Reflection of Change-Making Materials

Educational Organization and Leadership: 0828.546
Paper submitted 7 December 1998

There used to be a regular skit on Saturday Night Live in which a character, Stuart Smalley, held his daily affirmation. Smalley, who suffered from low self-esteem, would talk himself up in a mirror by chanting, “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And gosh darn it, people like me.” It was a spoof of the psychobabble that is purported to help us so much. Reading the studies in this section of our course reminded me of that skit.

Margolis dishes out a wordy essay that is nothing more than common sense. Yes, talking with those who will be responsible for the work before a change is good business. Yes, have those workers be part of the decision-making process. A perceptive administrator indeed should consider the perspective of his subordinates. It is understandable that workers may resist change. Was this to have been news? Was Margolis paid for this? My goodness, these are some of the basic tenets of work.

He states, “Thus, teachers need clear, observable, short and long-term objectives which they value and believe are achievable. These objectives should use criteria they believe accurately measure success.” Besides offering troublesome pronouns, Margolis would have us believe that teachers are just like the students they teach. If this is indeed the case (spoon-feeding faculty), then I suggest we spend some time researching whatever happened to the work ethic in our society. Yes, it is better to be informed as to what is happening and why it is. Absent that, workers need to understand they are employees.

Neck and Barnard offer no better. They suggest that we should, “Observe and record [our] existing beliefs and assumptions, [our] self-talk, and [our] mental imagery patterns.” My existing beliefs have taken decades to establish, let alone the effort involved. How would these folks suggest I record them? It sounds as though the suggestion is we put ourselves into therapy. This is one of the steps to inner leadership. Earlier, the pair discuss the classic optimist/pessimist argument as if it were the result of their study. Perhaps I suffer from their all-or-nothing thinking in that either their conclusion is lucid or I dismiss their entire paper.

The same can be said of the Navigating the Seas of Educational Innovation paper in which the authors seem to be quite unaware of the current state of affairs. More psychobabble is thrown about. It seems as though they would have us believe that we are inept in our comprehension of the expanding information load. They offer, “Many have chosen to deal with this increasing tension by teaching less about more, rather than opting for the less common, but more meaningful path of teaching more about less.” What seems to be missing from the discussion is not teaching more about less, but rather realizing that we are amidst a paradigm shift in our society. Rather than squabble over it, we need to accept it. We are moving out of the mechanistic world and into an information world. No longer can we master material. We will need to change what is learned, therefore, to be educated. We need to learn how to sort, classify, and evaluate material these days. It is not more about less. It is a fundamental shift in how we approach the material. Rather than proposing asinine theories, our authors would do well to catch up to the rest of the community. A thorough reading of Capra’s The Turning Point is suggested.

Attitude is the emotion of the evening, eh? I do agree with the introductory paragraph to the page named Change, “. . . the primary work of the principal is to facilitate change in such as [sic] manner as to lower the fear and anxiety of staff while maintaining a focus on the overall systematic goal and policing the integrity of the change process.” Here we discuss the reality of the job before us. Yes, it will entail much of what Margolis suggested. However, as we have covered earlier, a true leader will need to do this in an innovative manner.

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