The Origins of Dysfunctional Education Systems
A talk given to 'Philosophy and Education Renewal' in London
on 14th June 1997
Introduction
Since moving into teaching 6 years ago I have been very impressed
with the quality of some of the teaching I've observed. My own
teaching was continually falling short of the best that I saw.
I wanted to be like them. I asked them how they did it. They
couldn't tell me. I tried to copy people but the results were
not satisfactory.
I would like to say at the outset that I am not blaming teachers
for the serious faults that are found within the education service.
They did not create the system. I say this because many intelligent
people seem to think that they did, most are just trying to do
their best with what they have been taught. It is like a minefield
for anyone not appearing to totally conform. All we can ask is
that they work on the system in order to improve it, and not punish
them if they are just trying to hang on to their jobs. There
are some brilliant teachers around and I feel that it is the management,
from the government down, who are the main problem. Witness the
recent naming of so-called 'failing' schools; i.e. those that
came at the bottom of the competitive distribution. It seems
as if our new government have quickly changed tack with a new
'naming and acclaiming' slogan when the literacy summer school
scheme was announced.
A career change from engineering was prompted by reading Glasser's
'Schools Without Failure'. It had a positive effect on me and
convinced me that schools might be improved after all. In any
case I began to see them as the most important institutions in
modern society carrying enormous responsibility for the future.
But, once teaching, I constantly strayed off course, though I
tried to remain loyal to the ideas, believing them to be right.
The breakthrough for me was beginning a training course at the
Glasser Institute in Leighton Buzzard. On the first day of training
I went home and applied the ideas to my relationship with my son,
which began to transform immediately, and has continued to improve.
I knew that I was on to something significant very early on.
I have tried to study and apply consistently the ideas of Deming,
Glasser and Kohn to my teaching and work as a tutor for the last
two years. We are replacing the need for coercion, based on a
punishment and reward method of external control, with the idea
of internal control through the freedom to choose and face the
consequences of those choices. We are replacing competition with
one another with co-operation. In doing this we help students
to face reality and consider their future plans. We try to eliminate
denial and self-deceit by accepting personal responsibility for
our choices and actions. We help students to consider new ways
to behave and evaluate their effectiveness in satisfying their
needs. We aim to promote better self-esteem because it is a guide
that what we are doing is helping people to satisfy these needs.
It is a by-product of the management system. We are now certain
this is the path to better quality work, and hence higher standards.
In fact we think that this is the best way to raise standards.
I continue to keep a record of the developments in the form of
a diary.
The effect has been a personal metanoia and a slow transformation
towards what seems to be a whole new way of being. I have seen
that the theories can be made to work, and I must add that my
school have been very supportive in letting me deviate from its
policy continually. Teachers are now beginning to see the ideas
actually improving things and some are experiencing the first
pulls of a new way of thinking. I am open with parents about
what we do and the enthusiasm of their support for this approach
has been occasionally quite moving.
I have witnessed the behaviour of many children alter remarkably
in this period, they are dying for us to help them. I would like
to give just one example from last October. I found two boys
from year 7 fighting at the centre of a screaming crowd. Both
agreed to come into the circle of our form when I told them they
had nothing to fear, that I did not believe in punishment. We
talked about the history of this problem. It involved families,
gangs fighting and intimidation and misery going back for several
years in primary school. As so often happens they openly described
feelings of very low self-worth, even in front of a class of peers.
Fortunately they both wanted all this to stop but hadn't been
able to find a way to do it, and they agreed it was not helping
their lives. We applied Glasser's counselling technique which
resulted in the plan that they would cease the verbal insults
from that day. If there were any further problems then either
would see me immediately. These were their choices elicited upon
non-judgemental questioning. We agreed to meet in a circle again
if necessary to help solve this problem. The fighting has not
occurred since that day, both for the boys and the people involved
with them. A sort of friendship has struck up between them.
My form began to be convinced that there was another way to do
things beyond reward and punishment.
I would like to set the scene for what follows with a quote from
the work of an eccentric genius who for me is the Wegener of philosophy.
(Wegener (1915), you may remember, proposed what we now term
'plate tectonics' when the notion that something as big as an
entire continent could move was considered absurd by geologists.
