GREAT SCHOOLS

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  Great schools are not very complicated. There are a few simple

principles that can guide us.  Three principles are central to

all effective schools.  They are small, focused, and stable.



     The three principles are -  small, focused groups solving

their own problems, a learning community. The way to remember

this is SIMPLE; Stable, Independent, Managed, Principled, Little

and Elegant.  Stable because human beings need to know each other

and it takes time to build a community. Independent because

people need to be responsible. Managed because we need order,

rules, and structure. Principled because only character,

leadership, and values produce dependable results. Little because

"big is bad" and "small is beautiful," people need to be a member

of a clan, a tribe, or an extended family.  Substantive groups

are committed to each other, they care and love one another.

Elegant is a measure of quality. Quality in relationships

produces quality in process and product.



     Management theory has a new attitude because of the larger

numbers of professional workers. The model is now the "knowledge

industry."  Creative work cannot be ordered from the top down.

The top often doesn't know enough about the technical substance

of the work.  Our cultural and economic archetype has changed

from the farm to the factory and to the age of communications and

computers.   Professionals require the freedom of action not

possible in the bureaucratic, top-down, large factory.  Deming

has argued for self management within a set of quality standards. 

Schools, however, remain factories.



     Schools, as in all institutions, needed clear, focused and

ethical - goal building strategies.  Schools must connect doing

and thinking. The school itself must be a model of behavior. The

schools must have leadership, principles, be authentic and

sincere, where people are committed to giving rewards and

punishments for specific behavior. They must know what they want

and can distinguish the essential from the superficial.



     Small focused schools (a building is not a school) should

have multigraded multiaged programs with individual attention -

un-factory like. Integrated learning around topics such as

science, ecology, geography, history, literature, technology,

crafts, practical skills, visual and dramatic arts have meaning

to those involved.  Action is guided by the authentic drive and

hustle of the people involved.



     Educational has failed partly by trying to do too much and

to be all things to all people.  Democratic control means

political vagueness. Citizens vote against the new or uncertain.

Large groups cannot share innate feeling and common human

experience. They don't know or trust each mther. Formal rules

replace judgment. Only sports unites students, teachers and the

community. 



     More that two out of three children are not meeting

realistic modern standards of learning and learning how to learn.

They cannot complete for today's good jobs and do not understand

how to master new knowledge for the jobs of the future.

Educational reform has failed over the last thirty years as our

schools become relatively worse and our children less educated in

a complex world. They lack attitudes, skills, information, social

habits, the drive, the focus, to become knowledge workers. 



     The pressure of rapid change and urban life has weakened the

traditional methods of socialization and education.  The family,

churches, apprenticeships, social customs and traditions all are

vital to maintain and create pleasant and stable structures in

which to live happy lives. Our society depends on institutions to

maintain and reproduce itself.  Family groups, cultures, and

subcultures complete for resources and success. Today's affluence

is largely knowledge based. Mass education to maintain some

equality is critical. Japan and other oriental cultures are doing

better - one theory is the traditional value of education.

Education has not had a high value in our society money has.

Money was not clearly due to formal education. Proper schooling

had social value but the Fords, Carnegie's were not rich because

of their university degrees. There is a strong anti-intellectual

tradition based by Democracy and the experience that formal

education was often not required.



  As parents we have strong feelings and desire to help our

children become functional to benefit from a good life. It takes

effort and skill. Many people do not have the skills that existed

in extended families. The knowledge is possible but not the will,

Why?  



     Perhaps one answer, to the awful record of school reform, is

the poor educational system we now have is the result of it's

being run by graduates of the same poor system.  America has

traditionally relied on imports of skilled labor and University

teachers. Another is hubris, the false pride of achievements in

the past, the General Motors complex.  Political systems are part

of the problem, not part of the answers. The general declines in

values, has created the ` who cares? ' attitude. It's "Me,"

"now," myself and not much else. Rank commercialism, based on

lies and the destruction of meaningful language has advanced

belief in illusion, avoidance of reality, the all too human

desire to let someone else take the responsibility.  We like to

blame others, scape-goating, transference and project our faults

on others.  Well it's less than a perfect world.  



     Edward B. Fiske, Smart Schools, Smart Kids (Simon &

Schuster, 1991) gives a good summary of Why Do Some Schools Work?

