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).

This topic includes issues about TQM as it applied to SMART_SCHOOLS