It was only in the '60's that the overwhelming evidence persuaded
people that this breathtaking idea was an appropriate model for
the earth and its geological processes.)
" generally, we do not use our nervous systems properly,
and we have not, as yet, entirely emerged from a very primitive
semantic stage of development, in spite of our technical achievements.
The structure which a language exhibits, and impresses upon us
unconsciously, is automatically projected upon the world
around us". Korzybski, (1933) p.90
There are problems of detail in this but in essence it makes sense
to me and it is something that I try to hold on to at all times.
I find it useful now because I want to question a way of thinking
that has become so natural that it is congruent with thought itself.
I will refer to this as a paradigm with the generic name 'behaviourism'.
I will argue that it is an inappropriate and harmful model of
behaviour, and that it has distorted our view of the process of
education. For our present purposes I will highlight its role
in our confusions about what self-esteem is and suggest that even
when we have cleared them away, we fail to promote it due to our
creation of systems based on this model.
It seems so obvious to me that we should promote self-esteem that I assume:
a) people mean different things by it or
b) we mean the same thing by it but disagree about what promotes
it.
In fact the issues tend to be far from straightforward. It turns out to be:
a) difficult to recognise it in others and
b) hard to promote in an atmosphere completely soaked in reward
and punishment methods of control. For example it is difficult
to accept that rewarding people and punishing them are so closely
related that both serve to lower self-esteem in many cases. Perhaps
because they are seen as controlling: "All rewards are not
attempts to influence or persuade or solve problems together,
but simply to control"; Kohn (1993) p.27.
I believe we are projecting the linguistic structures implied
by the behaviourist frame of reference upon our ourselves, our
friends and partners and our children. So before coming to self-esteem
I want to first examine the nature and origins of this pernicious
dogma.
How did something so dysfunctional arise in the first place and
what exactly is it? Glasser has called it stimulus-response psychology,
(1992) p.39, and latterly external control psychology. In a single
sentence it could be the assumption that we are controlled by
forces external to us. We would have to say a lot more about
what is meant by 'external' here. Objects that are presumed to
be outside us are in fact products of our nervous systems. Nietzsche,
(1968), encapsulated the structural problem succinctly:
"...we are always unconscious of the real activity of the
outer world. The fragment of outer world of which we are conscious
is born after an effect from outside has impressed itself upon
us, and is subsequently projected as its cause.....In the phenomenalism
of the 'inner world' we invert the chronological order of cause
and effect. The fundamental fact of 'inner experience' is that
the cause is imagined after the effect has taken place."
(p.265; 'The Epistemological Starting Point').
Each person is the creator of their individual unique universe
inside their skins. Since created by us our model of the 'out
there' is determined by the usually silent assumptions we make,
or have been conditioned to make, about the nature of this reality
around us. Hence we deal often in issues of circularity and self-fulfilling
prophecies. My view is that shared by Lewontin (1993):
"The first rule of the real relation between organism and
environment is that environments do not exist in the absence of
organisms but are constructed by them out of bits and pieces of
the external world.", (p.113).
I believe that behaviourism is a deeply ingrained theory of knowledge
that we can see reflected in a mechanistic view of the universe
and a mode of thought which is analytical. This choice was made
for our culture by people who generated the language out of their
experiences, their needs, history, etc. Philosophers from the
past such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle personify, and helped
to perpetuate, a view of reality which denies the involvement
of our nervous systems. This oversight has persisted to the present
day amongst thinkers and the general population alike. The result
is an absolutistic and largely two-valued, either/or view of reality
in which we are not encouraged to question the verbal partitioning
of reality. The identification, or confusion, of words with the
objects they represent is a constant feature of this type of verbal
thinking.
Objectification vs. Correspondence
Behaviourism itself may rest on a basic assumption that I have
called 'objectification'. We are seen as spectators observing
the world as it really is with the senses as mere channels through
which some 'inner being' gains knowledge. In the case of vision,
for example, this is the belief that we 'see' what exactly 'is'
there, as if our eyes were supposed to be windows in the front
of our heads. It is challenged by demonstrating the role of our
nervous system in the phenomenon of vision. However it seems
to be difficult for some to accept the implications of the fact
that the eyes are outgrowths of the brain and that signals along
the optic nerve are essentially digitised. The fundamental insight
is prevented by their language structure itself.
