct – a person is well-served to remember all that goes into such decisions.

These politicians, the ones who will decide the strategy – are pros at the political game.  They are the ones whom the president-elect promised are fools.  He has stocked his team with pros from the business world, so one will see what will happen.  A prudent sentiment by which to leave this topic would be to point out that trust should be earned, not foolishly bestowed.  This is true even among federated citizens.  

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[1] Richard Fausset and Alan Blinder, “North Carolina Fails to Repeal Bathroom Law That Prompted Boycotts” The New York Times (December 21, 2016).  Accessed December 23, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/us/north-carolina-fails-to-repeal-bathroom-law-that-prompted-boycotts.html?_r=0 .

FAKE NEWS

One of the problems this writer identified early in this blog is the lack of political knowledge among the citizenry.  At the time, he offered some studies that supported this general observation.  This most recent election cycle provides further evidence; no, not by who won, but by the role fake news played in the results.

          As the legitimate news services have pointed out, on-line “news” stories started out giving false information about outlandish events that never took place.  Apparently, there is an art involved.  The stories, to be effective, must pick up on certain commonly held beliefs and then be written in a certain style.  In short, they should mimic legitimate news offerings such as in Time or Newsweek magazines.  But their similarity is limited to style, not content.

          This whole business was being given secondary attention among the legitimate press, but this all changed recently.  When a man showed up at a Washington eatery and fired an assault weapon (not hurting anyone) because he wanted to find evidence of a child abduction ring that Hilary Clinton and John Podesta were operating out of the establishment, the existence of fake news took a serious turn.  Of course, no such evidence of abducted children was to be found since the entire story was false.

          The question of why such misinformation spreads – especially when such information leads to such incidents as this shooting or adds to the factors that determine elections – becomes important.  The most obvious reason is that social media provides the technological capacity to spread the misinformation, but why do people believe it, particularly in the case of more outlandish stories?

          This writer wants to suggest a factor, and this factor falls in line with one of this blog’s central claims.  When a nation, as this one has done, adopts a natural rights view of governance and politics, when it sees a citizen as autonomous to define its basic political and other values with little sense of what is legitimate or not, then one can expect a certain segment of the population to drift toward the bizarre and extreme.  This works on more than one front.

          A belief in one’s own autonomy does not necessarily equate such liberty to others.  Part of the credo of natural rights is to extend such rights to others, but this can be lost as it becomes a way of thinking among a general population in which varying levels of sophistication exist.  It is a short jump from “me” having a right to believe what I want to believe, to I want everyone believing the same thing.  And once this jump occurs, then it can manifest itself in many ways.

          For example, such a person is apt to believe conspiracies when he or she confronts a person who disagrees with his/her beliefs.  This, in turn, makes such a person predisposed to believe the most outrageous of stories as the abduction story described above.  There is a lack of fundamental beliefs in such a society – beliefs that place parameters on what one accepts as true or desirable in public policy.  Everyone is left to his/her own devices when formulating political beliefs.

          Not only is the problem that people believe such outlandish stories, but that they, in turn, have chosen to disbelieve legitimate sources of news, since such outlets provide a steady stream of information that counters their beliefs.  Now, one should not accept what one hears via legitimate sources without question; every source of information can get things wrong to varying degrees.  But there is, of course, a big difference between a source that honestly gets something wrong and one that is aiming to disseminate outrageous information.

It is also information that is bolstering a political position.  What has not been clear in the reporting of such fake news is how much of it bolsters conservative positions as opposed to liberal positions.  Is one side of our political spectrum more susceptible to fake news?  Also, to what degree did fake news affect how people voted? 

One can be sure that political scientists will consider these and other questions.  Whatever they find, one can see that what is taught in our civics classrooms and how successful such teaching is are important elements of maintaining our democracy.  Such concerns deserve our attention even when it comes to what is taught in the nation’s schools, for it is civics classes that are primarily charged with preparing students to meet the challenges of their political world.

