[lbo-talk] teachers running schools

Chuck Munson chuck0munson at gmail.com
Fri Jul 9 08:50:23 PDT 2010


On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Gail Brock <gbrock_dca at yahoo.com> wrote:
> GB:  I'm going to be very interested in how this works out.  Management is a
> useful function -- to borrow from another thread going on now, there's a reason
> why pop musicians hire managers.  I don't think the issue is management so much
> as bad management, and what's interesting is whether "bad management" is simply
> redundant.  Does management always go bad?  Walter Reuther used to say that
> there was no reason for unions to organize since management would always do it
> for them.  On the other hand, if I were a teacher I don't think I'd want to
> spent my time on building repairs.  It would be better to have a principal who
> reports to the teachers as their subordinate rather than being the boss.   As
> this is presented, it's kind of organization bashing, and more specifically,
> government bashing.
>

This is really good news and confirms what I've been advocating for years in schools and libraries. We could really use this kind of thing in the Kansas City, Missouri schools, which are notoriously bad. mostly because of city-wide racism but also because of a corrupt bureaucracy.

A pop musician might hire a "manager", but they are really hiring a coordinator. Or a person to "do office and business things." A pop musician is not interested in hiring somebody to tell them what to do, that's the main manager function in most organizations (in addition to scheduling time-wasting meetings).

There is simply no reason to have manager in businesses and organizations. All tasks can be done cooperatively or they can be done in a modified system where people do certain kinds of roles, but don't have authority over other people. In a school, the office work can be done by office people, but the bigger issues can be decided on by regular meetings of teachers and office personnel. Or the school could be organized so that the teachers doa regular rotation of office work.

If you give people more input into decisions and give them the opportunity to have broader tasks, they won't burn out as quickly and they will be better motivated to do better work.

-- Chuck Munson

Bread and Roses Web Design http://www.breadandrosesweb.com/



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