The alternative assumption could have the name 'correspondence'.
This supposes that we each do not create our private universes
out of nothing. That in many ways our perceptions mirror the
organisation of the universe in which we live, at different levels
of order. After perceptions and thoughts our languages then aim
to mirror that structure rather as a map should show the same
relationships that exist on the terrain. Russell (1946) expressed
it like this:
"Thus we may assume that there is a physical space in which
physical objects have spatial relations corresponding to those
which the corresponding sense-data have in our private spaces.....Assuming
that there is physical space...we know only what is required
in order to secure to correspondence. That is to say, we can
no nothing of what it is like in itself, but we can know the sort
of arrangement of physical objects which results from their spatial
relations." (p.31).
Armed with the insight we may see that our knowledge can have
no content. It is relationships, and the implied structure, that
matter. All the knowledge that we have is that of structure alone.
This is revealed in the search for the nature of matter by smashing
apart the atoms that were once supposed to be the smallest indivisible
part of the substance of the universe. Content diminishes leaving
us with arrangements of particles; our feeble attempts to hold
on to the materialism of matter.
"The relativity theory of physics reduces everything to relations;
that is to say, it is structure, not material, which counts.
The structure cannot be built up without material; but the nature
of the material is of no importance." Eddington (1924).
There appears to be no reconciliation of these two distinct views.
Gardner, (1996), clearly stated the dichotomy:
"According to a naive, 'realistic' view, we see the world
just as it is: it has an objective appearance and we are so designed
as creatures that we can automatically 'read' this world correctly.
The contrasting 'constructivist' view, which has gained adherents
over the past century, refuses to recognise an objective world
apart from our own construal or interpretation. In this view
the individual, over time, constructs successive versions of the
world - mental representations that are more like models or blueprints
than like exact copies. In short the naive realist believes that
we know what we see; the constructivist believes that we see
what we know." (p.180).
It seems as if a theory of correspondence is consistent with our
scientific model (1997). But the implication is that a structural
revision of language is required. In particular the role of the
verb 'to be' is observed to lead to false structure. We realise
that we cannot get in touch directly with the universe 'out there';
we have evolved simply to compare the creations inside ourselves,
rather as computers do. We cannot know the absolute nature of
things; this comparing function makes our knowledge, and our entire
existence, a relativistic experience.
My students learn mathematics as a language based on the most
accurate comparisons we can make - those of ratio. This, I believe,
is the unprovable and inexplicable idea on which all of mathematics
sits. (Feynmann). Hence, for us, mathematics starts with philosophical
considerations of epistemology. I cannot see that any other way
truly conveys knowledge. When it is not taught like this then
its essential nature is missed and only confusion results. Mathematics
can be described as a language whose structure can be made closer
to that found inside ourselves, and we hope mirroring that of
this ultimately unknowable reality that we find ourselves inhabiting.
We have been prevented from knowing these crucial facts clearly
by our natural languages which seem to have usually evolved a
structure which is false to the facts as we understand them today.
There are no colours 'out there' and yet we continue to ask questions
such as 'What are the colours of the rainbow, or of flowers'.
We now have to come to terms with a relativistic model as revealed
by 20th. century science. At last we cannot ignore that our knowledge
is created inside ourselves by our interactions with what we have
labelled forms of 'energy' around us. Our technical knowledge
can help us to gain control over the patterns we find without
and within us but it cannot teach us how to live. Science has
been successful but it still deals only with simple structures.
The challenge for us now is to find way to understand more complex
systems such as ourselves and our behaviour. This is why, I believe,
we now need new theories, or models, such as those of Deming and
Glasser.
