Thanks To The Support I Received
Dr. Louis Wildman
Professor of Educational Administration
California State University-Bakersfield
Prior to her marriage, my mother had been an elementary teacher—some years teaching music and other years teaching the second grade. When she got married, she became a home-maker, and devoted herself to my father, myself, and the care of my grandmother and great grandmother, who lived next door. Hence, prior to starting school in the first grade (as it was thought “good parents” didn’t send their children to kindergarten), I received one-on-one instruction. By the age of five, I could play the piano and snare drum, count, and read.
At the heart of the Puritan philosophy of education was the belief in a holy triad in education—the family, the church, and the schools (Morgan, 1986). In my life, as it was for the Puritans, the family was the most important of the three. Now, when I teach school administrators about home-school relationships, I draw several concentric circles and place the child in the center, with the family in the next circle and the school in the following circle. Starting with my own experience, I have always taught that the relationship between the child and the family should be supported as a closer relationship than between the child and the school.
I distinctly remember my first day of school. Classes were formed from a long line of students and their mothers, which snaked back and forth, filling the gym floor. The first twenty-five students went to one class; then another group left; and then I was in the next group. I had been looking forward to that first day of school, but the next day I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t like being treated like a number; I didn’t like being “herded;” and I hadn’t anticipated the regimentation. As an educator, I hope I never treat people as so many widgets.
My mother insisted that I be allowed to play in the school band, even though that was supposed to be only for fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Once a month on a Sunday afternoon, a “family orchestra” practiced in the living room at home. My mother played the violin and my aunt played the flute. Other acquaintances played various instruments—clarinet, trombone, tuba, piano, and violin. I was the only child in the group--playing the drums—and all of these adult expert musicians gave me lots of patient instruction. Hence at school, after the music instructor found out I could read music and actually play, he was happy to have me in the school band, even if I was only in the first grade. I remember that one day an eighth grader—Willie—helped me find my way back to my classroom after band rehearsal. I had helped him keep his place in the music, and he helped me. I learned early how important it is to help others.
While my father was a tax accountant, on weekends prior to his marriage, he served as a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, conducting church services throughout Oregon, when priests became ill. Of course I can’t remember being baptized as a baby, but I have virtually always attended church on Sundays and, as a teenager, served occasionally as an acolyte. However, we didn’t always go to the Episcopal Church. Though my great grandmother had been among the founders of St. Andrews Episcopal Church, my parents wanted me to see what went on in other churches. So, about a half-dozen times a year, we visited a wide-range of churches, from the Russian Orthodox to the evangelical types, as part of my education.
Visiting many churches broadened my education and strengthened my faith as an Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church has a beautiful worship service in which literally every aspect has profound symbolic meaning. The worship service embodies symbols that are both personally meaningful and which express the infinite power and magnificence of the Lord’s creation. The Episcopal Church encourages members to think, rather than merely follow simplistic directives that do not recognize contemporary knowledge and circumstances. Hence, the Episcopal Church does not preach a literal interpretation of the Bible. Rather, it values Biblical scholarship and teaches members to apply Christian principles. Attending church, one need not embarrass oneself by yelling, dancing, or otherwise calling attention to oneself, as in so many evangelical churches. To me, calling attention to oneself during worship is inappropriate because it directs attention away from worshiping the Lord. When attending church, one can easily form friendships and feel a sense of community, but that is secondary to worship, which is the main reason for going to church.
Episcopalians are frequently asked why they are not Roman Catholics, as both believe in apostolic succession. The Episcopal Church first traces its ancestry back to the Anglican Church in Britain. The Anglican Church traces its ancestry back to missionaries who were in Britain before St. Augustine’s mission in 597. The main difference between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches is that the Roman Catholic Church believes that the Bishop of Rome is the supreme bishop, whereas the Anglican Church does not recognize the Pope as the supreme bishop. The authority which Christ gave to St. Peter (Matt 16, 19 and John 21, 15-17) was also given to all the apostles (Matt. 18.18 and John 20. 23). Further, for at the least the first 250 years of the Church’s history, there was not the slightest recognition in the Church that the Bishop of Rome was the supreme bishop. Innocent I (died 417) and Leo I (440-461) were the first Bishops of Rome to make serious claims to supremacy over other bishops.
The picture the Roman Catholics give is that King Henry VIII demanded a divorce which was against the law of the Church, whilst the Pope righteously upheld the Church’s law. It is said that Henry VIII founded the Anglican Church, however, Henry VIII himself was unaware of any such thing (Anonymous, 1953).
In addition to that history, I believe that the Episcopal Church better represents my understanding of Christianity, as interpreted for contemporary life, than Catholicism.
The world-wide problem of over-population would not be nearly so bad today had Catholics, Buddhists, Hindus, and Moslems taught birth control.
