A school is an economic entity whose operations must be prudent and ethical.
Okay, this should be short and sweet. It’s about governance and money.
Historically governing bodies have a simple role—to determine the course the school is to take (i.e., “set the mission”) and then make sure the school has the resources (material and human) to keep moving forward on that course.
As anyone who has ever sat on an independent school board could tell you, it’s seldom so easy. An independent school is a human organization with not only a mission but, if you will, a conscience. In many schools the conscience is on display most visibly in the annual ritual of setting tuition—the main resource-gathering exercise in which schools regularly participate.
The challenge in setting tuition is always to balance the resource needs of the organization—the funding of salaries, instructional programs, campus facilities maintenance, and future needs—against the dictates not just of the marketplace but of the school’s conscience: the desire for affordability against the desire to pay salaries at a decent level, the mandate for socioeconomic inclusivity against the need to keep expenses “close to the bone,” especially in uncertain economic times. Ramp up tuition to do some new things and build a cushion against the vagaries of the economy, or minimize increases so as not to discourage or drive away current or potential families? The first strengthens the school for the long run, supporters might say, while the second, to its partisans, sends a message of “we understand and we care,” underscoring the most humane aspects of the school’s mission and values.
At its heart, part of this conundrum involves a fundamental question that creates a certain amount of discomfort: Should an independent school be a vehicle for the redistribution of wealth? In a sense, most schools already are, insofar as the gifts and tuition payments of the more-or-less affluent directly or indirectly fund financial aid as well as general program expenses—either through a direct transfer of tuition dollars or more commonly by the processing of gift dollars into endowment income. The extent to which this happens at a particular school is dictated by the operational realities of the school’s financial situation and the willingness of its governors to participate in such an exercise.
I wrote in Verse 8 here that the product of an independent school is personal experience and growth, but I missed something critical. (This is why I am doing this: to gather and clarify my own thoughts.) What I missed is perhaps any school’s most important “product,” although I suppose it could be regarded as a byproduct: opportunity.
Perhaps it is the opportunity that an education affords a student that is really at the heart of our work. Perhaps opportunity is even the perceived extra value of an independent school education that underlies the privileged status of independent schools with regard to regulation and taxation. (A bit of a digression, if you will excuse me: Historically, the founding impulses of even what we now might consider the most elite and elitist of independent schools were not just about maintaining status—although that was probably understood in many cases—but also about the idea of turning the children of elites into citizens who would exist not as pampered parasites but who would live lives of “usefulness and purpose.” Here indeed was opportunity, not just for the individual but also for the society that would presumably benefit from the lives of these educated and presumably productive individuals.)
“Prudent and ethical” ought to go without saying, but the deeper challenge for the school as an economic entity is the balance between the accumulation of resources to enact vision and enable growth, on the one hand, and the school’s more generous ethos as expressed in its mission and values. And all of this is in a righteous cause: not just experience and personal growth but opportunity, for individuals and for society at large.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
A school is… (Verse 9)
A school is a community resource to the extent that it is willing to share.
There’s a good deal of buzz these days (even here) about payments and services in lieu of taxes (the infamous PILOTs and SILOTs), charges and demands for services that communities are attempting to levy on independent schools and other nonprofits to meet growing budget gaps. We have to ask ourselves who can blame these communities, on one level, while on another it looks a bit like extortion, a kind of extralegal quid pro quo in which the school is just a convenient target of opportunity. Schools are advised to pre-empt such demands by issuing “community impact statements,” meticulous and carefully calculated enumerations of the ways in which the school contributes financial value and social capital—as an employer, as a destination, as a consuming entity, and as a physical resource.
The community impact statement is a good idea, and just the other day we were reminded of the astonishing regional value of a large, thriving institution by a study featuring a Canadian school—all the better since the study had been conducted by a university business school. The study neatly indentifies specific benefits provided by the school and makes appropriate use of the multiplier effect to arrive at a hefty dollar amount—perhaps hefty enough in a case like this to lower the volume of chatter about PILOTs. The study, well promoted by press release, offers a solid assurance of the school's value as a resource.
But the school that really wants to make its mark as a resource had better back up such statements with accomplishments that give evidence of real impact. I do not doubt for a second the estimates in responsibly made studies, but there is a qualitative distinction between a number and a palpable sense of benefit. I admit that I am challenged to define that distinction well or even suggest ways to discern it, but here’s a go at the problem:
A school’s interactions with its external community can be measured not simply by employment numbers, the amount the schools spends on goods and services, or the number of students from the local community who attend. These are important figures, of course, but equally important are the ways in which the school makes known its intent and its interests with regard to the community. Do school governors and administrators participate in local affairs? Does the school make an effort to work with local vendors and support local businesses? Do students, families, and faculty participate in the cultural life of the community as real partners rather than only in ways that showcase the school and its successes? Do the school’s graduates play an active role in the community at large? Is the school proactively responsible in its environmentaI and even aesthetic citizenship? Is there a sense of mutual pride and affection between the school to its external community?
Most schools have found some ways to open their doors and campuses to their local communities—Little League on the practice fields, community theater in the auditorium, Saturday morning children’s art classes in the studio. Most have also found ways for students to provide service in the community, and the best of such programs have situated themselves in a deep understanding of "place" in the shared context the community and the school’s mission rather in notions of “community service hours.” Some schools have targeted at least some of their financial aid budgets for promising local students, and in a few places (see this National Association of Independent Schools advisory--you'll need to log in, I fear--for some examples) independent schools are taking first steps toward professional partnerships with public school systems and public school teachers and even involving themselves in charter school development. These are all good things, but they become excellent things when schools engage in them not simply to do what is necessary to appease the community or show off their own glories. What is required is honest and thoughtful good will and a full and generous understanding of both the community's and the school's needs and resources; this is the nature of partnerships with real impact. A school that can create such partnerships will seldom feel threatened by community economic or political pressures.
This is the year for “advancing our public purpose” in independent schools. In order to really to do this, schools and school people need to keep working to develop a mindset in which their external community is not simply an accident of founding, an audience, or an adversary to be kept at bay. Our public purpose is not just a nice idea or turn of phrase but an expectation—and we need to remind ourselves that our very existence is based on a social contract, manifest in our special status with regard to taxation and regulation. While as schools we set out to achieve our own missions, we have an implied mission to make our work worthy of that special status by living up to a broader and higher purpose, in our communities as well as on our campuses.
There’s a good deal of buzz these days (even here) about payments and services in lieu of taxes (the infamous PILOTs and SILOTs), charges and demands for services that communities are attempting to levy on independent schools and other nonprofits to meet growing budget gaps. We have to ask ourselves who can blame these communities, on one level, while on another it looks a bit like extortion, a kind of extralegal quid pro quo in which the school is just a convenient target of opportunity. Schools are advised to pre-empt such demands by issuing “community impact statements,” meticulous and carefully calculated enumerations of the ways in which the school contributes financial value and social capital—as an employer, as a destination, as a consuming entity, and as a physical resource.