Glasser (1997) has proposed an alternative to the behaviourist
paradigm and has labelled it 'choice theory'. This is a model
of a pattern of inner needs which drive human behaviour. It is
a feedback control loop description of how we are genetically
programmed to act in such a way that the needs are being met within
the confines of the unique world in which each individual finds
themselves. The contrast with stimulus-response position is that
the environment is seen as providing information upon which a
person can choose to act in order to satisfy their needs. The
individual is seen as responsible for their own behaviour. There
are no excuses accepted for the choices made, and no arbitrary
punishments or consequences imposed for failure to carry through
any plans. Help is, of course, always available if, through upbringing,
the number of perceived choices has been limited. It is this
approach that I have been successfully bringing to all my teaching
groups during the past year.
We want to belong, to feel accepted by others. It is vital that
we know there is at least one person around who cares whether
we live or die. We want to feel a sense of our own significance,
that we have something worth saying. People show a desire for
liberty, freedom to choose for themselves what they believe.
Finally we exhibit behaviour which seems to derive from a need
to simply enjoy things for their own sake.
When none of these needs can be filled there is a tendency to
choose to depress, a loss of vitality or the desire to be alive.
In time the suffering from lack of need satisfaction may lead
to suicide. It is very common for teachers to witness distressing
behaviours in students, but they may be misinterpreted as wilful
moves to undermine the teacher, and consequently punished
To facilitate a counsellor or teacher helping another person to
fulfil their needs he gave them the simple names of : 'love',
'power', 'freedom' and 'fun'. We all need to be helped to 'face
reality' and overcome a state of self-deception or 'denial' that
results from an inability to obtain need satisfaction in a reliable
and efficient way. Often the problems can be traced to the destructive
effects of punishments rewards and competition, or faulty conditioning
in general.
Now we are in a position to examine the role of self-esteem in
school life. But first we must agree upon a definition. Oscar
Wilde at 23 in a questionnaire, which is to be auctioned this
month, described self-esteem as conceit and vanity and the most
detestable trait in others. My thesaurus has it nestled between
self-conceit and narcissism. Chambers and the Shorter Oxford Dictionary
agree that self-esteem is about self-respect, and therefore a
good thing. However the compilers of the Oxford are ambivalent
about self-respect and self-regard giving the choice of selfishness,
conceit or alternatively proper concern for oneself as distinct
alternatives.
What I mean by self-esteem is referred to by Glasser (1969) as
'self-worth': In Schools Without Failure he argued that schools
must change and begin to address the needs of children before
they can raise academic standards:
"People able to develop a successful identity are those who
have learned to find their way through the two pathways of love
and self-worth, the latter dependent upon knowledge and the ability
to solve the problems of life successfully." (p.14).
In this early work he suggested that schools are set up to produce
large numbers of individuals with a 'failure identity'; a deep
down conviction based on assumptions that lie largely unquestioned
that they are bound not to succeed at whatever they try. For
many it results in an existential state of being without hope,
a sense of utter worthlessness or feeling of being a fraud, a
charlatan and it being only a matter of time before they are found
out. We see symptoms of depression, lack of vitality and affirmation
of life. The subsequent institutions of society are geared to
dealing with the products of these schools of failure as people
rationalise failure in the forms of drug taking, illness, crime,
etc.
From my experience his description is still appropriate. Thompson
(1993) published an analysis of 30 years of research into childhood
mental illness. The report concluded that three million of our
children, nearly one child in four, suffers from symptoms such
as sleeplessness, anorexia, school phobia, lack of concentration,
low self-esteem, etc. 250,000 children suffer severe illness
with 10,000 of those becoming psychotic. This ratio corresponds
to the proportion of 'difficult' children that my colleagues and
I have found in our classes. In my experience very little attempt
is made to face this situation in schools, and as the report suggested
the problem has a low rate of recognition by GPs.
A similar picture of low self-esteem has been found across the
spectrum of academic achievement. Rogers (1989) speaking about
the lack motivation amongst high achievers in the US remarked:
"It is no wonder that the underachieving gifted child is
a problem of great concern - we are helping to produce them."