Each year my parents, grandmother, great-grandmother and I always spent a few days at a family-owned cabin in Seaside, Oregon. That cabin had a large wood stove, which was also used to heat the place. It was my job to get up early; build a fire in that stove; and make pancakes for breakfast. My father had had similar responsibilities when he was a boy, and I carried on that family tradition of serving elders.
During summers, my father had a one-month vacation. These usually involved a two-week family trip in the United States and Canada. We would visit relatives; visit historic sites and zoos; attend concerts; and visit art museums. While I now realize that these experiences significantly contributed to my education, at the time, I didn’t understand that they embodied cultural values somewhat different from those values held by my elementary and secondary teachers, as well as my classmates who were deeply involved in the pop and teenage culture of that time.
On vacations and at home around the dinner table, my parents discussed the news, politics and religion. We listened to what was then the equivalent of public radio and television, today. Even now, in talking with my graduate educational administration students, I am struck by how few, as parents, listen to C-SPAN and public radio and television, and, as parents, talk about significant issues with their children.
Then, my mother and father discussed various views with me. This gave me an opportunity to try-out my ideas in a supportive environment.
Since my father worked for the Internal Revenue Service, we frequently discussed what was a fair tax. He believed in a graduated income tax, and so do I. He taught me how important it was for everyone to sacrifice in accordance with their means in the paying of taxes for needed public services. It always bothered my father that while the ordinary citizen who earned a specific wage inevitably had to pay the tax they owed because it was deducted directly from their monthly pay, so many in business were avoiding paying because of shady accounting procedures. Further, I learned that since the Internal Revenue Service was severely under-staffed for political reasons, billions of tax dollars each year went un-collected.
Portland, Oregon is famous for its Portland Youth Philharmonic. Portland was one of the first cities in the United States to have a youth symphony. At age 9, I was the youngest to have auditioned and become a member. (The average age was around 16.) I played in that orchestra for eleven years, and one year was the featured soloist at one of their public concerts. In 1958 I won their scholarship to the summer Aspen Music School where I because acquainted with members of the New York Philharmonic and NBC Symphonies, and in 1960 I won the Portland Youth Philharmonic’s scholarship to Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony.
During those eleven years I also was selected for the All-City Elementary Orchestra, and the All-City, All-State, and All-Northwest High School Orchestras. And by the age of 16 I became a professional musician, performing in the adult Oregon Symphony Orchestra, with which I also soloed on several occasions.
As a teenager, playing in one of the twenty best symphony orchestras in the United States, I thought I was pretty good. But when I studied with members of the New York Philharmonic, NBC Symphony, and Boston Symphony, I learned that I was not as good as I thought, and this was a valuable lesson in humility for anyone, particularly a teenager.
By the time I entered Lewis & Clark College, majoring in music and mathematics, I was teaching private music lessons during the day on Saturdays, and either attending rehearsals or performing, virtually every night of the week. In addition to symphony performances, I was called upon to perform in opera and ballet orchestras, and traveling musicals and ice shows coming to Portland. Occasionally I was even performing at special church services. For the past 50 years I have played the tubular chimes on Christmas Eve and timpani on Easter morning at the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Portland.
But the life of a full-time musician was not for me. Upon graduating from Lewis & Clark College, I went on to get a master’s in music education from the University of Portland. This led to an appointment teaching music history and theory at Warner Pacific College, also in Portland.
A few minutes before I started my first lecture, a grand-motherly lady asked me if she could post an advertisement she had cut out of the Portland newspaper on the bulletin board in the back of the classroom. She had been a missionary in the Polynesian Islands, and dancers she knew from there were going to perform at the Civic Auditorium in downtown Portland. I said, “of course,” and proceeded to start the class.
Music history courses usually start by discussing the music of classical Greece, and so I explained what little we know about that music, since we can only surmise what it sounded like from reading Greek literature and seeing art which pictures their musical instruments. What we think we know is that the music of the time was often related to dancing.
After my lecture I returned to my office, whereupon I got a call from the college dean, asking me to come to his office. When I entered, his first words were “Why did you allow the posting of that vile picture?” I had no idea what he was talking about, though the thought occurred to me that some student had posted a “Playboy-type” picture as a prank. In any case, I told him I would take it down. But before I could get up to leave, he proceeded to tell me that at that college they didn’t believe in dancing, and that I was not to discuss dancing in my music history class.
When I went to the classroom to take down the picture—remember, this was my first day of teaching—I found the picture the lady from Polynesia had posted, already torn off the wall, lying on the floor with a footprint, stamped on it. I was dumbfounded. The picture was not at all revealing, but of a male dancer standing on one foot with a bone in his hand.
Soon after I got back to my office, I was visited by a student who asked if I had been “saved.” Not immediately recognizing what she meant, I asked, “saved from what?” and soon found out that that was the wrong answer!
