Advice to Teachers and School Leaders About Tech and AI from 1969 That Is Still Sound Today

There was an educational technologist who provided sound wisdom about AI and all technology in 1969.

Anthony Oettinger, who was a Harvard researcher, acknowledged in his 1969 book “Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation,” that instructional technology could lead to improvements in education.

But…he also provided some words of wisdom that Ed techies have forgotten.

He cautioned that instructional technology can’t be “force-fed, oversold, and prematurely applied.

Ed Tech has never taken that advice and plunged into implementation with every new wave of technology that arrives. Perhaps that’s just another reason that the allure of screenbans is so strong today.

With every new technology since the PC, school leaders and ed tech advocates jump to force-feeding those new technologies through “strategic implementation plans” and “forced professional development” without ever taking the time to critically examine those technologies’ places in schooling, teaching and learning.

Then, school leaders and ed techies move to engaging in the very “oversales” tactics that Oettinger warned about. Propagandistic presentations and sales language like “gamechanger, disruptive, and transformative” are the go-to words in this over-selling tactics before anyone has even really been able to explore the technology. Implementation is treated like a “marketing problem” and not whether the technology is actually useful.

Finally, school leaders and ed techies prematurely apply the technologies in widespread fashion. School leaders want to boast about their schools being 1-to-1 schools, AI schools. Ed Tech consultants want to boast about the number of keynote speeches they’ve made and the hours of PD conducted. This happened with earlier tech and it is happening again with AI. The over-selling has generated the hype without really giving teachers and students and researchers time to examine the technology.

Ed Tech has immediately jumped to the search for proof that they were right about AI’s transformative power without giving the technology any time to develop.

Ed Tech’s problem is that it has never encountered a technology that was NOT disruptive, transformative, or a gamechanger. By default, anything silicon-based that comes along fits the bill.

Ed Tech is more into selling technology instead of critically and methodically examining as well as exploring possibilities.

I end with three things offered as advice to school leaders and teachers that captures Oettinger’s 1969 advice:

-Don’t force-feed the tech through strategic implementation plans and mandated PD. Allow time for small-scale experimentation and even resistance if it arises.

-Don’t oversell or even feel like you have to sell a technology. If the technology is miraculous, it will demonstrate this. If it has no promise then it will show this too.

-Finally, don’t engage in premature application ever! Tech options like AI hasn’t been around long enough to be the salvation of education. Don’t talk implementation. Instead talk about experimentation and exploration. Give the tech time to prove itself.

Oettinger’s advice is not antiquated, but that’s how sound wisdom often is, if we don’t allow the glare and glitter of new technologies blind us.

There Is Some Acceptable Logic with Screen Bans That Needs to Be Considered

Devices that have become common in our classrooms have a design problem that Ed Tech does not acknowledge. 

These screen devices and their apps have been in some instances engineered to be habit-forming. In other words, addictive characteristics have been designed into these applications and devices.

Technology companies have become experts at designing and engineering for habit-forming and addiction in their products. Big Tech companies like Meta and Tic Tok, just to start with a few, are experts in “hooking” users on their products.

I am currently re-reading Nir Eyal’s book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. This book is a textbook for addiction engineers. It describes how tech companies have pulled off engineered addiction with their screen-based products.

In fact, Eyal’s book, Hooked, is a how to book on how to make products addictive.

Once engineers have users “hooked” like drug pushers, they have customers who have been mind-manipulated to being endless users. Like drug users, they find it difficult to put down the drug. They will fight to protect both the product and the habit.

Eyal promotes what he calls “the Hooked Model” to addict users to products. 

This involves using four steps to achieve addiction:

1) Triggering initial user behavior;

2) Engaging user in an action;

3) Dispensing a variable reward to keep users coming back;

4) Getting the user to invest time, data, effort, social capital and money.

According to Eyal, subjecting potential customers to this “Hooked” strategy works. You have users addicted to your product. While this model might be simplified, it does capture  features in screen products we encounter on our devices.

He also calls his method of engineering addiction “a Superpower.”

I call it malicious manipulation of humanity for profit. Is there no consideration that such tactics at mind-manipulation are unethical?