Schools have recently become very interested in under achievement
with special reference to the school's position in the league
tables. I recently wrote to our own management team in these
terms: "Christopher Winch of Nene College Northampton argued
in 1996 that the confidence intervals in measures of pupil performance
are wide and introduce error factors rendering prediction an inexact
science. His paper makes interesting reading in this and a number
of related areas. A local example: we have a pupil in a bottom
maths set in year 10 with a reading score of 130. As a mathematician
I'm suspicious of the equations obtained from widely dispersed
scatter graphs which are then used for predicted grades. I think
we are in the area of alchemy here!" In my experience the
extra pressure that highlighted 'under achievers' have been put
under has been wholly counter-productive. Indeed it has been
observed to lower self-esteem in year 10 and 11 on the run-up
to GCSEs.
One US study found a negative correlation between the grades obtained
in secondary school and how positive students felt about themselves
and the world a few years later; Wolfe (1991). This latter finding
is confirmed time and again in my own discussions with students
and colleagues.
How can we explain the treatment of children in schools? Up to
age16 they are virtually slaves, and many feel imprisoned and
forced to perform meaningless tasks. They are treated in a way
that would be unacceptable for adults in a civilised society.
If Mause (1974) is right then we have inherited a long history
of child abuse which may go some way to explaining the bizarre
treatment of our precious offspring.
But what exactly is going on here? I agree with Glasser that
schools are at present a part of the problem. With a shift in
paradigm in the way they are managed they could become part of
the solution. Kohn (1992) and (1993) has demonstrated convincingly
that the hold that Competition and Behaviourism have on our thinking
is the root cause of the crisis in education. The way to raise
standards, he argues, is to recover the essential conditions necessary
for people to quality work, this is work that satisfies them and
their inner needs. Though easy to state, the route out of our
present difficulties is bound to be hard to take because it calls
into question the very values upon which our society is based.
The person with a success identity has a belief that life is worth
living, that they amount to something, that things are worth doing
because they have a reasonable chance of succeeding. They are
autonomous learners. They generally possess high self-esteem.
The problem for us who manage the business of education in schools
is that coercion, punishment, threat, praise, rewards, competing
are all very good at lowering self-esteem and interfering with
the intrinsic reward that comes from trying to do work of quality.
Once we get rid of behaviourism we have only just started to
tackle the real problem. Given the fleeting, dynamic nature of
self-esteem and the difficulty of recognising it in a single other
let alone a class of 30+ what are we to do? The solution lies
with understanding the nature of management itself. We must base
our management techniques on the best evidence we can find concerning
the factors undermining motivation. We must create systems that
are ultimately geared to the production of quality work, and not
to the production of statistics based on tests and examinations,
which are an abomination. We should begin to move along the continuum
of quality.
The evidence that Kohn amasses is powerfully convincing of the
depth of our problem here. We are in the thrall of a religion.
Before I summarise his contribution it might be informative to
consider the following. Some educational critics tell us that
children are failing to learn because we don't let them know when
they get something wrong for fear of injuring their self-esteem.
But children are constantly fearful of getting things wrong,
which is why they may do as little as they can get away with.
Others say that we need fewer punishments and more rewards, that
children should start aiming for the higher grades and not fear
getting the lower ones. But the problem is not just punishments,
it is also rewards; not bad grades but the emphasis on grading
per se. Anything that gets children to think primarily about
their performance will undermine their interest in learning, their
desire to be challenged and ultimately the extent of their achievement.
From my own efforts to remove external control psychology I have
found that students don't suddenly cry "now we can be intrinsically
motivated". Firstly I usually failed to consult them about
the changes, they should have been brought in on the process at
an early stage. I would want to discuss in future why people
learn and what impact rewards really have. I was saying that
the classroom mattered only to me and not to them. Second, abandoning
behaviourist tactics, though they thwart motivation, does not
guarantee that real learning will take place. It is also necessary
to establish the conditions that facilitate motivation, to create
the right curriculum and the right school climate. Finally some
students resisted the sudden withdrawal of rewards like grades.
They seemed unwilling to complete assignments without them as
though the purpose of being in school had suddenly vanished.
Rewards:
From the early 70's onwards studies have been showing that if
you offer a group of people a reward to do a task then they do
it less well than a control group offered no reward. This has
been found with all sorts of subject populations and many different
rewards and tasks. For example children trying a yoghurt drink:
the rewarded ones ceased drinking it in the long term. Children
doing maths homework: the rewarded ones enjoyed it less and did
less well.
