You can see it in people’s eyes. This quiet kind of crazy. An odd look, an edgy sideways glance, a glazed over disquiet. COVID is creeping up on us and we can’t see it. We can only see numbers, more numbers and the numbers tell a horror story. Like an island sinking under the pressure of global warming through rising sea levels, our little oasis is being surrounded by an invisible marauding beast.
Odd times can excuse odd behaviours. One of the odd behaviours I have noted of late is a propensity for principals to stand on their own two feet and act in the perceived interests of their community – in spite, or instead or as well as what our ever more centralised department of education is sending down the pipe line.
This got me thinking about leadership styles in the context of an idea I’d recently been reflecting on from Peter Rolwings. He talked about Albert Camus’ theory of Absurdity. A part of this theory looks at the struggle to find meaning in life given that we are all going to die. Camus grew up pre World War Two, studied philosophy and was a writer for the French Resistance. So the stuff of the pursuit of the meaning of living was something he was fully woke to! (I don’t actually know what it means to be ‘woke’ but it sounds contextually appropriate!)
He came up with three types of players in this game of meaning making.
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- The Conservative
- The Revolutionary
- The Rebel
Interestingly, the Conservative and the Revolutionary come from the same starting blocks and head in opposing directions. The Rebel on the other hand is in an entirely different game.
Okay then – in short, The Conservative, as an educational leader is a ‘back to basics’ kind of person. The neo traditional / vocational pedagogue. Always looking back to modernism as the answer, or post modernism as the symbol of meaningfulness in education. That simple time where life was binary. Where right and wrong were we truly were blank slates to be filled with the right kind of knowledge.
The Revolutionary likewise posits meaning in the ‘not here or now’ zone. Rather, meaning comes from the achievement of the Utopian future of grade-less, timetable free, one to one device virtual learning space where children run free in a field of their design, iPad in hand to pursue and post the learning of their dreams. This ties in with the reactionary nature of the ‘Liberal Progressive’ pedagogy that is still teacher directed but directed toward our learners rather than our accountability structures.
This leaves the Rebel. The Rebel doesn’t care for the glory days of the French Resistance or the Utopia of global socialism. The rebel finds meaning in the struggle for change in the here and now. The Rebel hangs out with Freire and the Socially Critical pedagogues. They love the process. They see the next target and go for it.
So, as a leader of a community during COVID-19, what has your leadership been? What kinds of questions have you been asking your line manager? Are they about getting permission to do or not do something?
Have they mostly been about resources or the lack thereof?
Has it been mostly about inconsistencies in communication between different levels of government?
Have you been waiting for departmental direction or going it alone?
These are pretty important questions as they help reveal where you sit as a leader – where meaningfulness is likely to be positioned for you.
For me, I agree with what Camus said ‘I think therefore I rebel’. This is of all about agency – not about rebellion. I’ve just finished reading The Resilience Project, followed by Atomic Habits, and now this. The thing that joins them all together is the idea that, as James Clear says ‘ You’ve got to fall in love with the process’ not the product. He talks about being the kind of person who eats well, not about the goal as an end it itself. Same with The Rebel as a school leader. How do we train our staff to live the life of the The Rebel? What must they do to train up their students to also understand the role of The Rebel in maintaining our freedom and democracy?
This may sound all a bit crazy. But what the haec – now is the time for a bit of crazy, it may just make the world a better place.