Teaching at this college for two years, I learned the need for academic freedom, and how precious and essential it is to teach a full and honest account of one’s subject.
During those years I also realized that I needed a doctorate to advance in higher education. This led to leaving Portland to attend the University of Washington in Seattle. There I wanted a broader education than just in music, so I applied to enter their programs in educational administration and higher education administration.
I thoroughly enjoyed the six years I spent studying at the University of Washington. One fall term I got administrative experience, organizing freshman orientation. Since little research had been done on freshman orientation, I persuaded the administration to randomly partition the entering class into five groups. The first group would just receive welcoming and registration materials in the mail, and the second and fifth groups would receive an invitation to participate in a typical orientation on campus with explanations about how to register, check books out of the library, and join fraternities and sororities. The third and fourth groups received minimal orientation materials, but the emphasis for those two groups was on the ideals of higher education. They received a reading on those ideals (excerpts from Noah Fehl’s book, The Idea of a University in East and West (1962)) and were invited to participate in small group discussions about those ideals led by faculty. A few months later, all freshmen were asked to complete a semantic differential on the meaning of a university. Factor analysis of those responses revealed that while members of groups one, two, and five appeared to think of the university as one might think of any large bureaucratic organization, those who participated in groups three and four, thought of the university in terms of the ideals of higher education. This experience taught me the importance of teaching students a school’s vision and its ideals and values.
Later at the University of Washington I was hired as a research assistant, assigned to survey and interview graduates of the College of Arts and Sciences. Like so many, I had the impression that there are “good” teachers and “bad” teachers. However, after surveying several thousand former students, and interviewing more than a hundred randomly chosen graduates, I was impressed by the diversity of responses. Virtually every faculty member turned out to be the favorite of five or six graduates. What marvelous diversity! It certainly taught me that we should not be so quick to judge teachers, as students differ in their judgments.
One summer at the University of Washington I was hired to serve as a research assistant to a faculty committee preparing to review the undergraduate curriculum. They wanted me to review relevant research and write an annotated bibliography. They gave me an office within the provost’s suite, and left for the summer. This gave me an undisturbed opportunity to not only write the annotated bibliography, but write a book with my own ideas, which I titled A Philosophy of Higher Education. It was in that book that I tried to set forth a consistent plan for undergraduate education, starting from my beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology, etc.,. to educational theory, to actual practice, utilizing what I called, the integrative model:
Philosophy------------------->Theory------------------------->Practice
Metaphysics Organized Knowledge Content
Epistemology Learning Theory Teaching Method
Logic Social Needs Setting/Materials
Ethics
Political philosophy
Aesthetics
I still recommend the integrative model to doctoral students. The integrative model is useful for comparing the thinking of various educators, and for examining the consistency of their thinking between philosophy, theory, and recommended practice.
As a teaching assistant at the University of Washington, I became acquainted with some of the senior school administrators in Seattle, and they invited me to work with teachers at Garfield High School, helping them write behavioral objectives for all courses. This became one of the first such guides in the nation. Successfully completing that assignment, they invited me to stay on as curriculum coordinator for the Central Area.
Unfortunately, during those years, Boeing had an economic downturn, laying off thousands of workers, and with just four years seniority in Seattle, I got laid off as well. The Seattle Public Schools found it necessary to lay off all certificated staff, except minorities, with less than nine years seniority. When I mention this, people often ask me how I felt having been laid off, while minorities with less seniority were able to keep their jobs.
I have always believed in affirmative action. Had minorities been laid off, this would have reversed what little progress had been made in the Seattle Public Schools in the hiring of educators proportionately representative of the student population. Obviously I was not enthused about being laid off, but I realized that this sacrifice was necessary for the greater good. I resolved to stay in Seattle, and substituted the following year, 178 out of 180 days. Never before had I received so many traffic tickets! In my enthusiasm to get out to a new school in the morning when called, I drove through every speed trap in town. I should have learned to temper my enthusiasm for teaching!
The following year I was re-hired as a junior high math teacher. But then I was laid off again, as Boeing was still laying off more employees, and the Seattle Public Schools had to lay off all certificated employees (again, except minorities) without eleven years seniority. So that was the end of my patience, waiting in Seattle, and I applied elsewhere, obtaining a position as curriculum associate in the Hillsboro High School District, followed the next year as superintendent/principal of the tiny North River School District in the Coast Range, 30 miles east of Highway 101 near Aberdeen, Washington.
This was a unique opportunity. The North River School District had had five superintendents in the previous four years. The community was split as to whether they even wanted to maintain their own school district or consolidate with Aberdeen. I went door to door, trying to convince folks about the advantages of small schools, and by a narrow margin, the move to consolidate was defeated. Meanwhile I needed to hire teachers for this remote, isolated school district, as most had left at the end of the previous year, thinking that they wouldn’t have jobs if they stayed.
