6 May 2008
opinion
Port Louis — Schools have always fascinated me because I am fundamentally a sharer of knowledge; an active experimenter with pedagogical concepts only to access the mind of the learner-being particular interest has been the difficult learner. I talk of my experiences, experiments as a school leader for I have been rector of three State Secondary Schools. I start with my teaching experience because only the active, reflective and reflexive teacher has the raw material to become an effective school leader.
Let us differentiate between the administrator, the principal /rector and the leader. The administrator sees his school as an organization with personnel, financial and management (mainly, executive dimensions). The administrator needs a manual of procedures, a set of guidelines, but principally decision-makers above him to approve requests, turn down applications transmitted by the administrator to the hierarchical superior. Decisional powers are scarce because the administrator has the tendency to look up to the superior for action.
Once I promoted a boy who had bagged an aggregate of 13 units while still in Form 1V. Jupiter's thunder growled at the ministry and I was placed on a proscription list for transfer. In this case, the ministry wanted compliant administrators - in other words, wise yes-men who will not show initiative, nor think out of the box and especially never violate the sacrosanct regulations of a superannuated establishment.
In times of crisis, laws are applied implied impersonally, no empathy is demonstrated because all are and have to be equal before the law. On such occasions, it is not uncommon to find a whole horde of central office administrators swoop upon the college and pretend to bring solutions. Reports are written and decisions are taken for the school administrator who must execute.
For me, such people have dug the grave of some schools. Today's youth will not accept rules that make sense only to elders. What elders understand by discipline, for example, is the hackneyed sheepishness of people of my generation. When I was a student of RCPL in the 60s, the rector who wanted to punish you for some mistakes in Greek, which for him was apostasy, would give a choice - five slaps on cheek or three kicks on your royal posterior. Do you find our youth accept this cruelty? Human rights or not, Ombudsperson or not, corporal punishment is an insult to man. The worst opprobrious act is to feel that you chastise a child by hurting his body and giving him physical pain.
I am not digressing. I am only demonstrating how the administrator's role is out of harmony with expectations of our youth. The other variant to the administrator is the principal or headteacher. This nomenclature carries a lot of contradictions.
How is a leader a visionary, a man who needs to rally faith of others around him? Claim to be the first among equals? The word "head" gives the feeling that he is alone, alone to take decision, alone to solve problems and always right in his decision. The head cannot err. If he does, let him be decapitated.
The term, 'principal' or 'head teacher' hides the fact that a school has almost 800 young lives who crave for guidance and moral shaping. The term truncates the school into disconnected parts - teachers lead children and the headteacher leads teachers. There's nothing more injurious to the holistic concept of a school than this.
The architecture of most of our schools is borne out of the dichotomy understood in leadership - the leader is someone apart. The principal's office is ill-placed and cut off from the rest as though the principal needs a vantage point, a mirador from where to observe his game.
I believe more in the role of the leader. That is the why I want to share my meeting into a school leader. You are not born a leader, nor do management guru's fabricate leaders. Leadership of schools is born out of a constant osmosis between vision, reality, success and failure, experimentation and learning.
But I had a dream. As a villager of the 50s, I could not digest the tinsel arrogance of my classmates and even teachers who lived in towns. It had always been my dream that a school in the rural areas should have a laureate. My dream was rude, rudimentary to the point of being immature - but it was my dream that became the seed of renewal.
I knew from my own father's teachings that discipline is a warp and woof of progress. But above all, I was convinced that no one can ever succeed if he lacks self-esteem. A self-image audit I carried out revealed that 80% of my students aspired to be policemen. I knew I had a thousand miles to go before my dawn. How does one boost self-esteem?
Celebrate the least achievement of your school. Raise the image of your school in the public eye.
Those concerned will remember that I organised a rally around the village with built boats, people dressed like for a carnival but with positive images. The rally was led by a few colleagues and all my students followed peacefully. The villagers noticed the school and its presence in the village was acknowledged by our participation in local activities. A school with a stigma taints the child who attends it. It is unfortunate that, owing to obvious reasons, it becomes a child's fate to be admitted in a school that carries the approbation of elders.
It seems my life has been easy hitherto. Let me now broach the teething problems:
The indiscipline of teachers who came late and wanted to go home early. I had to be firm - to the point of being perceived as a ruthless disciplinarian at the outset. Discipline must always be allied with empathy. Empathy is not the weakness of the one who relents after having been severe - almost like my father who stuffed me with sweets after having used the rod. Empathy is the selective altruism, which makes it possible for one to put oneself in the place of the one who needs hell. Teachers are intelligent human beings. One poor leader may spoil even the best. I too had had delinquent predecessors for whom the school was an alibi to abscond from home.
I needed a team and, after a few weeks of discipline, a team is not easily obtained. How did I ingratiate myself with my team? I chose my heads of departments as my senior management team. Some hated my sight at first. I had to swallow my pride and meet them in their own favourite lands, attend a puja if they invited me, make strategically minor concessions, which would not jeopardize the interests of the school as a whole, send them Get-well, Christmas and New Year cards (not with the ministry's money but with my own).
"Empathy is not the weakness of the one who relents after having been severe - like my father who stuffed me with sweets after having used the rod." To win a team, you need to go on a long courtship. The conscientious head accepts you de facto once he finds you are out to promote his subject. I knew an illustrious lady teacher of chemistry for whom I purchased all books and magazines she wanted.
The recalcitrant once only opposed because I was task-oriented. They were not used to performance management review that I carried out during my performance audit sessions. But do not despair. Possibly as a literary man, I am an incontrovertible humanist, convinced that there is something good in everybody and that you must only know how to extract it.
How did I feed my team? We discussed my dream and we needed to be indissolubly united in achieving the vision, realising the dream.
My first dream - I wanted the school which was performing at 73% at School Certificate to reach 90%. We needed the means to reach there. I am not convinced of giving the best to the best. It is my tip conviction that if a school has to progress, it should not be at the expense of the weak. My 90% should carry the majority together. I shared with my team differentiated treatment corresponding to levels of learning ability - a kind of affirmative action in favour of whole. In some cases, the weak in Maths of Form IV would follow Maths in Form III to catch up.
It took months to build my team. There were single rebels who were reticent and hardened in their belief that my dream was nonsense. I forgot such people. It is not the weak who determine progress. But when the recalcitrant persisted in indiscipline, like abandoning his class during his last two periods and fleeing home because his colleagues were going early, I was intransigent.
Many teachers want a strong leader because he/she gives them faith in their work and gives meaning to their effort. But apart from teachers, there are students and parents in a school community. next week, I will deal with that aspect...
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