The community impact statement is a good idea, and just the other day we were reminded of the astonishing regional value of a large, thriving institution by a study featuring a Canadian school—all the better since the study had been conducted by a university business school. The study neatly indentifies specific benefits provided by the school and makes appropriate use of the multiplier effect to arrive at a hefty dollar amount—perhaps hefty enough in a case like this to lower the volume of chatter about PILOTs. The study, well promoted by press release, offers a solid assurance of the school's value as a resource.
But the school that really wants to make its mark as a resource had better back up such statements with accomplishments that give evidence of real impact. I do not doubt for a second the estimates in responsibly made studies, but there is a qualitative distinction between a number and a palpable sense of benefit. I admit that I am challenged to define that distinction well or even suggest ways to discern it, but here’s a go at the problem:
A school’s interactions with its external community can be measured not simply by employment numbers, the amount the schools spends on goods and services, or the number of students from the local community who attend. These are important figures, of course, but equally important are the ways in which the school makes known its intent and its interests with regard to the community. Do school governors and administrators participate in local affairs? Does the school make an effort to work with local vendors and support local businesses? Do students, families, and faculty participate in the cultural life of the community as real partners rather than only in ways that showcase the school and its successes? Do the school’s graduates play an active role in the community at large? Is the school proactively responsible in its environmentaI and even aesthetic citizenship? Is there a sense of mutual pride and affection between the school to its external community?
Most schools have found some ways to open their doors and campuses to their local communities—Little League on the practice fields, community theater in the auditorium, Saturday morning children’s art classes in the studio. Most have also found ways for students to provide service in the community, and the best of such programs have situated themselves in a deep understanding of "place" in the shared context the community and the school’s mission rather in notions of “community service hours.” Some schools have targeted at least some of their financial aid budgets for promising local students, and in a few places (see this National Association of Independent Schools advisory--you'll need to log in, I fear--for some examples) independent schools are taking first steps toward professional partnerships with public school systems and public school teachers and even involving themselves in charter school development. These are all good things, but they become excellent things when schools engage in them not simply to do what is necessary to appease the community or show off their own glories. What is required is honest and thoughtful good will and a full and generous understanding of both the community's and the school's needs and resources; this is the nature of partnerships with real impact. A school that can create such partnerships will seldom feel threatened by community economic or political pressures.
This is the year for “advancing our public purpose” in independent schools. In order to really to do this, schools and school people need to keep working to develop a mindset in which their external community is not simply an accident of founding, an audience, or an adversary to be kept at bay. Our public purpose is not just a nice idea or turn of phrase but an expectation—and we need to remind ourselves that our very existence is based on a social contract, manifest in our special status with regard to taxation and regulation. While as schools we set out to achieve our own missions, we have an implied mission to make our work worthy of that special status by living up to a broader and higher purpose, in our communities as well as on our campuses.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
A school is… (Verse 8)
A school is a workplace whose product is personal experience and growth.
Widget factories make widgets, and insurance companies sell and service policies. While the business wisdom of the moment would focus on the “people” aspect of these enterprises, in point of fact you can hold their products in your hand and see them at work. Schools are different.
To have become a teacher or a coach or any of the people who work in schools and have contact with children as part of their jobs is, at some point, to have been interested in children’s lives and children’s worlds. I will even stipulate for the sake of argument here that school people believe in kids and root for their success, or at least they did at that moment when they decided to stay in the profession.
A school’s product, then, is at its best a wonderful series of “Aha!” moments, smiles, struggles well struggled, changed minds and attitudes, opinions and attitudes confirmed and strengthened by evidence and logic, gradually dawning understandings, new images and ideas created in a score of media, empathy and compassion extended by new points of view, instructive failures and recoveries, moments of chagrin and pride, tragedy and triumph. (That’s a short catalogue, I know.)
In short, adults in schools get to observe, listen, guide, comfort, cajole, instruct, suggest, clarify, correct, confirm, and marvel. We get to watch young people grow into themselves. What a job! What a career! What a life!
I am a firm believer in the idea of the educator as observer, and I do not mean this in a passive sense. The best educators are as attuned to subtleties in student work and student behavior as Sherlock, or better Mycroft, Holmes, and as we advance in our careers we add tools and attitudes and occasionally revelations to the databank on which we draw as we try to figure out the best way to respond to situations that are almost always, in some tiny but crucial way, unlike anything we have encountered before.
All of this, incidentally, places a giant, wonderful burden on schools and their people. We have to supply experiences, challenges, and opportunities that are worthy of the great work that we have been given to do, experiences, challenges, and opportunities that will truly engage and inspire our students. There’s no room for shoddy programs or for low standards when the potential of each student is at stake.
To reiterate a point I have made earlier, the best kinds of schools are those in which students are indeed encouraged to grow into themselves. Almost fifty years ago I attended a school in which there was then (no longer, I am quite sure) a kind of beau ideal of the “--- Man:” athletic, hardworking and book-smart but not intellectual, socially at ease, and modest about his many accomplishments. Other schools have had and promoted, explicitly or implicitly, their own ideas of what children should be, of what boys or girls should be, of the perfect artist or athlete or even intellectual. I like to think that the work independent schools have been doing around diversity has opened many eyes not just about race and ethnicity but also about the essential nature of children, and that idea of helping kids to become “the best version of themselves” (as opposed to beings measured against some school-established standard) has taken hold even among the traditionalists among us.
A few years back, “risk-taking” was a staple of school mission statements, and while the idea behind this was noble and good, we have not done much of a job to really encourage this in our schools, and we need to do better. Learning can be described crudely as a feedback loop, and part of good feedback involves finding out what happens when you try new approaches. Sometimes you fail; sometimes you need two or three tries to get something right. How many of our schools really encourage kids to take risks by allowing them to fail (with the failure as its own penalty) on their way to success?
A quick and slightly disturbing thought: At the moment my main work is as a college counselor, and we joke sometimes about being the “shipping department”—a line that is perhaps too clever by half. Cynically, I worry that there are many people who believe deep down that our schools’ actual products are in fact commodities in list form to be judged and measured by the “quality” (i.e., perceived prestige) of the places they go when they leave us. I reject this, and I hope you do, too.
If we are doing our jobs, we are giving students the time, space, and opportunity to learn and try new ideas, new attitudes, new approaches, new understandings, and above all new ideas of who they are and who they can be. With good and well understood curricula—the intentional, the hidden, and even the null—we produce people of whose accomplishments and growth we may be proud, but mostly importantly people whom we are proud to know.