Here is where I learned about the selection process. At the University of Washington I had been taught to utilize the “systems model:”
1. Analyze the position, accurately describing job related tasks, cognizant of local situation variables;
2. Establish and weight selection criteria based on the foregoing analysis;
3. Recruit, describe and rank applicants on the weighted selection criteria;
4. Interview the highest ranked applicants; and
5. Hire the top candidate.
Unfortunately, there are many problems with this systems model. Interviews are not good predictors of how candidates will actually perform (Wagner, 1949; Mayfield, 1964; Reilly and Chao, 1982). Further, task analysis tends to focus upon specific techniques, whereas I wanted more broadly educated professionals. The “systems” approach also takes decision-making away from the decision-makers, in that it sets up a procedure and doesn’t consider the possibility that someone might apply who doesn’t qualify in accordance with the procedure, but who has outstanding qualifications which were not anticipated. Most importantly, the systems approach only looks at the applicant from the school district’s perspective. It doesn’t consider the interests of the applicant, even though selection should be a two-way process.
For these reasons I developed what I call the “human resource model.” This human resource model looks at selection as an opportunity for the utilization of human resources, rather than as a search for a “replacement part.” Obviously a school district needs qualified applicants, but when there are numerous qualified applicants—anyone of which the school district would be satisfied to hire—it doesn’t make sense to make the final decision on the basis of a minute superior difference. Rather, the human resource model suggests that school districts make the final decision among qualified candidates on the basis of how well the candidate’s academic interests could be pursued within the available vacancy.
For example, let’s assume one is looking for a high school science teacher. If the final decision comes down to choosing between two qualified applicants—one with an interest in oceanography and the other with an interest in desert plants, it makes sense to hire the science teacher who can best pursue their interest in the particular setting.
Selecting teachers for the North River School District, I sought to utilize the human resource model, but I first had a major problem—namely getting any teachers to apply to teach in this remote, isolated area.
My solution followed from criticism of the systems model. Typically school districts advertise for a “third grade” teacher or an “English” teacher. To the school district, it is as if one third grade teacher is the same as another third grade teacher. The applicants are treated as “replacement parts.”
As a practical matter, the North River School District couldn’t compete for excellent teachers if it utilized the systems model. We were literally forced into following a different strategy—namely the human resource model.
Thus I began by widely advertising the vision I had for the North River School District. I advertised in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, as well as the Seattle and Portland newspapers. The advertisement made reference to selecting teachers who could meet our requirements as well as pursue their academic interests, and literally hundreds of teachers applied—many expressing their enthusiasm for a school district which considered selection as a two-way process.
My biggest problem was in helping the citizens, faculty, students, and staff see the vision of this small school district. They were so used to assuming that “bigger was better,” that they had difficulty sensing that a quality education was more attainable in a smaller setting. To address this issue, I repeatedly asked the question, “If you could create an ideal school, what would you do?” Eventually the faculty, staff, students, and members of the community developed the following answer:
It would be a small learning community, where everyone was trying to learn. There would be frequent discussions; projects which benefitted all. We would recognize that students and teachers have worthwhile purposes. Students would learn by doing, trying, modeling. The people would be friendly— sometimes playing together; more often working together for each other.
The members of this learning community would try to educate themselves for responsible caring about each other; for example, learning Red Cross First Aid together. For the professionals, the work would be more than a job—it would represent a higher calling, a dedication of one’s life.
The atmosphere would be conducive to learning and the pursuit of knowledge. The members of the learning community would develop common bonds of trust. The curriculum would model the best we know … a separation from careless ways, toward a higher level of insight and deeper sense of purpose. The members would seek a balanced curriculum of physical, intellectual and artistic habits. They would utilize a teaching process which involved appreciating, valuing, studying together, characterized by kindness toward one another, consideration, and cooperation, in a beautiful place; in a place for quiet thought, but not isolated from worldly concerns.
It would be a place which is continually evolving; a place where the faculty not only tries to teach students to do things, but also to help them understand what they are doing.
In sum, it would be a small, friendly, learning community with a few students and teachers, striving for excellence, cooperating, and helping each other learn, sharing joys and hardships, studying together. It would never be a completed task, but an adventure for all.
To promote this vision, we developed a slide show to illustrate what we were talking about.
While working for four years implementing that vision and winning the “Giraffe Award” from Quest Magazine for “sticking my neck out for small schools,” the economy of the North River Valley changed. Small logging companies were bought out by a giant corporation, and families became impoverished—some turning to illegal activities, such as stealing cedar trees and growing marijuana, to survive. Once again, my cultural values were inconsistent with the local population, so I resigned and accepted the superintendency in the Crescent School District, west of Port Angeles, Washington.