WAS LINCOLN JUST AN IDEALIST?

A question any civics teacher should address with his/her students is:  what leads policy proposals to become policy?  For example, why does one legislative bill become a law and another does not?  In common parlance, this question is usually talked about in terms of how much do public wishes play; how much of what the people want leads to our laws; how much the public influences the acts of executive officials and affects judicial decisions?

          In terms of the national democratic bias, Americans tend to savor the Lincoln quote:  “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  This bias naturally assumes and/or counts on citizens having quite a say in what policy is thought of, developed, enacted, and implemented in our governance.  But what civics teachers should have their students investigate is whether this is true and if so, how often, and if not, how often does it not happen?

          In an opinion piece published today, the writer offers the following:

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have a long agenda of unpopular policy changes they want to make, and they won't be impeded by the fact that the majority of the public doesn't actually want tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate giveaways, or restrictions on abortion. They're going to do them because it's what they believe in, even if the public might not approve.[1]

This pundit does not seem to place much faith in the power of public opinion.

Such a civics inquiry and subsequent discussion would benefit from several issues or facts.  To begin with:  most items of concern that government officials deal with are of little or no interest to Americans assuming the entailed function is being met – the police are protecting, the roads are paved, the fires are extinguished, etc.  For example, which highway builders should be contracted to build or refurbish a nearby highway is of little interest to Joe Q. Public.  Yes, some citizens might care, but by and large, most won’t.  The clear majority of policy questions are just about such details.

          Another related item is:  how much does policy reflect how affected groups lobby policy-makers to issue favorable decisions?  Those highway building businesses, for example, want specific decisions as to who will get that next contract.  And like that case, one can multiply such concerns across all those private interests that are affected by policies that usually mean monetary rewards or losses as in tax policies.  What one can note in terms of these lobbying efforts is that the sought-after policy is usually specific.

          One last issue or concern relating to factors concerning policy making and how democratic the process is is the “collective action problem.”  To quote an expert in this realm of research:

… organizations attempting to affect policy seek a collective good that will benefit every member.  Because everyone will benefit, whether or not they have done anything to win a collective good [such as a highway], it is rational for everyone to let others do the necessary work.  The result will be little or no collective action.  The same argument holds for individuals:  why try to influence policy when letting others do the work will produce the same benefit?  And if little effort is made to influence Congress, such efforts cannot very well have much impact.[2]

The effect of the collective action problem is that most citizen action tends to be  coming only from special interests and not from the general population.  Hence, any input from the citizenry is directed at specific concerns with specific aims and goals.

          In a civics class that adopts a goal of having students engaged in political participation – for example, one that relies on federation theory, as described and explained in this blog – the teacher of that class needs to ask about the above issues.  Such a class would not simply accept that students’ interests are elsewhere, but would call on those students to defend their apathy.

By framing this overall concern repeatedly, the aim is to at least have students reflect on the democratic level of the nation’s governance and politics and on their own engagement and their related values concerning governmental and political engagement.

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[1] Paul Waldman, “Will Donald Trump's historic unpopularity hamstring his presidency?,” The Week, accessed December 16, 2016 from Windows 10 news service.

[2] Paul Burstein, American Public Opinion, Advocacy, and Policy in Congress:  What the Public Wants and What It Gets, (New York, NY:  Cambridge University Press, 2015), loc. 206-217 (in a Kindle reader).  The facts of this posting are derived from this source.

THE SCHOOL DISTRICT MAZE

With this posting, this writer wants to pick up on a theme he visits from time to time: how do you initiate change in one’s local school?  He has indicated that if the change is at all profound, one that calls on teachers and other personnel to change attitudes or even values, the task is quite complicated and difficult.  But he has also indicated that it is such a change that is needed to address the deficiencies in civics instruction which this blog has described and explained in the past.