And what’s really cool: As we work with children, we grow and develop ourselves. As I said, What a job!
And I thought this would be a short post.
Widget factories make widgets, and insurance companies sell and service policies. While the business wisdom of the moment would focus on the “people” aspect of these enterprises, in point of fact you can hold their products in your hand and see them at work. Schools are different.
To have become a teacher or a coach or any of the people who work in schools and have contact with children as part of their jobs is, at some point, to have been interested in children’s lives and children’s worlds. I will even stipulate for the sake of argument here that school people believe in kids and root for their success, or at least they did at that moment when they decided to stay in the profession.
A school’s product, then, is at its best a wonderful series of “Aha!” moments, smiles, struggles well struggled, changed minds and attitudes, opinions and attitudes confirmed and strengthened by evidence and logic, gradually dawning understandings, new images and ideas created in a score of media, empathy and compassion extended by new points of view, instructive failures and recoveries, moments of chagrin and pride, tragedy and triumph. (That’s a short catalogue, I know.)
In short, adults in schools get to observe, listen, guide, comfort, cajole, instruct, suggest, clarify, correct, confirm, and marvel. We get to watch young people grow into themselves. What a job! What a career! What a life!
I am a firm believer in the idea of the educator as observer, and I do not mean this in a passive sense. The best educators are as attuned to subtleties in student work and student behavior as Sherlock, or better Mycroft, Holmes, and as we advance in our careers we add tools and attitudes and occasionally revelations to the databank on which we draw as we try to figure out the best way to respond to situations that are almost always, in some tiny but crucial way, unlike anything we have encountered before.
All of this, incidentally, places a giant, wonderful burden on schools and their people. We have to supply experiences, challenges, and opportunities that are worthy of the great work that we have been given to do, experiences, challenges, and opportunities that will truly engage and inspire our students. There’s no room for shoddy programs or for low standards when the potential of each student is at stake.
To reiterate a point I have made earlier, the best kinds of schools are those in which students are indeed encouraged to grow into themselves. Almost fifty years ago I attended a school in which there was then (no longer, I am quite sure) a kind of beau ideal of the “--- Man:” athletic, hardworking and book-smart but not intellectual, socially at ease, and modest about his many accomplishments. Other schools have had and promoted, explicitly or implicitly, their own ideas of what children should be, of what boys or girls should be, of the perfect artist or athlete or even intellectual. I like to think that the work independent schools have been doing around diversity has opened many eyes not just about race and ethnicity but also about the essential nature of children, and that idea of helping kids to become “the best version of themselves” (as opposed to beings measured against some school-established standard) has taken hold even among the traditionalists among us.
A few years back, “risk-taking” was a staple of school mission statements, and while the idea behind this was noble and good, we have not done much of a job to really encourage this in our schools, and we need to do better. Learning can be described crudely as a feedback loop, and part of good feedback involves finding out what happens when you try new approaches. Sometimes you fail; sometimes you need two or three tries to get something right. How many of our schools really encourage kids to take risks by allowing them to fail (with the failure as its own penalty) on their way to success?
A quick and slightly disturbing thought: At the moment my main work is as a college counselor, and we joke sometimes about being the “shipping department”—a line that is perhaps too clever by half. Cynically, I worry that there are many people who believe deep down that our schools’ actual products are in fact commodities in list form to be judged and measured by the “quality” (i.e., perceived prestige) of the places they go when they leave us. I reject this, and I hope you do, too.
If we are doing our jobs, we are giving students the time, space, and opportunity to learn and try new ideas, new attitudes, new approaches, new understandings, and above all new ideas of who they are and who they can be. With good and well understood curricula—the intentional, the hidden, and even the null—we produce people of whose accomplishments and growth we may be proud, but mostly importantly people whom we are proud to know.
And what’s really cool: As we work with children, we grow and develop ourselves. As I said, What a job!
And I thought this would be a short post.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
What is a school? Intermission
With seven "verses" down and seven more to go, this seems like a good time to stop and reflect on where I’ve been so far in the current project. I’ve had a couple of revelations and probably should have had a few more getting to this point, and it’s probably a good idea to explore these.
First, a couple of thoughtful readers have suggested that the focus on ideals, as embodied in mission and values, might give the impression—or worse, give schools permission to believe—that having a lofty set of principles is all a school needs to achieve virtue. Spout the ideals loudly enough, especially to yourself, and you don’t need to do much else.
Well, I’d like to put that idea to rest, pronto. A school that wants to survive and thrive, lead and inspire had better carefully and deliberately walk the walk as well as talk the talk. I fear that the world of independent schools is as full of self-congratulatory impulses as any other endeavor, but self-congratulation never built a utopia.
There hasn’t quite been a place to discuss this here, but somewhere between arrogance and abjection lies a place of quiet self-reflection where honest humility and justifiable pride are in balance. If the unexamined life is not worth living, neither is the unexamined school worthy of survival, and the only effective path to the delivery of intentional, internally consistent education is a high level of institutional self-reflection and willingness to adjust policies and practices in the response to changing circumstances and worthy new ideas—to change course. Reputations, to put it bluntly, are not permanent, but a commitment to exploration must be.
I’d also like to talk a bit about the nature of the “school” I’m thinking of. While the model has been brick-and-mortar for the past two or three millennia, that’s all going to change as online and blended learning opportunities proliferate. While the emphasis in virtual education has tended to be on the technology and the delivery methods, I believe that in time online and blended schools will need to provide ethical, extracurricular, and interpersonal experiences that are as powerful as those provided by brick-and-mortar schools. The missions and values underlying the operation of these schools must be robust, internally consistent, and increasingly focused on the total experience of students rather than just academic curricula. The experimental work being done today by some of the virtual high schools, the thriving Online School for Girls, and the nascent Online Progressive UnSchool (see also this presentation by Fred Bartels) will help educators discover ways to deliver some or perhaps all (or more) of the rich experience of the physical independent school in virtual environments. This work is both exciting and daunting.
Of course it’s entirely possible that the independent school of the future will be something else entirely, but I’m willing to stand by what I have already written and will continue to write here as being fundamental elements of sustainable schools, whether their campuses and communities are virtual or physical. The human need to connect will mean that in years to come whatever sorts of entities call themselves schools will, if they are to survive as such, need to create communities of both practice and principles.
First, a couple of thoughtful readers have suggested that the focus on ideals, as embodied in mission and values, might give the impression—or worse, give schools permission to believe—that having a lofty set of principles is all a school needs to achieve virtue. Spout the ideals loudly enough, especially to yourself, and you don’t need to do much else.
Well, I’d like to put that idea to rest, pronto. A school that wants to survive and thrive, lead and inspire had better carefully and deliberately walk the walk as well as talk the talk. I fear that the world of independent schools is as full of self-congratulatory impulses as any other endeavor, but self-congratulation never built a utopia.