One model is Deborah Meier's District 4 in upper Manhattan,

Central Park East. It contains fifty schools in twenty-one

buildings. When all else fails maybe we can try something new.

(Pages 181 - 184 ) General motors lost billions before it began

to turn around.  

RE: Cult of Efficiency



Introduction:



Some people have said that the value issue is a simplistic and a

single cause solution to a complex issue. They fail to understand

this "simple" cause. 



The value issue is complex and little understood. The industrial

goods and services of the global economy requires high value

added activities to earn wages higher than third world countries.

High value means high quality and from highly skilled workers.

Quality is a moral issue. You can not get quality by tests and

inspections. You have to have independent professional people

(with a quiet spot in their souls) who focus on the task and know

what they are doing. Quality is body knowledge as well as

engineering. This is why the oriental with a long tradition of

focus, and body knowledge know quality when it arises out of

sincere human interactions. 



A decade of research (Coleman, Project Talent, NCES, ETS) has

shown that 80% of the outcome is dependent on non-school factors.

If you do multi-variance analysis the SES (Education and income

of the family) explain more than 80% of the variance. In school

factor - teacher training and degrees, salary, book in the

library, etc. have little or no effect on outcomes. In Demning

this is the beano demonstration. In a bag of mixed beans will be

red (good students) and white (average) and black (poor

students).



Depending on the community each teacher reaches into the bag and

gets a sample. Then to blame the teacher because her sample

contained 20% black beans - passed on from other teachers without

noticeable progress - is a systems problem not a personal

problem. 



This idea of the morality of quality beyond most Americans.

Demning could not express it clearly but gave many examples. You

have to experience quality to know quality. In a tackly, cheap,

superficial, commercial culture full of junk (MTV, Congress, and

Goals 2000) With the Soap opera and talk shows mind without

substance - clouded with the belief in magic and superstitions -

how do you get quality of life or politics or products. People

cheat, cut corners, lie and steal. They lack character and long

term goals. (Covey) Quality is character not process. Education

is about creation of a quality setting where good work can take

place. It has everything to do with design, content, and process

of the people in place, teachers and students.



Discussion Topic: Total Quality TQM



     Can quality be defined, or is it more accurate to view

quality as a recognizable characteristic? Quality isn't something

you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a Christmas

tree.  Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and

objects, the cone from which the tree must start.  To arrive at

this Quality requires a somewhat different procedure from . . . .

"Step 1, Step 2, Step 3" instructions . . . (Pirsig, 1974, p.

262).



     "Quality can be defined only in terms of the agent.  Who is

the judge of quality?"  (Deming, 1986, p. 168).  Deming sees

determination of quality as involving three agents, including

workers and managers as well as customers.



   "In a school, everything important touches everything else of

importance," notes Theodore Sizer recognizing "the synergistic

character of a school" (Sizer, 1991, p. 32).  "No Pain, No Gain"

suggests restructuring often involves painful break with

tradition.  Effective change demands attention to all parts of a

school.



  Adapting Deming to schools involves restructuring our

educational organizations as dramatically as the Japanese

restructured their business organizations.  Dewey's presence can

be seen in efforts to adapt Deming to education.   



Thinking and Doing



  Deming's philosophy represents a conceptual shift in how we

view organizations.  Quality does not result from inspection. 

Inspection and standards reduce rather than promote excellence. 

Quotas, inspections, and slogans exhorting persons to work harder

and faster do not motivate.  They merely defeat the purpose.  We

must pay attention to process, but effective process cannot be

prescribed.  It is developed through attention to guiding

principles.  



Process in any organization is unique.  Harmonious relations

should bloom spontaneously as flowers do.  It is a poor workshop

where operators and foremen are considered to be part of the

machinery and required to do a job specified by set

standards.  What constitutes a human being is the ability to

think.  A workshop [and a school] should become . . . place[s]

where people can think and use their wisdom (Ouchi, 1981, p.

228).