          To date, he has outlined some of the issue areas that are involved.  For example, he described curricular philosophies and approaches which different educators might harbor that frame how any individual educator might view a proposed change.  In doing so, he hopes he indicated some of the complexities involved.  In this posting, he wants to draw the reader’s attention to the more practical concern of structure.  How is a school and, in turn, a particular class situated within a school district?

          While school districts around the country might vary a bit, they do follow a general model.  They can be summarily described by an organizational flowchart.  One can get a view of such a flowchart on the website http://www.rff.com/school_orgchart.htm .[1]  And for the purposes here, this account will describe this model by starting with a class and from there progressively point out how each level of such an organization is situated.

          Say a social studies class is housed within a department of the school, the social studies department.  That class is, of course, taught by a teacher who belongs to that department.  The department has a department head who usually does not have authority over the class or teacher, but serves more in a bureaucratic function to convey information from the administration to the teachers of the department and, at times, from those teachers to the administration depending on the issue involved.

          In terms of teachers, authority flows from the principal to the teacher.  In this, the principal is assisted by a small number of assistant principals (A Ps).  Each A P has an area of administration that he or she supervises.  These can include maintenance, discipline, counseling, etc.  Again, the level of authority can be highly limited and one who works at a school finds out that the person in charge is the principal.  Of course, some principals delegate authority to trusted A Ps, but in this writer’s experience, most principals are not so disposed when it comes to an issue of any consequence.

          Of course, principals answer to district administrators, but this can also be curtailed.  Most district wide policies can be and are shaped to adapt to the perceived needs of an individual school.  Again, based on this writer’s experience, a principal’s tenure at a school is approximately five years.  One reason a principal might not delegate much power to A Ps is that assistant principal assignments are not the province of principals, but the decision of district officials.  This prevents the principal, to any meaningful degree, from promoting a unified philosophy or approach in is his/her school.

          Principals mostly communicate with the office of an area superintendent.  This official usually supervises the workings of a number of schools in a sub- geographic area of the district.  This, of course, depends on the size of the district; some are quite small consisting of just one such area or maybe two.  Larger districts, for example Miami-Dade (a countywide district), might have three, four, or five sub-districts or regions.  There are also assistant or associate superintendents who supervise district wide functions such as maintenance or personnel.

          Of course, on top of the chart in terms of hired help is the superintendent.  He/she can be either appointed or elected.  This official does have the ability to steer the district in certain directions, but he or she, in districts of any size, is far removed from the realities of the classroom.  In all this writer’s years of teaching, he met only one superintendent and the meeting meant little to his doing his job.

          But there is still one more level of organization:  the school board.  This is a committee of elected officials who determine legal policy for the district and in many cases, hires the superintendent.  In large districts, these positions are highly susceptible to political forces.  Districts buy a lot of things and services from black (white) boards to internet services.  They probably maintain immense control over construction decisions.  As such, they are heavily lobbied by private vendors over the course of such decisions.

In other words, school districts are well established bureaucracies.  In large, urban areas, they match good sized corporations as to their structure, processes, functions, and the like.  How does change or policy change occur in such structures?  Michael A. Roberto provides a list of fundamental processes that he recommends should be followed to initiate what he calls transformative change.  They entail the following:

·        Establishing a compelling direction, a vision for the future, and the strategies for how to get there.

·        Aligning people, communicating the direction, building shared understanding, getting people to believe in the vision, and then persuading and influencing people to follow that vision.

·        Motivating and inspiring people to enact the kinds of changes and vision that you have articulated.[2]

In upcoming postings, this writer will further apply these processes to education and its bureaucratic realities.  I have left the relation of the school district to the state government for some future effort.  In terms of change though, the above description will suffice to account for the type of factors that change efforts need to address.

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[1] Accessed on December 13, 2016.

[2] Michael A. Roberto, Transformational Leadership:  How Leaders Change Teams, Companies, and Organizations, (Chantilly, VA:  The Great Courses/The Teaching Company, 2011), 20.