There hasn’t quite been a place to discuss this here, but somewhere between arrogance and abjection lies a place of quiet self-reflection where honest humility and justifiable pride are in balance. If the unexamined life is not worth living, neither is the unexamined school worthy of survival, and the only effective path to the delivery of intentional, internally consistent education is a high level of institutional self-reflection and willingness to adjust policies and practices in the response to changing circumstances and worthy new ideas—to change course. Reputations, to put it bluntly, are not permanent, but a commitment to exploration must be.
I’d also like to talk a bit about the nature of the “school” I’m thinking of. While the model has been brick-and-mortar for the past two or three millennia, that’s all going to change as online and blended learning opportunities proliferate. While the emphasis in virtual education has tended to be on the technology and the delivery methods, I believe that in time online and blended schools will need to provide ethical, extracurricular, and interpersonal experiences that are as powerful as those provided by brick-and-mortar schools. The missions and values underlying the operation of these schools must be robust, internally consistent, and increasingly focused on the total experience of students rather than just academic curricula. The experimental work being done today by some of the virtual high schools, the thriving Online School for Girls, and the nascent Online Progressive UnSchool (see also this presentation by Fred Bartels) will help educators discover ways to deliver some or perhaps all (or more) of the rich experience of the physical independent school in virtual environments. This work is both exciting and daunting.
Of course it’s entirely possible that the independent school of the future will be something else entirely, but I’m willing to stand by what I have already written and will continue to write here as being fundamental elements of sustainable schools, whether their campuses and communities are virtual or physical. The human need to connect will mean that in years to come whatever sorts of entities call themselves schools will, if they are to survive as such, need to create communities of both practice and principles.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
A school is... (Verse 7)
A school is a set of intentional and unintentional learning experiences for students.
We have come almost half way through this exercise before getting around to academics, you might say. But I am not even thinking specifically about academic learnoing here, although I am thinking very much about curricula.
Many years ago the school where I now work began to think about curriculum, and many of us read an extraordinarily little monograph by my now-friends Steve Clem and Vance Wilson called Paths to a New Curriculum (NAIS, 1991—you’ll have to look for this one at Alibris or the like). Along with offering a very useful and still, I think, very timely process for curriculum review, Steve and Vance also suggest a set of distinctions in thinking about a school’s program that I still find compelling. They lay out three kinds of learning experiences--curricula--that students experience:
The explicit, intentional curriculum. This is the breadth of what is intentionally planned and taught within the totality of the school’s programs, including not just classroom learning but the designed, guided (and in the best of all worlds, clearly mission-connected) experiences had by students in all areas of endeavor—from athletics to recess to extracurricular clubs and publications to “character education” to residential life. These are the things that schools tend to work hardest on, although the most proactive attention tends to fall on the academic side, while in many schools the other matters are largely allowed to take their own course within the broad framework of mission, values, and often custom and school culture.
The hidden curriculum. Where “custom and school culture”—sometimes involving an intentional blind eye—mostly outweigh proactive planning and control, we find the hidden curriculum; these are the lessons students learn largely from their own experiences, things that “are what they are” rather than products of anyone’s intent or planful, strategic instruction or guidance. Sometimes the hidden curriculum is literally so—a world of student traditions and attitudes unseen or ignored by adults—while sometimes it is an aggregation of reactive decisions and policies that operates in parallel to and sometimes at cross-purposes with the intentional curriculum.
The null curriculum. This is the sum of what NOT taught, but might be—academically, ethically, spiritually, behaviorally. Educators have tended to decry the null curriculum as a kind of giant escape clause that tells students, “This stuff isn’t important to us, so it needn’t be to you, either.” While this may overstate the case, it is worth considering those things that are omitted from a school’s intentional curriculum and why the omission. Of course, attempting to fill these holes can turn program planning into a giant game of whack-a-mole and poses the danger of piling on program after program, ad infinitum.
(Incidentally, in doing my homework for this section I ran across Professor Leslie Owen Wilson’s page from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point describing different types of curriculum. The prof breaks it all down even further, perhaps going beyond usefulness, but the distinctions and her commentary are instructive.)
The point, of course, is that kids learn a whole slew of lessons in school, and it’s a very good idea for schools to maximize what is intentional—and to base intent on consistent and thoroughgoing principles, like the mission—and be alert to the desirability of minimizing what is hidden and “null.”
We have come almost half way through this exercise before getting around to academics, you might say. But I am not even thinking specifically about academic learnoing here, although I am thinking very much about curricula.
Many years ago the school where I now work began to think about curriculum, and many of us read an extraordinarily little monograph by my now-friends Steve Clem and Vance Wilson called Paths to a New Curriculum (NAIS, 1991—you’ll have to look for this one at Alibris or the like). Along with offering a very useful and still, I think, very timely process for curriculum review, Steve and Vance also suggest a set of distinctions in thinking about a school’s program that I still find compelling. They lay out three kinds of learning experiences--curricula--that students experience:
The explicit, intentional curriculum. This is the breadth of what is intentionally planned and taught within the totality of the school’s programs, including not just classroom learning but the designed, guided (and in the best of all worlds, clearly mission-connected) experiences had by students in all areas of endeavor—from athletics to recess to extracurricular clubs and publications to “character education” to residential life. These are the things that schools tend to work hardest on, although the most proactive attention tends to fall on the academic side, while in many schools the other matters are largely allowed to take their own course within the broad framework of mission, values, and often custom and school culture.
The hidden curriculum. Where “custom and school culture”—sometimes involving an intentional blind eye—mostly outweigh proactive planning and control, we find the hidden curriculum; these are the lessons students learn largely from their own experiences, things that “are what they are” rather than products of anyone’s intent or planful, strategic instruction or guidance. Sometimes the hidden curriculum is literally so—a world of student traditions and attitudes unseen or ignored by adults—while sometimes it is an aggregation of reactive decisions and policies that operates in parallel to and sometimes at cross-purposes with the intentional curriculum.
The null curriculum. This is the sum of what NOT taught, but might be—academically, ethically, spiritually, behaviorally. Educators have tended to decry the null curriculum as a kind of giant escape clause that tells students, “This stuff isn’t important to us, so it needn’t be to you, either.” While this may overstate the case, it is worth considering those things that are omitted from a school’s intentional curriculum and why the omission. Of course, attempting to fill these holes can turn program planning into a giant game of whack-a-mole and poses the danger of piling on program after program, ad infinitum.
(Incidentally, in doing my homework for this section I ran across Professor Leslie Owen Wilson’s page from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point describing different types of curriculum. The prof breaks it all down even further, perhaps going beyond usefulness, but the distinctions and her commentary are instructive.)