Response:

The factory system in America was compounded by an ethic

difference between the workers and the owners, then the

managerial class as it grew in the 1920, 30th. The owners were

English and German the workers Eastern and Southern Europeans and

Irish. (Blacks during WWII). The cultural requirements of

industrial discipline on agricultural peasants called for extra

measures. At the Ford plants, besides requirements of showers,

lockers, times breaks, there were English lessons, flags songs

and speeches. In Taylor's original study (about 100 years ago)

Shmidt the pig iron handler was a hard working peasant. The

efficiency expert a WASP. The American High School copied this

style. It was designed to produce factory workers. Bells, rows,

lockers, created a hidden curriculum of industrial discipline.

Workers are not expected or were they encouraged to think, just

perform routine duties under careful supervision.



Teachers of the "Gifted" take all the red beans then say "how

wonderful". Some intercity schools have almost all black beans.

America has had one of the most segregated systems in any

industrial country. Highland park vs. Chicago, Gross Point vs.

Detroit, Shaker Heights vs. Cleveland, Beverly Hills vs. Los

Angeles, Scaresdale vs. New York, up scale Connecticut vs. the

rest of us. 



Response:

The difference between samples and statistical assessment (QC)

and testing and inspections is the point. Test check each person

as it comes down the line. Assessment looks at systems

characteristics. What is the distribution of results. What are

the systematic reasons for the variance. If students can't read

how are they to do Economics. Is the foreign language teacher

expected to teach basic gammer. (Students who do not know basics 

can't learn beyond a fixed point)



While throwing money at the system appeals to me, the current

system could absorb a large increase of money without noticeable

results. If we were to spend more we could 1) created national

teachers, those who passes a national certification test and

presented a profile of their work. A 10,000 supplement world

attract a new type into the system and help cause change. The

same could be for Critical occupations, Science and math.

(qualified science teachers are very rare in American Public

Schools. The joke of the Goals 2000 that we will be number one in

science and math is that if we created a program greater than the

moon shot, it couldn't be done by 2000. But then we have come to

believe words no longer have meaning and government is not a

serious activity. How grown people could say these things with a

straight face is beyond me.



(Teachers don't control the content of their classes, they are in

a difficult position of trying their best (until they burn out or

quit) in working under horrible conditions, without status or

support, the students now are uppity and can't be disciplined,

teacher are without power over the things that really could make

a difference. They work in a word out of control, it's very

stressful. They can't not control or change the use of time,

space, content, membership, goals, standards, etc. 





RE: Great Minds work alike:



For the last few weeks there has been an interesting

correspondence between what I have been doing on my book and

INTERNET and the time covers. First there the INTERNET story

about "Newbies" which I was. Then the story on the Disaster in

Central Africa as an ecological event - which I saw as a problem

with the covenant - the relationship between people and the

planet. Now the idea of infinity and my work on the Sufi. The

next topic should be "Does anyone notice the

System is broken" the political process does not work.



Excerpts from drafts and INTERNET (E-mail) notes on

sustainable growth - Visions - Values - and reform.





RE: Real World?

     A paradigm Shift?



A friend in mathematics once said "The real world is only a

special case and not especially interesting." Economics has

created the most wonderful, beautiful, intellectual

structure which is robust enough to have special

applications to the real world. It is a theology not a

science nor can it be. The "science" of man is something

quite different. The logical structure is based on 18th

century rationalism, and 19th century science and technology

(production functions ) with a little 20th century social

science (Institutional structure). 



The psychological reality of economic assumptions, has

always been wrong in the real world. Even big organizations and

economists themselves are not rational. They practice

forms of social cults, with sub-optimal goals based on

personal ambitions, greed, power plays, goal displacement,

illusions, companies sell dreams and often live in their own

dream-world, they are human - all too human. The shadows

become real, the real is a shadow. Blue smoke and mirrors is our

biggest business. 



The emperor has clothes but they are not the shining gold

that the false tailors have promised. But then it's a

living. Truth is an abstraction - we all find comfort in a shared

illusion. 



Organization motivation, however, of the principle economic

institutions can not be ignored. The motivation of the

landed gentry, the desires and character of capitalist and

industrialist, the values of corporations, the results of

the separation of owners from managers, and new forms of
economic enterprise (The Age of Unreason - Charles B. Handy is an

excellent introduction) are too important to avoid.

(Time frame for saving and investment, take-overs, Token vs. real

economy are important issues that raise the real values and

motive of real people in real time.) 



It is possible that neo-classical economics is renewed. The

structure is not really dependent on the base assumptions.

