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The Irish activist musician and philanthropist Bono once said “You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It’s very real. It’s very strong”.
Anyone who has worked in schools can easily identify staff who are the idealists on one hand and the pragmatists on the other. School leaders who are idealists will often be criticised for “making life difficult”, while those who are pragmatists are likely to be criticised for their apparent “lack of consistency”. The one common factor is that every school leader can expect to attract criticism!
In reality, it is far too simplistic to suggest that idealism and pragmatism are opposing virtues that compete to attract the attention of those who work in schools, including members of school boards and the senior management. The psychologist Erik Erikson, who is known for introducing the term “identity crisis”, developed an eight-stage theory of psychosocial development that helps us understand why idealism and pragmatism do not fall on a simple two-dimensional spectrum”.
According to Erikson, humans progress through eight stages of psychosocial development from infancy through to old age. At each stage, there is a conflict between two opposing states that shapes the person’s personality. Resolving these conflicts satisfactorily leads to virtues like hope, will, purpose, and wisdom. Failure to resolve the conflicts leads to outcomes like mistrust, guilt, role confusion, and despair. Pragmatism can be a person’s easy ‘short-cut’ to dealing with the basic conflicts at each stage of the process. On the other hand, the more difficult process of successfully completing each stage should give rise to a healthy personality based upon integrity.
At this point, I need to indulge in a short autobiographical reflection. For 12 years before I was first appointed as a School Principal, I served as Head of Geography in a Jesuit school in Australia. I didn’t fully realise it at the time, but those 12 years were foundational to my professional formation and preparation for later school leadership. During those 12 years, I learned by watching, listening and observing the brilliant examples of fine educators who were steeped in a set of traditions, principles, practices, and philosophy developed assiduously over 400 years of running schools across the globe.
Of relevance here, one of the many lessons I learned was the importance of remaining steadfast to the values of the school – in other words, maintaining integrity. As incubators of young lives, schools are often messy places behaviourally and relationally. Situations arise that can be dealt with in one of two ways – EITHER speedily, summarily and pragmatically, OR by staying true to the ideals of care and justice for each individual, which means, of course, more slowly and painstakingly.
Every situation I observed in that school was resolved in the second manner – that is, through the lens of idealism rather than pragmatism. In that school, the core values meant something profound, so in practice they were never sacrificed to pragmatism or convenience. I was deeply impressed by this unwavering supremacy of core values, and I adopted the same principle myself during the subsequent decades of my own principalships.
As a school leader, adherence to idealism often meant taking difficult decisions rather than slipping into the easy seduction of pragmatism.
It is not easy to resist the demands of a large donor who insists on interfering with the daily running of the school, but it is important to do so.
It is not easy to discipline the son of a board member who has engaged in gross misbehaviour just a few weeks before his final examinations, but it is important to do so.
It is not easy to withstand pressure from the CFO who is a close friend of the Board Treasurer and wants his best friend promoted into a position for which he is completely unqualified, but it is important to do so.
I could cite many more examples, but you get the point. Heads of School are often confronted by the pressure to act pragmatically when their idealism compels them to act with integrity.
As I have written in another article, values define the identity of any school, and therefore should be the foundation of every action taken in that school. Of course, a school isn’t a sentient being. When we talk about the “school’s values”, we mean the enduring values of the school’s founders and current owners, overseen by the Board, and delegated through the Head of School to the staff to be implemented.
Given the supreme importance of a school’s values in defining its identity, it follows that wherever possible, schools must have as much autonomy as possible to recruit teaching and non-teaching staff who not only embrace the school’s values, but are excited to promote them. In an international school, it is very likely that a teacher who is intolerant of certain cultures or ethnicities will sooner or later undermine the school’s mission. In a school that is faith-based, employees who do not embrace that faith would either have to suppress their own beliefs or act hypocritically if they are to avoid undermining that school’s mission.
Many schools find themselves with employees who do not authentically embrace the school’s values. Maybe they once embraced the values – they will almost certainly have claimed to do so during their job interview – but either their personal values have shifted, or they sense that the school has undergone mission drift. This is where pragmatism may start to dominate or even overwhelm idealism.
In 1962, the former Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, famously said “It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice it is a good cat”. It was a powerful appeal to pragmatism that contrasted with his rival Mao Zedong’s hard-line ideological purity. In Mao’s view (to paraphrase Deng), the colour of the cat is supremely important; it must be red!
In the everyday busyness of leading schools, it is easy to imagine a Head of School sitting at her desk, surrounded by reports, budgets and unfinished correspondence, looking wistfully through her office window at the vibrancy of children from diverse backgrounds in the playground outside, holding hands, seemingly without a worry in the world. Could there be a sharper real-world contrast between the freedom of optimistic idealism and the prison of pragmatism imposed by extrinsic demands?
Realistically, school leaders (whether board members or senior managers) need to find a balance between idealism and pragmatism. Idealism is futile if it can’t be implemented, just as pragmatism is dangerous if it leads to mission drift. I would urge that the mix should not be 50:50, but the balance should be heavily weighted towards idealism if school leaders are to fulfil their duty to enhance the school’s mission and values.
The former US Secretary of Defense [sic.], Caspar Weinberger, seems to agree with me. In a speech delivered in 1983, he stated “In the end we cannot choose to be prophets without plans, pragmatists without a moral purpose, idealists without some means of preserving those ideals, or enthusiasts for less than the most noble of causes.”
It should not surprise you to learn that Casper Weinberger’s mother was a teacher.
- Dr Stephen Codrington
The photo of Bono used as a base for the lead image in this article is by Peter Neill, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
We offer support for school leaders and board members in many areas relating to maintaining Mission, Vision and Values, including developing Strategic Plans, Board performance reviews, Principal and senior management performance reviews and workshops on Mission, Vision and Strategic Thinking.
Further information on this and many other facets of best practice in school leadership and governance is provided in the books “Optimal School Governance", and “Insights into School Leadership and Board Governance”, which can be ordered directly through Pronins.
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