The point, of course, is that kids learn a whole slew of lessons in school, and it’s a very good idea for schools to maximize what is intentional—and to base intent on consistent and thoroughgoing principles, like the mission—and be alert to the desirability of minimizing what is hidden and “null.”
Friday, January 21, 2011
A school is... (Verse 6)
A school is the incarnation of ideals to which some people will want to dedicate themselves and their resources.
I’ve already written at length on these ideals and their importance, but not to be underestimated is the degree to which some people will want to dedicate their energy, time, and treasure—even their lives—to helping the school enact its great values.
Human beings seem to be hard-wired to seek both meaning and connections in their lives, and for many people the first stirrings of these instincts come in late childhood, when an awareness of group membership can appear in the form of what is loosely called “school spirit.” Children at the age of ten or eleven begin to feel real pride in their school, and many independent schools are adept at fostering this pride by reminding students of the specialness of the school, its values, and the experience they are having. Shared endeavors like class plays, curriculum-related exhibitions, and athletic teams reinforce positive feelings about the group and secondarily the institution.
For many students these feelings grow as they pass through middle and high school. Fierce loyalties develop, and although these may manifest themselves as blind partisanship and even arrogance, some students feel a deep, transcendent (and often hard to express, at least publicly) connection with their schools. This connection is intensified as the student develops rich and increasingly candid and mature relationships with others who love the school and what it stands for—fellow students, teachers, other staff, and administrators. These students—not necessarily the most accomplished or “decorated” or even the key athletes on whose leadership and performance the school’s public fortunes ride from year to year—aspire to become the true-blue exemplars of the school’s most excellent qualities. They have received something of inestimable value, and they set themselves, at first quietly and even unknowingly, to pay that gift forward.
Most independent schools have become expert in cultivating this impulse among these students as they graduate, move on, and then settle into communities and careers. Schools also know that they need to be prepared to add tinder and oxygen to the spark of such loyalty that flares in many alums years after their graduation. A school that was and above all has remained worthy of such dedication can expect great things from its graduates—great works in the world and great support of itself.
The dedication of faculty and staff should never be discounted; even short-time employees can have an extraordinary and—yes—transcendent experience that makes them lifetime loyalists. Some senior staff are pleased simply to identify themselves with the glory and reputation of the school, but many long-time employees stay because of a deep commitment to a school's best values and the satisfaction they derive from living in a community driven by ideals. They may become living embodiments of the school, treasured as such by students, families, past students, and colleagues. (And let me be clear that while teachers and administrators often play these roles, other staff of all kinds can be powerfully influential in their identification with and devotion to the school.) In schools that find ways to continually activate and fuel such devotion, the utopian spirit of which I wrote in Verse 3 is palpable.
Of course, along the way most independent schools also acquire what annual reports often lump under the category “friends of the school”—parents and past parents, community members, and even more randomly connected individuals who find themselves attracted to what the school stands for and to the work it actually does with its students. Their desire to involve themselves or to remain involved with the school stems from idealism and sometimes gratitude, and they form yet another identifiable—and cultivatable—cadre of devotees whose contributions strengthen the school in all its efforts.
There’s a brief and obvious lesson about “change” and “innovation” here: However a school may advance in its programs and practices, it must be clear with its constituencies as to how these advances support and extend its fundamental ideals.
I’ve already written at length on these ideals and their importance, but not to be underestimated is the degree to which some people will want to dedicate their energy, time, and treasure—even their lives—to helping the school enact its great values.
Human beings seem to be hard-wired to seek both meaning and connections in their lives, and for many people the first stirrings of these instincts come in late childhood, when an awareness of group membership can appear in the form of what is loosely called “school spirit.” Children at the age of ten or eleven begin to feel real pride in their school, and many independent schools are adept at fostering this pride by reminding students of the specialness of the school, its values, and the experience they are having. Shared endeavors like class plays, curriculum-related exhibitions, and athletic teams reinforce positive feelings about the group and secondarily the institution.
For many students these feelings grow as they pass through middle and high school. Fierce loyalties develop, and although these may manifest themselves as blind partisanship and even arrogance, some students feel a deep, transcendent (and often hard to express, at least publicly) connection with their schools. This connection is intensified as the student develops rich and increasingly candid and mature relationships with others who love the school and what it stands for—fellow students, teachers, other staff, and administrators. These students—not necessarily the most accomplished or “decorated” or even the key athletes on whose leadership and performance the school’s public fortunes ride from year to year—aspire to become the true-blue exemplars of the school’s most excellent qualities. They have received something of inestimable value, and they set themselves, at first quietly and even unknowingly, to pay that gift forward.
Most independent schools have become expert in cultivating this impulse among these students as they graduate, move on, and then settle into communities and careers. Schools also know that they need to be prepared to add tinder and oxygen to the spark of such loyalty that flares in many alums years after their graduation. A school that was and above all has remained worthy of such dedication can expect great things from its graduates—great works in the world and great support of itself.
The dedication of faculty and staff should never be discounted; even short-time employees can have an extraordinary and—yes—transcendent experience that makes them lifetime loyalists. Some senior staff are pleased simply to identify themselves with the glory and reputation of the school, but many long-time employees stay because of a deep commitment to a school's best values and the satisfaction they derive from living in a community driven by ideals. They may become living embodiments of the school, treasured as such by students, families, past students, and colleagues. (And let me be clear that while teachers and administrators often play these roles, other staff of all kinds can be powerfully influential in their identification with and devotion to the school.) In schools that find ways to continually activate and fuel such devotion, the utopian spirit of which I wrote in Verse 3 is palpable.
Of course, along the way most independent schools also acquire what annual reports often lump under the category “friends of the school”—parents and past parents, community members, and even more randomly connected individuals who find themselves attracted to what the school stands for and to the work it actually does with its students. Their desire to involve themselves or to remain involved with the school stems from idealism and sometimes gratitude, and they form yet another identifiable—and cultivatable—cadre of devotees whose contributions strengthen the school in all its efforts.
There’s a brief and obvious lesson about “change” and “innovation” here: However a school may advance in its programs and practices, it must be clear with its constituencies as to how these advances support and extend its fundamental ideals.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
A school is... (Verse 5)
A school is a key locus for social interaction—among students, parents, alums, staff.
This almost seems to obvious to mention. Whether the school is day or boarding, in some ways it is a society unto itself. The school is the scene of a million little stories—dramas, romances, comedies, tragedies, and triumphs—and for many of its denizens it is the most important place in the world for 180 or so days a year. The effect may be intensified in residential settings, but the day-school counterpart of this intensity lies in the reality that many day schools assemble students from diverse and often distant communities who would never otherwise know one another—and who depend on the school to be the congenial the setting of their social lives.
Some independent school campuses are virtually cocoons, sheltered from “the world” and inward-focused by mission and tradition, while other schools relish being in the middle of things. There is no “right” way to be, although too much inwardness can be a dangerous thing if it finds expression in self-reverence, self-congratulation, or closed-minded exclusivity.