There too, within a month of arriving, I was immediately tossed into a consolidation fight over whether the Crescent School District should consolidate with Port Angeles. In response, I quickly held community meetings and developed the theme, “Public education with a personal touch.” Here are the ideals we decided to work for:
1. Strong basic education for good citizenship.
2. Encouragement of initiative.
3. Being responsive to student needs and parent desires.
4. School staff, students and parents working and learning together.
5. Greater utilization of the school facilities by the community.
We emphasized that the Crescent School District belonged to the local citizens, whether they had students there or not. We wanted to emphasize that the school district was for the community, and hopefully the community was for the school district.
Fortunately, the community recognized that were they to lose their school district, they would have lost their sense of community. So the consolidation movement was defeated. But then I was faced with the problems of this district, the biggest of which was a very large unemployment rate.
Some may be surprised that a school superintendent would be concerned with this economic problem. But with almost half of the men in the community unemployed, it was essential that something be done as family poverty is directly related to student achievement.
Hence I decided to organize an economic development conference. I invited the unemployed, representatives of all the local timber companies, the county commissioners, representatives from the state and federal forestry departments, and faculty from the College of Forestry at the University of Washington. My charge to them was to identify ideas and ways that the unemployed could return to work. During that day, two such ideas were identified. It was learned that there was a need for a company to manufacture wooden filigree for older homes. Second, it was learned that many trucks were bringing food from southern California to the Olympic Peninsula, but returning empty. It was suggested that companies be formed to bundle firewood and send it back to southern California in those otherwise empty trucks. These two ideas improved the economy of the region.
The Olympic Peninsula is a beautiful area, but during much of the year it rains a lot. Given the poverty of the area, it had not been possible for the school district to afford a covered play area for the elementary school. Hence, this was a big problem, as the students needed recess breaks and play time at noon. Clearly, I needed to find a way to build a covered play area.
In going through records in the superintendent’s office, luckily I came across a file showing that land had been donated to the school district, many years ago, and long since forgotten. Hoping that this land was in the forest, I asked the high school FFA club to see if they could find it. And sure enough, the acres were in a heavily forested area, but about a half mile from the nearest road.
Fortunately, a local constituent still had two very large Percheron horses, capable of pulling large logs to the nearest road, and he was willing to volunteer his time and horses. Thus we cut a sufficient number of large trees to form a large pole barn, de-barked them, and a logging company was willing to haul the logs to the school grounds. The telephone company offered to help, but only the Coast Guard had a drill sufficiently large to drill holes in the ground for these large logs, so they too got involved.
Once the high school carpentry class framed the roof and shakes were donated, we held an old fashioned barn raising on a Saturday, and about a hundred citizens showed up to install the cedar shakes, serve a big picnic lunch, or simply cheer everyone on. The barn raising brought the community together. The elementary school got a large covered play area for the cost of just some nails, cement, and framing lumber, and the children, particularly, were pleased. A few days later, a lady came to my office and said she wanted to donate a bird house for the play shed. When I went outside to look at it, I saw a bird house that filled the back end of a pickup truck! It was a mansion, with numerous floors and a fancy roof! So, we installed it on top of the covered play area.
Unfortunately, during my second year as Superintendent of the Crescent School District, I learned how an election can change the composition and interests of the school board. The community was split between the very rich newcomers, the long-time families, and the relatively poor folk. I had the support of the last two groups, but not the very rich newcomers, and I left to return to Oregon, and a position as Curriculum Coordinator in the Lakeview School District. There, after three years, cuts in school funding resulted in my leaving education to serve as Director of the Lake County Chamber of Commerce. This was a wonderful opportunity, but I missed education, so I applied for a position teaching educational administration at California State University-Bakersfield, where I have been for the past twenty-three years.
The main reason I sought a position in higher education, rather than another superintendency, was so that I could work on trying to organize the knowledge base in educational administration. All professions need a knowledge base which summarizes the profession’s researched theories and lessons of practice. As a doctoral student, I had been interested in Stanford Professor William H. Cowley’s taxonomy. His student, Prof. Don Williams, who was carrying on Cowley’s work, was also my advisor at the University of Washington. Hence when I was hired at California State University-Bakersfield, I started researching the major domains in educational administration. I did this by using a Delphi technique to get the consensus of over a hundred educational administration faculty and practicing educational administrators. That work was then published in the first Handbook of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (in Hoyle & Estes, 1993, 35-60.) Today the educational administration knowledge base is available without charge on-line at http://www.ncpea.net, and I serve as the editor. There are twenty major domains:
1. Historical, social, cultural, and philosophical foundations
2. Research methods
3. Learning theory
4. Curriculum
5. Student services
6. Administration of special programs
7. Personnel
8. Educational management
9. Educational leadership
10. Human relations
11. Organizational change
12. Site-based leadership
13. School law and policy
14. School business and finance
15. School public relations
16. School facilities
17. District leadership
18. Educational leadership preparation
19. Technology leadership
20. International contributions
During the years I have taught at California State University-Bakersfield, I have been fortunate to have won a number of awards:
The “Meritorious Performance and Professional Promise” Award (1989-90); the School of Education “Service” Award (1999), the “Excellence in Teaching” Award (2000), and the “Excellence in Research” Award (2006), from California State University-Bakersfield;
The “CAPEA Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication to the California Association of Professors of Educational Administration and the Students and Schools Served (1998);
The United Way of Kern County "From the Heart" Award, for significantly improving the "area of education for the betterment of Kern County” (2001);
The West Kern Association of California School Administrators' "Professor of Education of the Year" (2005);
The Association of California School Administrators’ California “Professor of Education of the Year” Award (2005); and
The National Council of Professors of Educational Administration "Living Legend" Award (2006).
