A reader responds to an earlier post. This reader says that schools are like churches; some say they are like families. As the previous post said, they are built on relationships. When a school closes, a community dies. Those in big corporate cultures don’t understand this. They are used to closing down low-performing units, firing people who aren’t at the top of the stack ranking. This is everyday stuff for them. They don’t understand community. They understand data. They overlook the daily expose of corporate misuse of data (see Enron, WorldComm, LIBOR, or your local business page). If anyone steps forward to defend the community, they will be called “defenders of the status quo.” In the past, they would have been called patriots.
This is so true. Schools operate like churches where individuals work together for the common good. Sharing highs and lows of putting on a school wide musical, laughing and crying together when children earn a scholarship or when children die, brainstorming strategies to help the family of a student who is suddenly homeless. These events create bonds that last a lifetime. Our janitor lost his father, our cafeteria lady lost her husband, our principal’s wife had a baby, our staff and parents showed up at the funeral home and made food for the families. The school needs a new playground. A group of parents donate money and time to build it on weekends. These are people who anticipate a long term (meaning YEARS) relationship with their children’s school. To this day, I receive a birthday card every year from the family of one a student whom I taught 25 years ago. Birthdays are extremely special in her family so I always made time in class for her family to share her birthday with her classmates. If this happened today, we wouldn’t have time, we’d be prepping for tests. The business community doesn’t want to round out the ramifications of their reforms. Whenever I read of a school shutting down in spite of strong community protests, I feel real pain in my stomach. Education attracts people who have a strong service ethic and who prefer the company of children, not corporate careerists who thrive on competition and risk. Teachers are extremely dedicated to their own professional growth because they view their growth as helping children experience success, not failure. Wouldn’t we want people like this teaching our children? Aren’t these relationships similar to those formed by the elite edu-reformers in their children’s schools? Corporate reforers seem oblivious to their own lived experiences.Teachers are the types of individuals who avoid conflict and work within relationships to build consensus. Corporate reformers live in a milieu of conflict. Their behaviors are classic bullying behaviors- the strong vanquishing the weak, the man subduing the woman- the market rewarding winners and bankrupting losers. Teacher’s good intentions are being exploited. That’s why I take their rhetoric and dumb ideas so personally. That’s why educators should confront them at every turn and on every level and never give up. |
I can’t help but reflect on the fact that the privatizing/profiteering of public schools coincided quite closely with the profiteering /privatizing of prisons. (Interesting that both movements grew to early and monumental heights in Texas).When essential public, human services are reduced to the stockholders’ bottom line, where do human rights fall in that equation? Where are the original purposes of those institutions when they are subverted, when the ultimate measure of their success is making money for the investors?
I have never understood why some business leaders want us to run schools like a factory or corporation. Do they honestly believe the model of selfishness, greed, and disconnect with what their decisions to take care of themselves at the expense of everyone else today will do to everyone tomorrow is how we need to be more “efficient” I’m educating our children? Is that how we will increase academic standings? Is that how we will make our country stronger and create a more educated, creative, and inventive workforce? Corporate America–that place where honesty, integrity, trust, and selflessness are rarely shown? Enron, the mortgage debacle, the banking industry interest rate scam just now coming out, price fixing, special interest lobbying…I could go on and on. How on Earth would this model work for our kids when it doesn’t work for our country? Students are not widgets. They are not products. We can’t do “quality control” and only accept delivery of the perceived “best” raw materials (i.e. students) from the most reputable “suppliers” (i.e. parents). We embrace whomever walks through our doors and try to help them and teach them despite what baggage they bring along. Perhaps corporate America should take a lesson from educators for a change and put some heart and community back into THEIR world. I think our country would be much better for it.
“Perhaps corporate America should take a lesson from educators for a change and put some heart and community back into THEIR world. I think our country would be much better for it.”
A well stated truth, thank you!
I would dearly love to believe that corporate America gives a damn but I’m not convinced they do. It is profit maximisation to the hilt and stuff you buddy!
“. . . they are built on relationships” and “Those in big corporate cultures don’t understand this”
I’m glad you limited your critique to the “big corporate culture” as I have a number of life-long, very fiscally-not necessarily in social liberty issues-conservative friends who have started and successfully run a small business for decades who insist that that success is due primarily to the concept of “they are built on relationships”. Don’t get me wrong as they also believe that businessmen can more efficiently operate any organization especially public entities, after all they get most of their news and information from the conservative business press as exemplified by the Wall Street Journal. And I have to fight them tooth and nail, we have great arguments/discussions when we get together and even through email exchanges, that public schools do not have the same purpose and function as a private money making business and therefore should have different ways of handling day to day interactions.
I also have two lifelong friends (being of the same description as the others mentioned above) who are quite high up in the big corporate cultures that are Citi and Wells Fargo, one a lawyer with scores of lawyers under him and the other an MBA with numerous subordinates in charge of handling billions of dollars of transactions a day. And they argue that their success and the success of their coworkers “are built on relationships”. But those relationships are intra-company and they have little say as to the “corporate” relationships with customers and clients. Big difference.
Keep on fighting the fight for those of us who do not worship the almighty dollar as the end all be all, Diane, and thanks for doing it!
I can only say that whenever I have the misfortune of dealing with a big corporation, I come away convinced that the last thing they care about is the customer. The typical experience is having a conversation with a recording. If I am lucky, I get to talk to a customer service representative in Panama or India or somewhere else who is polite but unhelpful. Or I get disconnected.
I always make it a point to ask for a manager whenever I wish to voice an opinion about a policy. Nine times out of ten, I get someone higher up who actually does listen, or at least “pretends” to care. However it’s probably wise to never expect that corporations are going to be their customers’ friends.
I believe this is not so with EVERY corporation. Several years ago, while waiting for a Wegmans employee to put a fruit basket together for me, I decided to ask him how he felt about working for the company despite it being non-union. I quietly asked him to be honest, although I’m not sure if he trusted me to not run and tell the boss what he was going to say. He looked me in the eye and admitted that he was not only very happy working there, but he felt that he was valued by the company. Recently, I read an article about Wegmans that outlined it as a successful company for more reasons than just products and profits:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/the-anti-walmart-the-secret-sauce-of-wegmans-is-people/254994/
If indeed Wegmans’ secret to success is partially because it does value its employees, there is proof that corporate success stems from a partnership of values between all people who work within the company.