But a school must be conscious of its place as a social nexus for so many people and find ways to make this part of its identity attractive and comfortable even as it encourages members to cross familiar boundaries as they build relationships within the school community. Authentic diversity is based on the discoveries made by crossing such frontiers, however challenging; the crossing of social boundaries, when it passes beyond “work” to become a way of being, can provide enormous individual pleasure as well as build group and institutional solidarity and fortitude.
Lately there has been quite a bit of attention focused to the kinds of unsafe and antisocial actions that can occur in school communities—the truly dangerous side of being a place of so many intense interactions. Even as they work to strengthen the light, intentional, and positive sides of their existence as social communities, schools need to be aware of the ways in which risky and even cruel behaviors can arise and change the tenor of community life. This should, perhaps, go without saying, but some schools may be reluctant to acknowledge the full depth of their role as places of social intercourse, seen and unseen, positive and negative.
The expansion of the campus into cyberspace and across time through social media can wonderfully strengthen critical bonds in the service of advancement—particularly for current families and between the school and its graduates. It can also provide a virtual preview of the “school as community” for prospective students and families.
Schools now must also harness (and sometimes contend with) the virtual exoskeleton created beyond their campuses by social media as used by constituents, connections made by skeins of digital filaments that orbit the school universe—sometimes involving school “business” and sometimes existing just because of connections based within the school. Of the school but exactly in it, these connections are increasingly regarded—especially when they transmit dark forces—as part of the school’s responsibility to its community and its individual members.
Ultimately, though, the role of the school as social setting and social community is most often a source of joy among its members. Though they may have their moments of pain, schools are above all places of friendship and for the highest expression of love in all its forms—as desire, as appreciation and loyalty, and as the love of humanity itself.
This almost seems to obvious to mention. Whether the school is day or boarding, in some ways it is a society unto itself. The school is the scene of a million little stories—dramas, romances, comedies, tragedies, and triumphs—and for many of its denizens it is the most important place in the world for 180 or so days a year. The effect may be intensified in residential settings, but the day-school counterpart of this intensity lies in the reality that many day schools assemble students from diverse and often distant communities who would never otherwise know one another—and who depend on the school to be the congenial the setting of their social lives.
Some independent school campuses are virtually cocoons, sheltered from “the world” and inward-focused by mission and tradition, while other schools relish being in the middle of things. There is no “right” way to be, although too much inwardness can be a dangerous thing if it finds expression in self-reverence, self-congratulation, or closed-minded exclusivity.
But a school must be conscious of its place as a social nexus for so many people and find ways to make this part of its identity attractive and comfortable even as it encourages members to cross familiar boundaries as they build relationships within the school community. Authentic diversity is based on the discoveries made by crossing such frontiers, however challenging; the crossing of social boundaries, when it passes beyond “work” to become a way of being, can provide enormous individual pleasure as well as build group and institutional solidarity and fortitude.
Lately there has been quite a bit of attention focused to the kinds of unsafe and antisocial actions that can occur in school communities—the truly dangerous side of being a place of so many intense interactions. Even as they work to strengthen the light, intentional, and positive sides of their existence as social communities, schools need to be aware of the ways in which risky and even cruel behaviors can arise and change the tenor of community life. This should, perhaps, go without saying, but some schools may be reluctant to acknowledge the full depth of their role as places of social intercourse, seen and unseen, positive and negative.
The expansion of the campus into cyberspace and across time through social media can wonderfully strengthen critical bonds in the service of advancement—particularly for current families and between the school and its graduates. It can also provide a virtual preview of the “school as community” for prospective students and families.
Schools now must also harness (and sometimes contend with) the virtual exoskeleton created beyond their campuses by social media as used by constituents, connections made by skeins of digital filaments that orbit the school universe—sometimes involving school “business” and sometimes existing just because of connections based within the school. Of the school but exactly in it, these connections are increasingly regarded—especially when they transmit dark forces—as part of the school’s responsibility to its community and its individual members.
Ultimately, though, the role of the school as social setting and social community is most often a source of joy among its members. Though they may have their moments of pain, schools are above all places of friendship and for the highest expression of love in all its forms—as desire, as appreciation and loyalty, and as the love of humanity itself.
Monday, January 17, 2011
A school is... (Verse 4)
A school is a social enterprise, with obligations to the society that supports it. (And I will admit freely to cribbing this line from the teaser from this article by Lawrence Bacow, Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, and Saran Kaur Gill in The Chronicle of Higher Education, 13 January 2011)
Independent schools have lately embraced the tagline “private school with public purpose” as if this were uniquely an attribute or perspective of only some schools, or of my school more than your school (in a manner of speaking). But of course, the very independence of independent schools from government regulation and their tax-exempt status suggests an acknowledgment by society that there is some virtue in having such schools exist. What is that virtue, and how must schools manifest it in their work?
This virtue is not to be found in nor defined by community service, which is often spoken of as a way for students (and institutions) to “give back” to society and which at its worst—and thankfully we encounter less of this attitude with each passing year—is regarded by the providers as an expression of noblesse oblige. Financial aid was once often regarded in this same light.
Nor can this virtue be distilled into services and payments in lieu of taxes. In these tight economic times SILOTs and PILOTs are regarded by strapped communities as a kind of programmatic or fiscal quid pro quo that is easily understood and easily demanded: the privileged School On The Hill casting down some portion of its wealth lest the villagers arrive at its gates with pitchforks and torches. While schools need to consider carefully and to demonstrate thoroughly and convincingly their actual net cost and net value to their community, reducing the obligation to a kind of tribute exacted in access to playing fields or an annual check to the volunteer fire company is narrow and rather disheartening.
Society grants certain exemptions to independent schools in the belief that there is virtue in offering families choice in the way in which they educate their children—choice in “quality,” in program, in philosophical or spiritual foundation, in the very nature of the school community. Relief from the necessity of paying taxes is a kind of economic stimulus measure to encourage the establishment of a variety of schools, and relief from regulation—at least academic regulation—stems from a fundamentally American belief in the value of a diversity of ideas. (This can of course be a mixed blessing, especially where ideologies, religion, and politics collide to generate schools or teachings of enforced narrowness or bias of perspective—but one person’s science is another’s witchcraft, and vice versa, alas.)
What independent schools are obligated to be is the very best, and the very most true to their missions and values, that they can be. This is not about some puffed-up version of “excellence” but rather about serving their immediate community of students and families superbly—teaching well and living up to their own highest stated ideals. Affordability, and casting the widest net possible to attract and retain the most appropriate students and teachers, ought to be ambitions of equal importance.