However, thinking back over those years at California State University-Bakersfield, it is not the local, state, and national awards for which I would like to be remembered, but I would like to be remembered for my values and the work I have tried to accomplish in the pursuit of those values. These values, learned from my reading, research, and experience, represent the major factors or dimensions in my thinking about educational administration.
I begin teaching all my courses by reviewing those values so that students understand my perspective, and so that they can see how those values play out in the different courses I teach. Here are those values:
1. Just as I am against waste in natural resources, I am also against waste in human resources.
This value is fundamental to how I approach school personnel management.
For me, vacancies are not just positions in a system to be filled, but opportunities for the utilization of human resources.
For me, a democracy can never have too many educated people. Hence, I am saddened when, for example, so many Ph.D.’s are unable to find work wherein they can pursue knowledge. This is the reason Professor Donald Williams and I proposed “Institutes in the Arts and Sciences” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1973) as a kind of government WPA project for researchers and scholars. Scientists and scholars should be “inner-directed”—guided by their own intellectual curiosity, insight, and conscience. Such people make a lifetime commitment to the pursuit of truth. They may agree to forsake riches and agree to live in relative poverty, yet tragically still not be allowed to make such a commitment.
Clearly, since only a portion of the entire potential labor force is needed to produce needed levels of goods and services, it is unlikely that the market model will ever motivate society to fully utilize available expertise. Therefore when there is a vacancy in education, it should be seen as an opportunity to utilize human resources.
This is also the reason I believe school personnel directors should utilize the human resources selection procedure, and constantly be looking for ways of maximizing the use of available human resources.
2. I believe schools should be learning communities.
In a learning community there is
a. a sharing of knowledge;
b. a recognition that students and teachers are all learners;
c. a valuing of education (vs. training) by all members; and
d. decision-making based on the merit of ideas, not on who had the idea.
3. Schools have two fundamental purposes.
While at the University of Washington, I took a course in social psychology and came across the work of Edward Jones and Howard Gerard who had spent a year at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, sorting and reviewing research in that field. They concluded that “there is a basic antinomy [opposition] between openness to change and the desire to preserve a pre-existing view or conviction.” (1967, p. 227) This fundamental antinomy pits stability and self-maintenance on the one hand against openness to change and stimulation on the other, and I felt that this same antinomy applied to education. Schools desire to pass on to their students pre-existing views as well as encourage them to share in the search for truth. Likewise, Immanuel Kant said that “education partly teaches man something and partly merely develops something within him.”
This antinomy partitions education into two types: “expository” and “investigatory.” The purpose of expository education is to pass on to the next generation what we have learned. It can be described in terms of stated specific objectives. The purpose of investigatory education is to develop the unique talents and abilities of each student, so hopefully students can surpass our accomplishments.
Throughout the years I have been critical of those who would not recognize that schools have both of these fundamental purposes. For example, Chester Finn, writing what he called “The Biggest Reform of All” in the April 1990 Kappan (584-592) defined education in terms of learning outcomes. I responded in a subsequent edition of the Kappan, suggesting that education involves both passing on to the next generation what we think is of most worth, as well as facilitating individual student talent. Chester Finn’s article was very influential in promoting the outcomes-based education movement, but, as I stated in my response, “artists and scientists do not attain eminence by pursuing the most efficient trail towards passing an exit exam. Rather, they linger to investigate an idea or pursue a special talent.”
Similarly, Dennis Doyle (Kappan, March 1992) wrote a similar article to Chester Finn’s. Again I responded in the Kappan that in education, both sides of the antinomy were needed.