Tech companies and others engage relentlessly in engineered addiction because it works. But there is something extremely immoral about the whole thing. The idea that you can design a habit-forming, engineered addictive product and celebrate it as a superpower is problematic. 

Teaching students and all educators how to recognize when such tactics are employed is vital. This is clearly a subject for any digital literacy efforts.

Is it any wonder why tech companies and Ed Tech are so upset about screen bans?

Screen bans nuke this engineered addiction model before it gets its talons into users’ minds.

If users regain control over when and how a device is used, then the game is up.

In Your Work, Your Leadership, Are You an Exploiter or Nurturer? Your Life, Livelihood Makes It Clear

When it comes to your leadership, your livelihood activity, are you an “exploiter” or a “nurturer”?

In his essay “The Unsettling of America” Wendell Berry writes about these two “kinds of mind” and thinking about them in terms of our current culture of technological and economic obsession is interesting. According to Berry:

Exploiters are specialists, experts. The nurturer is not. They acknowledge their limited knowing.

The exploiter’s standard is efficiency. The nurturer’s standard is care.

The exploiter’s goal is money, profit. The nurturer’s goal is health—the land’s, his own, his family’s, his community’s, his country’s.

Exploiters ask how quickly and how much can the land be made to produce; nurturers ask what is the land’s capacity? How much can it be asked to do without diminishing it?

Exploiters want to earn as much as possible by as little work as possible; the nurturer wants to work as well as possible. For them, efficiency can be sacrificed for good.

The exploiter believes in organization, establishment; the nurturer has faith in human order.

The exploiter serves institutions, organization; the nurturer serves the land, household, community, place.

The exploiter thinks of numbers, quantities, hard facts; the nurturer in terms of character, condition, quality, kind.

Which describes the current EdTech industry and consulting industry? Which captures Big Tech today?

I think it is clear where the AI industry falls here, especially in light of their Data Center projects and the obsession with efficiency. Big tech is more exploiter than nurturer.

Exploiters care more about things and worship efficiency at all costs. Sound familiar? Nurturers care more about life, humanity, people, and well-being.

Your “kind of mind” is betrayed by you you engage in your livelihood and that which you do and advocate for. 

Educational Leaders Need to Learn Locally First, There's No Consultant and App for That

Wait! Before you spend that money on an educational consultant or “expert” consider these thoughts first.

Wendell Berry, essayist, novelist, poet, and farmer, once wrote about a problem he experienced on his property. He had wooded hillside where he wanted to pasture livestock, but there was no water source available.

He consulted an expert, then set about clearing land of trees and grading it to create a small pond on a “narrow bench.” It successfully filled with water and seemed to resolve the problem.

That fall and winter, it was extremely wet, so the hillside collapsed into the pond, completely filling it. In spite of the expert advice, he was back to square one. He says:

“The trouble was the familiar one: too much power, too little knowledge. The fault was mine.”

In other words, he did not know enough about the local, and just acted, and the result was his fault alone.

He said he got “expert” advice at the project’s outset, but he forgot something he already knew to be true:

“No expert knows everything about every place, not even everything about any place. If one’s knowledge of one’s whereabouts is insufficient, if one’s judgment is unsound, then expert advice is of little use.”

Berry hits on some very important points that educators and school leaders often forget: Experts and consultants do not know everything about your school or district no matter how many “success stories” they tell or “testimonial tales of salvation” they offer. They lack complete contextual knowledge.

They do not know your schools, your classrooms, your students, your communities, your parents, and not all of these are the same. Schools are complex places, and an “expert” or consultant bearing a formulaic solution will not always provide a solution to the problems you face.

You have no choice but work hard and get know everything locally, and that takes effort and time, sometimes months and years. And you have to be willing to learn and listen instead of acting like a physician and prescribing medicine about an illness that looks like something seen elsewhere, but is really a unique, local problem.

Once you know locally, you can then make sounder judgments regarding solutions. There is no expert that is going to be able to provide instantly successful solutions so set aside the marketing and sales hype from the thunderous consultant crowd, and listen and learn locally perpetually.

This is the hard work of education; no shortcuts allowed.

Learn locally first as much as possible before calling in the experts, and once you have called them in, know your schools, your districts, your people and your community. Then you will have the knowledge to make sound judgments about solutions and their “expert” advice.