Notice these results cannot be explained using any behaviourist
theory where the opposite result would be predicted. More than
20 studies have shown that offering people a reward reduces the
quality of their performance. Long-term studies of people stopping
smoking, losing weight, etc. show that programmes tend to be less
effective when rewards are offered for compliance. Children who
were rewarded by their parents for being helpful were less generous
than their peers who were not rewarded. It was concluded that
the children had learned that the only reason to be kind is that
you're going to get something for it. (Like the children who
refuse to pick up litter simply because they did not drop it.
They seem to have lost sight of the essentially co-operative
nature of the request).
No study has EVER found, in Kohn's view, a long term enhancement
of the quality of performance as a result of any kind of
incentive plan. See 'Punished by Rewards' for nearly 400 pages
of overwhelming evidence against what we all commonly seem to
do in schools.
Competition:
When people are compared on how they perform on a wide variety
of tasks those who are told they are competing always produce
poorer quality work than if no mention of competition is made.
This was found in work ranging from academics doing maths problems
to little girls at a birthday party painting pictures which were
then judged by artists!
Scientists were rated as to their competitiveness and also the
success they enjoyed in their field of specialisation. The most
successful people turned out to be the least competitive. This
finding was so surprising that the research was tried again with
psychologists, business people, university students, airline pilots
and sixth formers. The results were the same, the inverse relationship
was found!
It is sometimes said that we are naturally competitive, 'like
all living things'. But we may have been seduced by a simplistic
view of evolutionary biology. It was Herbert Spencer, not Darwin,
who coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. Wynne-Edwards,
(1962), proposed that animal populations which showed self-restraint
in reproduction and exploitation of natural resources survived
longer than more profligate groups, so that self-regulation of
population size developed during the course of evolution.
If it were human nature to compete then more 'technologically
primitive' cultures - being closer to nature - should be more
competitive. The reverse is often seen to be the case with so-called
'civilisations' who set up institutions (like schools) where one
can succeed only if others fail.
Among other ideas Kohn proposed:
Mutual aid is most productive for most species.
Competition comes from a deep sense of failure.
We compete because we are raised that way, not because we are born that way.
Competition increases anxiety.
It disguises the causal chain, leading to spurious explanations - 'beyond our control'.
It suppresses continuous improvement.
It lowers self-esteem.
It interferes with normal relationships to see others as potential rivals.
It is an extrinsic motivator and reduces 'joy in work'.
It prevents collaboration.
Musical chairs creates a room full of losers.
ETC.
'Quality' is a key concept for our present purposes. It must
be stated that this notion of quality is impossible to define
in the abstract. We all pursue it relentlessly in our lives as
we search out things and experiences of value which make our lives
rewarding and worth living. Quality can only be understood in
relation to other things. Ask children what is a quality fast
food restaurant and they will not hesitate to tell you. It cannot
be defined in itself. Now this does not in itself present me
with great difficulties for as Korzybski emphasised our knowledge
rests on undefined terms; (1933) p.152. This was found to be
the case with mathematics. Even within that language there is
found calculus; a most useful tool for science that rests on the
shakiest of ground. Therefore we cannot say that something, is
quality or contains quality. We have to be wary of saying 'this
is a quality drawing'. Show the drawings produced by Alice
and Sapphire. They are the products of a teaching process
that uses no competition between children, no punishments or artificial
rewards.
I have problems with the terminology of 'quality' on a number
of counts: The attempt to turn an abstract notion into something
concrete is very unsettling. "I hope you're teaching quality
today" rapidly becomes a redundant expression. It is small
wonder that colleagues are unhappy with ideas like 'a quality
teacher in a non-quality school', and do not find the word fits
well within our schools at present. It is more applicable to
manufacturing industry. Presumably quality is something that
ultimately unites everyone, pupils, parents, philosophers. We
all want it, and recognise it when we see it.
There does seem to be something useful in Deming's idea of 'managing
for quality'. He urged that we use 'operational definitions'
of concepts such as 'quality' so that we remove the vagueness
when we build systems to produce it. Over the past year this
has provided me with a way out of the difficulties posed by the
complexity of the issues raised. Like the behaviourists I have
tried to be consistent and base my behaviour on principles consistent
with the results of experience and experiment. Unlike the behaviourist
majority I have tried to remain open to questioning the principles
upon which I act.