A great school services its larger community not by finding ways to do service or make payments but by authentically and transparently existing and participating in all its communities. The model of The School On The Hill ought to be long since dead, replaced by an idealization of the school whose functions and people are alert and responsive to the ongoing needs and aspirations of both internal and external communities.
The public purpose of independent schools is to vigorously exercise their freedom to be themselves and, in our time, to explore and innovate as perhaps only they—permitted and even encouraged as they are to pursue and grow around their own ideals—are able to.
Independent schools have lately embraced the tagline “private school with public purpose” as if this were uniquely an attribute or perspective of only some schools, or of my school more than your school (in a manner of speaking). But of course, the very independence of independent schools from government regulation and their tax-exempt status suggests an acknowledgment by society that there is some virtue in having such schools exist. What is that virtue, and how must schools manifest it in their work?
This virtue is not to be found in nor defined by community service, which is often spoken of as a way for students (and institutions) to “give back” to society and which at its worst—and thankfully we encounter less of this attitude with each passing year—is regarded by the providers as an expression of noblesse oblige. Financial aid was once often regarded in this same light.
Nor can this virtue be distilled into services and payments in lieu of taxes. In these tight economic times SILOTs and PILOTs are regarded by strapped communities as a kind of programmatic or fiscal quid pro quo that is easily understood and easily demanded: the privileged School On The Hill casting down some portion of its wealth lest the villagers arrive at its gates with pitchforks and torches. While schools need to consider carefully and to demonstrate thoroughly and convincingly their actual net cost and net value to their community, reducing the obligation to a kind of tribute exacted in access to playing fields or an annual check to the volunteer fire company is narrow and rather disheartening.
Society grants certain exemptions to independent schools in the belief that there is virtue in offering families choice in the way in which they educate their children—choice in “quality,” in program, in philosophical or spiritual foundation, in the very nature of the school community. Relief from the necessity of paying taxes is a kind of economic stimulus measure to encourage the establishment of a variety of schools, and relief from regulation—at least academic regulation—stems from a fundamentally American belief in the value of a diversity of ideas. (This can of course be a mixed blessing, especially where ideologies, religion, and politics collide to generate schools or teachings of enforced narrowness or bias of perspective—but one person’s science is another’s witchcraft, and vice versa, alas.)
What independent schools are obligated to be is the very best, and the very most true to their missions and values, that they can be. This is not about some puffed-up version of “excellence” but rather about serving their immediate community of students and families superbly—teaching well and living up to their own highest stated ideals. Affordability, and casting the widest net possible to attract and retain the most appropriate students and teachers, ought to be ambitions of equal importance.
A great school services its larger community not by finding ways to do service or make payments but by authentically and transparently existing and participating in all its communities. The model of The School On The Hill ought to be long since dead, replaced by an idealization of the school whose functions and people are alert and responsive to the ongoing needs and aspirations of both internal and external communities.
The public purpose of independent schools is to vigorously exercise their freedom to be themselves and, in our time, to explore and innovate as perhaps only they—permitted and even encouraged as they are to pursue and grow around their own ideals—are able to.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
A school is... (Verse 3)
A school is an aspiring utopia: an intentional community driven by ideals.
As a community an independent school sets its own standards of behavior based on its own deep principles and values. Students and staff are subject to these standards, which may range from small things like observing “proper” table manners to great ones like affirmations of spiritual belief. Within the community that is the school, then, a certain idealism reigns, informing actions and words in the hope of raising community members—and for some schools the world at large—to the level of the school’s dreams—not as Ideal Types but as evolving humans ready to play an active role in changing improving the lot of humankind.
A school’s idealism is represented in its primary topics of discourse. Are these about children, and learning, and the betterment of our world, or do such subjects receive only lip service or—worst of all—have they become objects of “political correctness” to be tiptoed around by jaded cynic and discouraged idealist alike?
There are those who would call fatuous, even plain silly, the idea that students (and teachers) might check their biases, petty prejudices, and even their cynicism and materialism at the schoolhouse gate. It might seem unnatural, or inauthentic—and yet why else do we have and work in such schools? For a few hours a day we ought to be able to expect the best of our students and ourselves, in the hope that the lessons learned under the umbrella of school’s ethos might take root in the world at large. (Isn’t this what alumnae/i magazine profiles are intended to celebrate? Isn’t this why we admire Martin Luther King?)
This will always be a struggle, to live up to an ideal in a world where we are also reminded of the need to “keep it real.” But the very tension in this struggle should be inspirational—keeping it real, after all, is about retaining integrity as we work toward a better world. Whether their foundations be spiritual or secular, independent schools have always, at their best, been about far more than college admission, test or athletic contest scores, or the preservation of the status of elites. A school that has forgotten the better angels of its founders’ natures or the great ambitions of its heritage is a school whose idealism needs rediscovery and revival.
In theory it is school leaders who must take on the role of “idealists in chief,” but anyone and everyone in a school community lives under a gentle but inexorable obligation to call the institution and its members to their duty—to make the school a place devoted to ideals that may be, and perhaps even should be, unapologetically utopian.
As a community an independent school sets its own standards of behavior based on its own deep principles and values. Students and staff are subject to these standards, which may range from small things like observing “proper” table manners to great ones like affirmations of spiritual belief. Within the community that is the school, then, a certain idealism reigns, informing actions and words in the hope of raising community members—and for some schools the world at large—to the level of the school’s dreams—not as Ideal Types but as evolving humans ready to play an active role in changing improving the lot of humankind.
A school’s idealism is represented in its primary topics of discourse. Are these about children, and learning, and the betterment of our world, or do such subjects receive only lip service or—worst of all—have they become objects of “political correctness” to be tiptoed around by jaded cynic and discouraged idealist alike?
There are those who would call fatuous, even plain silly, the idea that students (and teachers) might check their biases, petty prejudices, and even their cynicism and materialism at the schoolhouse gate. It might seem unnatural, or inauthentic—and yet why else do we have and work in such schools? For a few hours a day we ought to be able to expect the best of our students and ourselves, in the hope that the lessons learned under the umbrella of school’s ethos might take root in the world at large. (Isn’t this what alumnae/i magazine profiles are intended to celebrate? Isn’t this why we admire Martin Luther King?)
This will always be a struggle, to live up to an ideal in a world where we are also reminded of the need to “keep it real.” But the very tension in this struggle should be inspirational—keeping it real, after all, is about retaining integrity as we work toward a better world. Whether their foundations be spiritual or secular, independent schools have always, at their best, been about far more than college admission, test or athletic contest scores, or the preservation of the status of elites. A school that has forgotten the better angels of its founders’ natures or the great ambitions of its heritage is a school whose idealism needs rediscovery and revival.
In theory it is school leaders who must take on the role of “idealists in chief,” but anyone and everyone in a school community lives under a gentle but inexorable obligation to call the institution and its members to their duty—to make the school a place devoted to ideals that may be, and perhaps even should be, unapologetically utopian.
