Tag: glasser

Things I Know 307 of 365: The horizon of school must be clear

Continuing to explore William Glasser’s The Quality School, I found this:

On the other hand, and this may seem contradictory, if you ask students working at McDonald’s if they want a good education, the answer will be Yes. They have a vague picture in their quality worlds of what they conceive to be a good education, but I believe few of them have any idea of what it actually is. It is easier for them to see quality on the job than at school. To find out why requires a few more questions.

If you ask if it takes hard work to get a good education, students will again answer Yes. They are still not clear about what a good education is, but whatever it may be, they think it takes hard work to get it. Further, if you ask them if they are smart enough to get a good education, almost all will answer Yes, even if they do not know exactly what it is they have to be smart enough to do.

But if you ask them if they are working hard in school, most will answer No. What they are saying is that, as much as they want the vague something that to them is a good education and know it takes hard work to get it, they do not have any clear idea of how schoolwork, as they now know it, relates to what they want. Until they have a much clearer idea about what a quality education is and how it can be attained from that they are asked to do, students will not work hard in school.

My first two years in the classroom, I was teamed with one of the most caring and thoughtful teachers I’ve had the pleasure to meet. His name was Doug Powell and he taught 8th graders math. I respected Doug for numerous reasons, not the least of which was the fact he saw our interactions around teaching as reciprocal. Though I was as new to teaching as someone can be, Doug never made me feel as though there wasn’t something he could learn from me. I felt valued, and it was the same feeling he brought to his classroom.

At the beginning of each year, Doug gave the students his “Horizon Speech.” He told the kids the horizon was the distance they could see and explained how sailors used the horizon in setting and keeping course. Doug told his students that they came to him with horizons on their futures that were of varying distances. Some couldn’t see past that day, some were blinded beyond that school year, and some could see for years.

His job, he told them, was to help them extend their horizons. I think that’s what Glasser is getting at. Doug helped students extend their understanding of the lives that lay ahead of them so the courses they set were better informed and free of the “vague something” so many kids see when they look at school. Doug helped students understand where school fit in their understanding of a quality life in ways that were detailed, unambiguous and tied to who they were.

Things I Know 288 of 365: A managerial approach can include an ethic of care

We fail to realize that the way we manage ignores the fact that very few people – and students are no exception – will expend the effort needed to do high-quality work unless they believe that there is quality in what they are asked to do.

– William Glasser

Glutton for punishment, I picked up William Glasser’s The Quality School by choice a week ago.

Until then, all I knew of Glasser was the ubiquitous table that ends with some variation of, “Children learn 95% of what they teach to someone else.”

It seemed a bit thin as a basis for evaluation.

The basic thesis of Quality thus far is the importance of doing away with coercion in schools as a system for managing students and for managing teachers.

For the less advantaged, boss-management both at home and in school is a double disaster: First, such students have learned fewer need-satisfying behaviors than children from advantaged homes, and they come to school both less willing and less able to do the work. This means that almost from the start they do not do as well in school, even though they are inherently just as capable as the advantaged students who do better.

Writing in 1990, Glasser throws around now-out-of-fashion terms like “boss-manager” and “lead-manager,” and that took some getting used to. Each time I pick up the book, I’ve got to remind myself he was writing in a time when we weren’t yet trying to disguise the use of business principles in education.

By coercing students, Glasser argues, we’re attempting to move them away from their natural tendency to meeting their inherent needs. This ignoring and subversion of needs leads to resentfulness in students. “If we attempt to manage people without taking their needs into account,” Glasser writes, “we will ask them to do things without considering whether or not those things are need-satisfying either now or later.”

Ignore students’ needs enough, he says, and you kill any chance of inspiring quality work. Oh, you’ll get work, but it won’t be quality.

And eventually, you won’t get work from those whose needs are most often ignored or marginalized.

I’m not entirely in agreement with Glasser at all times. That’s one of the signals I’m reading something worthwhile.

What I am digging thus far is the connection his thinking on management inadvertently makes Nel Noddings’s philosophy behind the Ethic of Care. Oftentimes, when I speak of caring to people, I’m heard as a touchy-feely sort who can’t speak in the register of results or blend the thinking of workforce with schooling.

While I’ve some definite issues with looking at the purpose of schools as workforce development centers, I do understand the need to speak the language of my audience.

If I’m not having to define each term as it leaves my mouth, I save time and manage a clear, cogent line of argument.

Adjusting for the 30 years since it was written, The Quality School, offers language of explaining an ethic of care to those speaking for a more managerial or business ecosystem. In that way, I’m finding it quite helpful.