The systemic change that is ultimately needed was the subject
of the life's work of W. Edwards Deming. After World War II He
went to Japan to help them build up their shattered economy.
There he taught the leaders of industry his theories of management
and they listened and applied them. In the 1970s when business
in the U.S. began to suffer under the onslaught of reliable Japanese
goods Deming came out of retirement to teach American executives,
who would now at last listen, how to work together to produce
quality products and services. He shifted the focus away from
individuals towards the systems in which they live and work.
Whether we are talking about a family, a classroom, a school,
a company or an entire country, we face similar problems of management.
We may not be very good at it, but we can learn to do better.
The idea of everybody winning is central to Deming's thinking.
He saw competition as a virus which destroys systems. The total
behaviour of a system must be considered. It cannot be understood
by the method of analysis, the dissecting process which has come
to dominate our thinking. We have to develop new ways of understanding,
a new epistemology.
There were four main areas to his thinking:
1. Appreciation for a system: an understanding of the whole cannot be gained from analysis of the parts.
2. Knowledge about variation: he was a mathematician who believed we did not make sufficient use of data through poor education in statistics. With use of control charts it is possible to 'listen to the voice of the process'. Management is prediction.
3. Theory of knowledge: There are no facts without theory and theory must be kept alive via constant renewal through research.
4. Psychology: Understanding human needs and motivation. This
is the area to which Glasser has made such a significant contribution.
These four areas he called a 'system of profound knowledge'.
All these were necessary to advance our knowledge in order to
solve the large scale problems that were producing chaos in human
affairs. He believed that it is possible to design large scale
systems that satisfy human needs. He saw the ultimate system
as a world in which there did not have to be winners and losers.
Even if he were wrong in that belief the goal would be worth
pursuing. I believe he was correct and that until we have transformed
our thinking it is not possible to evaluate the possibility.
As Deming said : "The significant problems we face today
cannot be solved with the present level of thinking".
The principles for change can to be summarised under '14 points'.
The 'fourteen points' adapted from 'Out of the Crisis' (1982)
chapter 2; 'Principles for Transformation'.
1. Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.
2. Adopt the new philosophy.
3. Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
4 Minimise total cost by reducing the number of suppliers. Cease awarding business on the basis of price tag alone.
5. Improve constantly and forever every process for planning, production and service.
6. Institute training on the job.
7. Adopt and institute leadership.
8. Drive out fear.
9. Break down barriers between staff areas.
10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.
11. Eliminate numerical quotas for the workforce and numerical goals for management.
12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship. Eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
13. Institute a vigorous program of education and self improvement for everyone.
14. Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the
transformation.
Amongst his writings we find the following examples:
"Systems have to be managed, left to themselves the components become selfish and competitive".
"The most important figures are unknown and unknowable". This is an early appreciation of the inherent unpredictability of chaotic systems.
"The workers are handicapped by the system, and the system belongs to management".
"One requirement for innovation is faith that there will be a future".
etc.
After Deming I would like to list certain signals of organisation
entropy (which is to say a measure of the disorder of a system)
and ask you to consider if teachers would recognise any of these
at the present time:
Glasser stated that the ideas of Deming should be brought into
education. On page three of 'The Quality School' Glasser states:
"This book will explain how Dr. Deming's ideas can be brought
undistorted into our schools so that the present elitist system,
in which just a few students are involved in high quality work,
will be replaced by a system in which almost all students have
this experience".
Essentially, punishment, reward and competition is replaced by
the WDEP method. What do you want? What are you doing? Evaluation
- is it working? What is your plan? I had not realised the power
of this technique until I saw the video 'Managing the Disruptive
Classroom' earlier this year. I now use it literally constantly
with useful results. It has been interesting to see how the method
developed in a counselling exchange can be adapted in so many
ways to the cut and thrust of the day to day teaching load.