Over the years it has been a great disappointment that more and more, culminating in the “No Child Left Behind” disaster, that a one-sided view of education has gradually taken hold, when a balance between the two sides of education is needed. (For much more on this needed balance, see my August 1, 2006 “Living Legend” lecture which may be found at http://www.csub.edu/~lwildman/speech.html)
To provide this needed balance in my own courses, I have introduced investigatory projects within my own graduate classes. Frequently students report that they experience a kind of existential dreadful fear of embarking upon projects where no one knows how they will turn out. Typically even graduate students want to be able to turn to the back of the textbook and find “the answers.” But life isn’t like that. Hence, while all of my classes include a substantial amount of content which I want the students to learn, they also include participation in an investigatory class project which we develop as the term progresses. Here is a list of some of those investigatory projects:
1. Advice for New School Administrators
2. Guiding Student Achievement Through Teacher Evaluation
3. An Educator's Guide to Conflict Resolution
4. Increasing the Educational Use of School Buildings
5. Examples of Investigatory Teaching
6. Authentic Curriculum
7. Strategies for Dealing with Difficult Parents
8. Field Trips: A Manual For Educators
9. Authentic Assessment Examples
10. Preparing Student Conflict Managers
11. Grades, Grades, Grades
12. An Analysis of Restructuring Proposals in the Richland-
Lerdo School District
13. A School Assembly Guide
14. Dealing With Difficult Staff Members
15. An Inservice Guide for Developing Greater Cross-Cultural
Understanding
16. An Emergency Preparedness Handbook for School
Administrators
17. Developing Meaningful Graduation Ceremonies
4. While educating all is expensive, it is more expensive not to make a liberal education the norm for most everyone.
For Americans, the importance of public education is a proposition of faith based on deeply democratic assertions of the rightness of educating every person, not because of their economic value or political influence, but because of their dignity as human beings and their rights as citizens.
There is a positive correlation between intellectual freedom and education. The percentage of adults who show a tolerant attitude toward political nonconformists, for example, varies considerably in accord with the amount of education they have received. One of the earliest studies of this was a nation-wide poll conducted by Seymour Lipset (1960).
In another early longitudinal study, Trent and Medsker followed 10,000 high school graduates through the next four years of their lives as they entered colleges, the labor market or full time homemaking (1968). They found that college students become more critical in their thinking, more tolerant, flexible, and autonomous in attitude, and less prejudiced in their judgments, whereas young people who embark upon jobs or full time homemaking do not show the same kind of development.
Utilizing the “Omnibus Personality Inventory,” the changes Trent and Medsker found on the “Non-authoritarianism scale” were startling, especially with reference to intellectual freedom. Those who score high on the Non-authoritarianism scale are characterized by flexibility, tolerance, objectivity, and a lack of dependency upon rules or rituals for dealing with ideas, objects, and people. On the other hand, low scorers are more rigid and conventional in their thinking, tending to see more situations in a this or that, two-choice fashion. Trent and Medsker found that whereas the mean scores for non-college students indicated that they became more authoritarian over the four year period, college students became markedly less authoritarian. As Michael Rebell has written, “a person’s ability to function productively as a civic participant, to be a capable voter, juror, and involved citizen who feels a personal stake in society, clearly mirrors his or her educational level” (in Belfield & Levin, 2007, p. 255). Hence, if we are to develop our democracy, education is very important.
Further, because the return on investment in schooling is higher now than in the past, and because as a nation we now face greater international economic competition, the cost of under-investing in education is enormous. For example, Cecelia Rouse showed (ibid. pp. 99-124) that “increasing the schooling of those without high school degrees by one year would generate an increase of $88 billion in lifetime income and income tax revenues of nearly $100 billion (including Social Security contributions).
As a footnote to this belief, I hasten to add that I believe it is extremely important that when we teach educational finance to prospective educational administrators, that we embed their study of financial accounting techniques within an understanding of the foundations of public education. Public education is not a business, and we should resist pressures to apply de-regulated market model concepts. I believe public education should primarily be concerned about developing human resources.
5. Affirmative action (or proportional representation).
As I mentioned above, while discussing my work in Seattle, I have always believed in affirmative action even though I personally have had to sacrifice for it. We in the United States have an opportunity to build a multi-racial society, showing the strength of proportional diversity. Since history teaches us the perils of racial discrimination, and Christ teaches us that we are all children of God, we must recognize that there is no genetic basis for racial classifications. Rather, surface skin color is a continuum like many other human characteristics.
6. While schools are for students, they are also for teachers and administrators who spend their lives within these institutions. The way the public treats educators—our educated—demonstrates the extent to which we value education.
The primary role of personnel administrators is to facilitate the development of human resources—to bring out and utilize the talents of those who work in the schools. Many other professions would love to have such dedicated members. However, if we do not respect that dedication by treating educators well, children will notice and likewise not value education.
7. I believe in a balanced life of physical, intellectual, and artistic activities, as the habits of a liberally educated individual.
Basketball coach John Wooden often quotes a poem:
No written word nor spoken plea
Can teach young hearts what they should be.
Nor all the books upon the shelves.
But what the teachers are themselves.
In other words, if we are to teach students to live a balanced life of physical, intellectual, and artistic activities, we must do so, ourselves.
I have tried to follow that advice. Each weekday morning I play basketball from about 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. I continue my musical career through regular practice and occasional performances. My scholarly pursuits comprise my intellectual activities.
