John Thompson, historian and teacher, reflects on the teaching of “creative disobedience.”
I grew up in an oligarchy but it was under attack by a bottom-up force known as democracy. During my childhood, the elites routinely bribed the Oklahoma Supreme Court and a handful of businessmen choreographed economic growth in a segregated and unequal manner. Prohibition still existed, making our criminal justice and legal system even more corrupt and brutal. Jim Crow was still dominant and “one man, one vote” had not yet been mandated by the US Supreme Court.
Our state’s public schools were condemned as “progressive” and “godless” institutions. The Power Elite derided Baby Boomers as softies who couldn’t compete with the Soviet menace and who needed standardized testing to force us to practice our basic skills, so we didn’t waste time on self-expression. By my teens, higher education was condemned for teaching “fads” like sociology and the word “accountability” was used as the hammer to keep teachers and unions in their place.
Sound familiar?

But, the economic pie was growing and becoming more equitable. Oklahoma City public school students and teachers spearheaded one of the nation’s first, longest and, eventually, successful sit-in campaigns. Our parents had survived the Great Depression and World War II, and they sought a better life for us. We were challenged to become “inner directed” persons, not “outer-directed” followers of the “herd of independent minds.” When we made a mistake, adults responded with the ubiquitous phrase, “Go to school on that.” In other words, we were taught to learn from the experience. Our job was to “learn how to learn.” Schools existed not to teach obedience to “external loci of control,” but to help us be true to ourselves.
Our schools were not the extreme progressive enclaves that the elites condemned, but they nurtured self-expression, individuality, and the self-control necessary for self-government. In our elementary school where lower class and working class families were making the transition to the middle class, our principal made it clear. The purpose of school was not preparing us for a job but for a fulfilling life.

School was a buffer – a safe zone – where teachers helped us learn “creative insubordination.” Later I was taught the theme, “every man his own historian.” Rather than memorize names, dates, facts, and figures, every generation was supposed to reinterpret and rewrite history from its own perspective.
Twenty-first century America is a better place, and we must not forget the great progress made in such a short time. But, gone is the confidence that tomorrow will be better than today. School reform, which Paul Tough attributes to “liberal ptsd” from supposedly losing the War on Poverty, seeks to destroy the last remnants of educational progressivism, and replace it was a technocratic utilitarianism. Democracy is seen as too unaccountable and must be replaced by corporate governance. The goal is to train competitors who can survive in the global marketplace.

Even so, history is repeating itself, and a grassroots revolt is taking back our schools and restoring democratic values. My generation’s parents, teachers, and popular culture celebrated characters such as those portrayed by Henry Ford; our role models were Tom Joad and “Davis,” the juror who challenged the mob mentality of “Twelve Angry Men.” The Lonely Crowd, by David Riesman, Nathan Glazer, and Reuel Denney, spoke to us, and we were taught to stand up for what we believe. Now, as the New York Times’s Duff McDonald shows in “Creating the Followers of Tomorrow,” Ira Chaleff is sounding today’s alarm. Chaleff’s Intelligent Disobedience: Doing Right When What You’re Told to Do Is Wrong calls for a new rebelliousness, which he calls “intelligent disobedience.”

Chaleff begins with an indictment of the $50 billion dollars of corporate spending to teach its form of leadership and followership. He then criticizes business schools where “M.B.A.s are not being prepared to operate under the pressures of hierarchy and the metrics most frequently used to reward or penalize them.” Chaleff’s language isn’t as eloquent as that of social critics who taught my generation to challenge authority, but he calls for human organizations where “the best followers” have learned “when to pull the leader back from an edge.”

Chalef cites the Atlanta standardized testing scandal as an example of performance targets corrupting the people in the system. It doubly hard to “be intelligently disobedient when ‘missing the target’ is considered a disaster.” He writes of Atlanta:

So much importance was put on performance metrics that administrators and teachers falsified test results and wound up in jail. And it wasn’t simply whether test scores had improved, but whether the percentage of improvement was greater than the previous year. That’s very analogous to forecasting corporate results and then falling short of that forecast.

We humans “have our primitive brain and higher-level functioning brain.” There is no reason, however, for schools to continue to reinforce the primitive brain which evolved to keep us alive. It already operates “about 10 times faster in moments of perceived danger.” We need schools to provide a buffer – for both students and educators – to slow down, explore and reflect, and to build on our courageous brain.
As Chalef says, we all have to function at times as subordinates but that doesn’t mean we have no power. Adults and children must learn that they can “appraise the relative power in a situation before deciding they’re powerless.” We must guide students toward ethical behavior in a complex world where they will need to speak truth to power.

Instead of test, sort, reward, and punish, we need schools to prepare children for a courageous life. Sadly, as Chalef notes, when someone fights back, “there’s no guarantee you won’t get fired, of course, so you do need courage. But courage isn’t the absence of fear; it’s what we do in the face of fear.”

Sounds a lot like the Opt Out test boycott movement!

That brings us back to today’s challenge. To produce schools worthy of American democracy, we must first beat back market-driven reformers who seek to impose corporate governance and an excessively competitive ethos on our children’s learning environment. We must stop this outrage where children are forced to recite the one “right” answer for each of the primitive bubble-in questions they face.

Then, we must commit to schools where the inner beauty and fortitude of children can blossom. Rather than condemning public education for not instantly undoing the legacies of generations of discrimination and exploitation, let’s also celebrate our accomplishments. In a very few generations, public schooling contributed greatly to awesome world historical accomplishments. We must re-dedicate to the goal of expanding the opportunity, the joy of learning, and the creativity that is offered to the affluent to all of our kids.

Chalef can call it “intelligent disobedience.” I’d prefer to call it “creative insubordination.” Trust the new generation of families, educators, and students, and they will coin their own names for the learning culture they create from the bottom up.