It is very fast and very effective. Reality Therapy changes the
teacher from an external manipulator who is in the way of the
child's getting instant gratification, to a person, important
to the child, who does not judge and can help the child to satisfy
their inner needs.
I believe we do project ourselves into what we see because we
each create a version of the universe inside our nervous systems.
It is this unique model, individually created, which we each
project back out there and give the casual name 'reality'. Until
we examine ourselves we assume that we all see the same
thing. Perceptions are remarkably consistent and due to
the structures and traps of our language we are lulled into this
delusion that we each look through our spy holes and peer at the
same screen for example. I believe this was a major contribution
of Alfred Korzybski and his 'Theory of General Semantics'; see
his Science and Sanity (1933).
I still find it difficult to distinguish between competition which
is within me from competition which is out there in
the system. Although I have a suspicion that the managers are
themselves highly competitive and set up systems which have this
characteristic.
For example I have discovered that many colleagues share my own
approaches. But they do this secretly and so I would have never
known unless I started to ask appropriate questions.
Summary: I appeal to all those interested in Systemic
change to start with schools. If we go back to 'Schools Without
Failure' I believe Glasser was right to state the crucial importance
of schools, and to blame them for many of the problems of failure
that we face. We have an anti-education system. Examinations
are an abomination, totally uncreative. We have substituted teaching
for learning; the curriculum for knowledge. Liedloff (1986) spoke
of the day a child started school as the day it stopped learning,
when compared to the continuum cultures that she observed. We
may have to wait a long time before we are confident enough to
finally abandon embrace real systemic transformation. In the
meantime individuals can constantly improve with the help of such
positive methods as those of Glasser, and make the best use of
the hand that they have been dealt. There are large pressures
to conform to the bureaucracy of the system. It is difficult
to go against the policy whilst at the same time advocating co-operation.
Recent trends in the service have moved in the opposite direction
to Lead Management. League tables; simply ranking will produce
a distribution symmetrical about the mean. We then end up with
humiliating those 'below average'. The National Curriculum was
an example of people resenting not so much change as being changed.
You can't force even good ideas on people. The exposure of 'failing'
schools or teachers at Ofsted inspections is only an extension
of what we do to children.
References:
Deming, W. Edwards. (1982) 'Out of the Crisis', Cambridge U.P.
Deming, W. Edwards. (1994) 'The New Economics', MIT
Eddington, A. S. (1924) 'Space Time and Gravitation' Cambridge.
Gardner, H. (1996). "Gifted Worldmakers" in "The Fontana Post-modernism Reader", Walter T. Anderson, (ed.). Fontana Press.
Glasser, W. (1969) 'Schools Without Failure', Harper and Row.
Glasser, W. (1992) 'The Quality School', Harper Perennial.
Glasser, W. (1994) 'The Control Theory Manager', Harper Business.
Glasser, W. (1997) 'A New Look at School Failure and School Success', Phi Delta Kappan.
Kohn, A. (1992) 'No Contest : The Case Against Competition, Houghton Mifflin.
Kohn, A. (1993) 'Punished by Rewards', Houghton Mifflin.
Korzybski, A. (1933) 'Science and Sanity', 4th.edition 1973, Non-Aristotelian Library.
Lewontin,R.C. (1993) 'The Doctrine of DNA', Penguin Books.
Liedloff, J. (1986) 'The Continuum Concept', Penguin Books.
Mause, Lloyd de. (1974) Editor - 'The History of Childhood', The Psychohistory Press.
Nietzsche, F. (1968) 'The Will to Power', Vintage Books.
Rogers, Brenda T. (1985) 'Cognitive Evaluation Theory: The Effects of External Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation of Gifted Students'. Roeper Review 7
Russell, B. (1946) 'The Problems of Philosophy', OUP.
Thompson, R. (1993) 'Mental Illness, The Fundamental Facts', The Mental Health Foundation.
Wegener, A (1915) 'The Origin of the Continents and Oceans'.
Winch, C. (1996) 'Accountability, Controversy and School Effectiveness', Journal of the Philosophy of Education.
Wolfe, R. (1991) 'The Relation Between Grades and Self-Esteem', State University of New York.
Wynne-Edwards, V. (1962) 'Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour'. Oliver and Boyd.