Market, monetary, fiscal, policy, investment and factor

analysis do not depend on a social- psychological model.

Each is a special case and there are some very useful tools of

analysis. A carpenter does not have to understand

physics. 



The paradigm shift (should be the name of a rock band) of

the new world order, the Global economy, the limits of

growth, the oversized, over fed, over here technology -

creates new imperatives? What is the answer - I thought you never

ask?  A new bottom line - wealth not riches -

productive long term capacity - not profits - the goose not the

golden eggs. (Back to Adam Smith - who had good feel for

education.





RE: INDEPENDENCE DAY: The Vision Thing



     Stephen Covey in "Seven Habits of Effective People"

sketches the process of becoming independent and then

interdependent.  On July 4'th 1796 the United States of

American declared its independence from the British Empire.

The spirit of the time was charged by the emotional sense of

freedom. Old superstitions that maintained the mythology of

royalty and established religions were cast aside. The

victory of the common man was proclaimed as the rights of

all men. (people) The sovereign man commenced, free at last,

Great God, free at last. Freedom was passing from the old

illusions and fears to a overwhelming sensation of new

possibilities. Our country was founded on reason, hope and

the belief in the generous, dependable character of our

fellow citizens. We the people could govern ourselves

without the established order. That was revolutionary, then

and now. When in the course of Human events, the "system" no

longer serves the people and the greater glory of man, it

become necessary to change or abolish the established order. 

This applies to GM, IBM, Congress, Health Care and the

public school boards, superintendents, principles, and all

system that no longer serve the people. Such old

establishments become the dead hand of the past controlling

the living. It become time for a proclamation of our

independence.



Eighty-seven years later that "new order" was challenged by

the system of slavery. A people can not live half slave and

half free. The nation build of the people, by the people and

for the people must in blood and pain claim a new birth of

freedom.  Individual independence become interdependence -

the common welfare requires a higher calling. Capitalism and

commercial interest thrive under free markets and

competition. But let us never forget those who gave the last

full measure of devotion to the higher cause, the nobler

vision of a free nation with high civic virtues and clear

sense of mutual obligations.



Independence comes from our ability to freely respond to a

world not of our making.  We can't control the world or

others but we can gain freedom of choice of how we feel and

what we do. We can set goals, have visions, and organize our

activities. We are what we do, our value is how we spend our

time and by what standards we measure our desires. As a

people we have experienced the higher desires, and

collective goals. The VISION THING is the individual

incorporating within themselves, even to their very core,

the desires of a great nation and of the sound principals of

that nation. This was the leadership of our founders. This

is what supported us at the time of a great civil war. I am

part of the whole and within  me, and in all my fellow

citizens is the soul of a nation, dedicated to principals of

human progress and freedom.  This carries within me the

responsibility and obligations to be what a free nation

needs in a citizens. Civic duty raise us up to a higher

plain that purely personal and local interests. 



We must have the power of the vision - "the city on the

hill" a light unto the world. Without a devotion to the

greater good, sacrifices can not be made and we become only

a Babel of conflicting interests, personal greed and power.



***********************************************************P

eter E. Pflaum Ph.D.         GLOBAL_VILLAGE_SCHOOLHOUSE

ZEN IS THE ART OF GETTING YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY

************************************************************

predestined values, things over which we have no power - put

things back in the limits of reality - we are not Gods we do not

have unlimited choices. Back in tune or out of the room. Back in

touch - )



"Mankinds' moral sense is not a strong beacon light,

radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it

touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and

multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the

strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But

brought close to the heart and cupped it one's hands, it

dispels the darkness and warms the soul."  James Q. Wilson

************************************************************  

The point is we need a new vision - I have a suggestion.

The most Ancient way is the way of the Sufi. They have a

method of "learning" that could open people eyes to what is

happening.



The most likely case is that field in Central Africa - this is my

bad dream - I worry - The dream was Atomic destruction - now its

ecological - 



The sufi method in training is useful to get past peoples

fear of the new. It helps focus on the task at hand. I have

developed a 12 -15 step workbook that works for many

students. I have three long files on the method - drafts

(work in progress). Your task is to rent the last wave movie and

read one of the sufi books below.

(By Friday sundown)