Is It Me, Or Are Some AI Advocates and Trainers Sounding Like Revival Preachers? Its a Tool Not the Foundation for a Ed Tech Religion!

Has anyone else noticed how the educational AI promotional movement has become like a religious revival movement? And, that it is being heavily promoted by those like AI companies, Ed Tech consultants, and even educators who stand to gain billions of dollars and professional recognition because of it?

I recently saw a LinkedIn post, “the official AI Promo Echo Chamber,” where an ISTE AI trainer and consultant actually boasted like he was in a old time tent revival meeting: “I have set out to train EVERY K-12 TEACHER AND COLLEGE FACULTY MEMBER IN THE COUNTRY ON USING AI TO TRANSFORM TEACHING AND LEARNING.”

Pardon my thoughts here, but that sounds like a “fanatic on a mission” not some individual who is thoughtful and measured about AI and its uses. His mission is not to thoughtfully explore the possibilities of AI; it appears his mission is to ram down the throats of educators everywhere his beliefs in the transformative powers of AI technology.

We’ve been here before where Ed Tech advocates boasted about the so-called “transformative power” of technologies, but usually the only thing that gets transformed are the wallets of those selling and consulting for these technologies and the slim budgets of schools scrambling for ways to pay for them.

This ISTE AI trainer and promotional evangelist also boasted about “standing on the stage at Google’s headquarters” training the first cohort of new converts. I can’t even begin to suggest how nefarious this is, for you have a Big Tech company poised to siphon billions more from K-12 to college education than they have already done with their Google Apps and Chromebooks. At the heart, this seems like an AI fundamentalist, evangelistic effort. That is the Ed Tech way in the 21st century.

The problem with AI efforts in education right now is that it is being promoted as “transformative” when Generative AI in its currrent form has only been around for around 4 years. It hasn’t been around long enough to even determine what its long-term consequences might be much less transform anything.

The AI implementation efforts right now, which is clear from the ISTE AI revivalist preacher, is not a thoughtful, careful, and critical examination of AI as a tool; it is “a gospel of salvation wrought through the technological marvels of artificial intelligence.”

These evangelists aren’t interested in training criticial users. Instead, they seem to want to convert the entire educational establishment on behalf of AI companies who are bankrolling the entire movement.

These AI movements have the slight flavor of totalitarian, fundamentalist movements, and “AI zealots” are set out to convert the masses on its saving possibilities even before there is any established research.

And what’s worse, they are engaging in misformation like the notion that AI has been around for years, as stated by one AI promoter, which is not entirely the truth. AI has been around at the edges of our applications, but generative AI is only a more recent development. Those preaching for conversion even sometimes use half truths and even false statements all in the service of gaining converts.

It’s time for educators everywhere to be thoughtful and critical of those who are leading this AI movement. Instead of allowing them to make boasts about the “transformative” possibilities of their favorite technology, its time to question them. During their “training” sessions, when they make claims, ask them to support those claims. Question their evidence. You might even question their affiliations with tech companies and organizations and their sponsors. That certainly can explain their presence.

When a movement like this gains some religious flavors, concerned educators should be skeptical. They should question everything. They should be concerned about what this technology might do to students and even our society years down the road. Most of all, they need to call out this inevitability narrative. 

After all, as historian Yuval Noah Harari writes in his book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI: “Technology only creates new opportunities; it is up to us to decide which ones to pursue.” 

It is up to us, all educators, parents, school leaders to decide on which AI opportunities we should pursue. We should not leave that choice to those like Google and their paid consultants and revivialist preachers to make that decision for us.

AI Detectors Are as Morally Wrong as the Cheating Done by Students Who Submit AI-Generated Work as Their Own

For me, using AI detectors to determine whether a student forged an assignment using Generative AI tools is morally wrong. 

I agree with Carissa Veliz, who writes in her book “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI”:

“A predictive approach to ethics is likewise inadequate for matters of justice, inside and outside the courtroom. In criminal contexts, merely statistical evidence isn’t enough.”