Every summer since 1972 I have conducted a Liberal Arts Seminar designed to help adults ten to fifteen years beyond college, model this classical Greek ideal. While these Liberal Arts Seminars have varied over the years, depending upon what I could afford to sponsor, they have continued to carry out the basic purpose—namely to teach adults to live a balanced life of physical, intellectual, and artistic activities.
The relevance of that ideal is realized when one considers that heart disease is the nation’s number one health problem. Nearly a million Americans die each year from heart and blood vessel disease. This number could be significantly reduced if people would engage in an individually planned and enjoyable physical exercise program. Adults know this, but need help getting started. Within these seminars, a university physical educator helps participants start an individually appropriate physical exercise program. And this component occurs before breakfast in the one-week Liberal Arts Seminar.
At breakfast, a hospital nutritionist teaches participants to evaluate the quality of food they consume. For the week the nutritionist plans a widely varied diet, suggesting many need filling dishes which are both healthy and aesthetic. A cook prepares the meals.
In a society of constant change, large numbers of people who remain frozen in their ways of seeing things become a retarding force. Thus, in the morning a social scientist, and in the afternoon a physical scientist, involves the group in replications of key experiments, designed to acquaint participants with current thinking in the social and physical sciences and help participants improve their modes of inquiry.
At lunch, participants engage in discussions of readings previously distributed to the group. Either the author or someone acquainted with the author leads each discussion. Discussions begin with an analysis of the author’s viewpoint, and proceed to an examination of the limitations of the author’s method and the applicability of the author’s suggestions.
Each evening a different artist performs and describes his/her work, soon followed by elementary experiences hopefully which will interest participants in later amateur artistic involvement.
During the week, the leaders of each activity participate in all of the other activities, along with participants from business, industry, labor, government, and education. This emphasizes the idea that we are all students.
Since virtually every school district and university has experts in physical education, nutrition, the social and physical sciences, and the arts, school districts and universities could conduct adult Liberal Arts Seminars. This would help the faculty in these educational institutions practice what they preach.
Reflections
After writing the above, I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, in which he explains how we owe much to our parentage, opportunities, and culture.
I certainly owe much to my parents. My mother tutored me before I went to school. The family orchestra taught me to carefully listen to play together with other musicians. In high school when I had trouble learning all the characters in the Odyssey, my mother helped me study the story by reading it slowly with me, with much commentary. Throughout my childhood, my parents encouraged me to do my homework and practice my music, usually for several hours a day.
Throughout my life I have been fortunate to have had unique opportunities. Trying out for the Portland Youth Philharmonic at an age younger than any other player, I overheard the assistant conductor mention to the conductor that my aunt played the flute in the Oregon Symphony. That connection surely helped. Just happening to be playing the piano in the choral room at Lewis & Clark College, when the Director of the music department was asked to recommend candidates to apply to teach music at Warner Pacific College was certainly a stroke of luck.
Finally, culture has played a big role in my life. Growing up, I listened to the news at the dinner table with my parents, and they discussed it with me. The social and religious culture of the Episcopal Church, with its emphasis upon reason, respect for scholarly learning, and stately worship services, continues to influence my life. Both of my parents graduated from college, and occasionally attended alumni functions. I remember one such dinner in which as a boy I had the opportunity of sitting next to the President of Oregon State University. Participating in that academic culture, Malcolm Gladwell would say it is not surprising that I became a professor.
References
Anonymous (1953). Infallible Fallacies: An Anglican Reply to Roman Catholic Arguments. New York: Morehouse-Barlow Co.
Belfield, C., & Levin, H. (Eds.) (2007). The Price we pay: Economic and social consequences of inadequate education. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Doyle, D. (1992). The Challenge, the opportunity. Phi Delta Kappan, March.
Fehl, Noah (1962). The Idea of a University in East and West. Hong Kong: Chung Chi College.
Finn, C. (1990). The Biggest Reform of all. Phi Delta Kappan, 584-592.
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Hoyle, J., & Estes, D. (Eds.) (1993). The First Yearbook of the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration. Lancaster, PA: Technomic Publishing Co.
Jones, E., & Gerard, H. (1967). Foundations of Social Psychology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Lipset, S. (1960). Political Man. Garden City: Doubleday & Company.
Mayfield, E. (1964). The Selection interview: A Reevaluation of published research. Personnel Psychology, 17, 239-260.
Morgan, J. (1986). Godly learning: Puritan attitudes towards religion, learning, and education. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reilly, R. R., & Chao, G. T. (1982). Validity and fairness of some alternative employee selection procedures. Personnel Psychology, 35, 1-62.
Trent, J. W., & Medsker, L. L. (1968). Beyond High School. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Wagner, R. (1949). The Employment interview: A Critical summary. Personnel Psychology, 2, 17-46.