Friday, January 14, 2011
A school is... (Verse 2)
A school’s name is shorthand for a set of shared experiences—lived, hoped for—deeply understood across generational and other boundaries.
To those who have attended or who have been associated with any independent school, its very name will evoke that experience. To those who hope to be associated with or even those who just make reference to the school, the name will have meaning as a standard of comparison, as a place where something in particular exists or happens, or perhaps even as a conversational or social weapon—or shield.
Beyond brand and beyond mission, a school assumes in the individual mind an identity and existence through its name and through associations with that name. Consider the personal meaning a school’s name takes on for a graduate—prideful, happy, even sacramental, or bitter or sad; quite probably, because of the emotional complexities of childhood and adolescence, some combination of the all of these. In the community, the school’s name may reverberate as a symbol or even a mantra of power, privilege, exclusivity, excellence, or mediocrity. To parents, hope is encoded in the name, an incantation that represents all their wishes for the transformation of the student from child to successful, happy young adult.
The name of a school is magic, drawing power both from what the school actually is and does but even more from the miracle of human development and growth that takes place within it. Successful schools understand this and are continually engaged in work that sustains the magic, a balancing act that requires an exquisite sensitivity to what is authentic and not pretense, what is essential and not superfluous, and above all what is best for students and not for the school.
There is danger lurking in a name that has become invested, usually through the efforts of the school but sometimes accidentally, with so much power that it has come to define a Type or an "ideal." When the notion of this ideal becomes so ponderous or so rigid as to stultify or warp students, or even the way in which students are seen and their school experience understood--even by themselves--it becomes time for Herculean efforts to liberate the school from the limiting power of its name.
(Expect 14 "verses" when all is said and done, BTW)
To those who have attended or who have been associated with any independent school, its very name will evoke that experience. To those who hope to be associated with or even those who just make reference to the school, the name will have meaning as a standard of comparison, as a place where something in particular exists or happens, or perhaps even as a conversational or social weapon—or shield.
Beyond brand and beyond mission, a school assumes in the individual mind an identity and existence through its name and through associations with that name. Consider the personal meaning a school’s name takes on for a graduate—prideful, happy, even sacramental, or bitter or sad; quite probably, because of the emotional complexities of childhood and adolescence, some combination of the all of these. In the community, the school’s name may reverberate as a symbol or even a mantra of power, privilege, exclusivity, excellence, or mediocrity. To parents, hope is encoded in the name, an incantation that represents all their wishes for the transformation of the student from child to successful, happy young adult.
The name of a school is magic, drawing power both from what the school actually is and does but even more from the miracle of human development and growth that takes place within it. Successful schools understand this and are continually engaged in work that sustains the magic, a balancing act that requires an exquisite sensitivity to what is authentic and not pretense, what is essential and not superfluous, and above all what is best for students and not for the school.
There is danger lurking in a name that has become invested, usually through the efforts of the school but sometimes accidentally, with so much power that it has come to define a Type or an "ideal." When the notion of this ideal becomes so ponderous or so rigid as to stultify or warp students, or even the way in which students are seen and their school experience understood--even by themselves--it becomes time for Herculean efforts to liberate the school from the limiting power of its name.
(Expect 14 "verses" when all is said and done, BTW)
A school is ... (Verse 1)
A school is an idea representing an ideal or aspiration.
On one level, this is like brand—a set of expectations built around experience—but on a deeper level, this is of course a combination of the ideas and beliefs behind the school’s founding and its current stated mission. Rather like constitutional law, schools evolve as time and experience—quotidian and crisis—force the leaders of the institution to adapt their understanding of its purposes, aims, and values to changing conditions. Like the law, there may be a thick encrustation of interpretation and precedent and operational procedures akin to statutes, but at the core must live those principles, call them constitutional principles, that guide the school toward its ideals and its most lofty aspirations.
What are the ideas or aspirations that come to mind when people hear the name of your school? This is an important question, and of course in presenting your school to the world and to itself (external and internal marketing, both equally important) it is critical that there be congruence between the school’s view of itself and the world’s view of the school. (And what do you do when you suspect the world’s view is the more accurate?)
A school that lacks clarity on this issue is in difficulty.
On one level, this is like brand—a set of expectations built around experience—but on a deeper level, this is of course a combination of the ideas and beliefs behind the school’s founding and its current stated mission. Rather like constitutional law, schools evolve as time and experience—quotidian and crisis—force the leaders of the institution to adapt their understanding of its purposes, aims, and values to changing conditions. Like the law, there may be a thick encrustation of interpretation and precedent and operational procedures akin to statutes, but at the core must live those principles, call them constitutional principles, that guide the school toward its ideals and its most lofty aspirations.
What are the ideas or aspirations that come to mind when people hear the name of your school? This is an important question, and of course in presenting your school to the world and to itself (external and internal marketing, both equally important) it is critical that there be congruence between the school’s view of itself and the world’s view of the school. (And what do you do when you suspect the world’s view is the more accurate?)
A school that lacks clarity on this issue is in difficulty.
What is a school?
I’ve set myself a little exercise lately, to come up with very short lists of things that independent schools need to get over and that they need to be doing in order to insure their own sustainability. It’s fun to think about (especially if you sort of ignore the stakes, but that’s another story).
An idea popped up early in my “get over” list that has me hooked for the moment. It’s simply this, that schools need to get over the idea that “a school is just a school.” While a kiss may be just a kiss, independent schools are a whole lot more than self-defined and self-contained systems of students, teachers, parents, and alums governed by self-perpetuating governing bodies. To be an independent school is to be many things to many people. (This is quite different from the temptation in admissions and marketing to be all things to all people.)
So, then, what is a school?
I’m planning to spend the next few weeks here answering this question. More importantly, I’m also hoping to suggest reasons that this rather banal question is important, and why developing a comprehensive “definition” of a school can suggest work that all independent schools can do to strengthen their operations and programs for the future.
I’d be delighted to see some response to this series, of course.
An idea popped up early in my “get over” list that has me hooked for the moment. It’s simply this, that schools need to get over the idea that “a school is just a school.” While a kiss may be just a kiss, independent schools are a whole lot more than self-defined and self-contained systems of students, teachers, parents, and alums governed by self-perpetuating governing bodies. To be an independent school is to be many things to many people. (This is quite different from the temptation in admissions and marketing to be all things to all people.)
So, then, what is a school?
I’m planning to spend the next few weeks here answering this question. More importantly, I’m also hoping to suggest reasons that this rather banal question is important, and why developing a comprehensive “definition” of a school can suggest work that all independent schools can do to strengthen their operations and programs for the future.
I’d be delighted to see some response to this series, of course.
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