Because AI detectors use statistics and probability to predict whether a student’s work is AI generated or not, it alone should never be used as the sole evidence for making the determination on whether the student cheated and turned in AI work as their own. This probability of having AI generated material has room for error, and when it comes to dispensing justice, it is inadequate for me. I would not use it alone for detecting whether a student engaged in this unethical behavior. 

In some ways it would seem to me to be akin to the lie detector, which attempts to detect patterns of truthfulness and untruthfulness but can’t tell you whether a person is being deceptive about a specific instance.

Do we then just accept the student’s work as is? Unless we can find some causal evidence, not probable evidence, I think we have little choice, but we can devise ways to ask the student to defend their work and ensure they have invested their experience fully in the learning.

Still, to me the greater problem is that the student chose to cheat to begin with. It is a moral and a trust issue. It is a symptom of a character concern in that student that they would resort to such action, and from a societal standpoint, that should be of equal concern, that a student would choose that course of action to begin with.

What seems like a better course of action rather than simply accusing the student of cheating based on a technology, would be to devise a way that the student must defend their work, without assistance. 

For example, it could be a panel of teachers asking questions designed to ensure that the student was knowledgeable about their work. Criteria could be determined ahead of time that outlines what a successful defense of the work looks like, and the final assessment on the student’s work would be based on that alone.

Ultimately though, we still should acknowledge the moral problem underlying this, which is the same problem that has been beneath cheating since students have been subjected to instruction, which is that a student would deceptively choose to cheat to begin with. AI cheating is in some ways just another high tech cheating tactic.

The solution in this case, is not more technology, though educators, being the tech-solutionists they are, always seem to turn to tech for answers. 

Tech companies love it, because they can sell us a tech that causes a problem, then turn around and sell us another technology to solve that problem, and then another tech to solve that tech’s problem and so on. 

AI detectors are not the answer.

Instead, the answer lies in working toward the goal of helping students become ethically averse to cheating to begin with through moral instruction and character development, educating them to be better than that.

Also, the answer lies in making sure the teaching and learning experience requires the student to demonstrate their learning in ways that can’t be fabricated through AI. This is not a technology problem, but an old educational problem of, “How do I ensure that students have learned?”

It's the Teacher That Matters Most in Teaching and Learning, Not Screens, Not AI...That's The Lesson Needed for School Leaders in All These Screen Ban Efforts

How can I transform teaching and learning to accommodate or integrate AI? THAT is the WRONG question.

The correct question is, if it follows that AI is actually another tool to be used in education should be: How can AI (or any tool) help teachers engage in better teaching and students engage in better learning?

The history of Ed Tech says we asked the wrong questions when the PC, Web 2.0., and social media came along. Then, we asked how can I use these tools to transform and revolutionize, rather than how can these tools be used to facilitate? To equip?

Perhaps that's why Ed Tech and the technology cheerleaders are desperately trying to defend all the technologies it has introduced in education. 

Educators are susceptible to the “glimmer of gadgets” and have been for some time. Instead of asking the facilitating question, they sometimes look to the technologies for salvation, and the result is the present. Now, with little evidence to support a dramatic revolution in teaching and learning, important critical questions are being asked about the rightful place of technologies—screens if you want to call them—in the classroom.

We know how students learn and we have a repetoire of teaching methods at our disposal, and much of the research shows that what makes learning happen is WHAT A GOOD TEACHER DOES WITH THE STUDENTS DURING THE TIME THEY ARE IN HER/HIS CLASSROOM. It is really that simple. 

Yet, instead of looking to the one single individual who has the potential impact on learning the most, we get tangled in our devices, or fanciful technologies if you will, and we forget the teacher. 

I remember the minor debate in my schooling as a student when calculators appeared, (Yes I am that old.), but I don’t recall the raging enthusiasm to transform teaching and learning through the magical powers of the Texas Instrument calculator. It was seen as simply a machine, not a mechanistic path to save education, and we used it when it was useful and did not use it when our teachers determined that it was not useful and an obstacle to what they were teaching and what we were learning.

AI, if it is simply a tool, then let’s kick the pedestal out from under it,  toss out all the hype, and lets just see if it really can help teachers teach and students learn. That has yet to be truly determined, in spite of the mad search for evidence to justify AI existence in the classroom rather than trying to see if teaching and learning improve.

And that is another issue as well, for the AI enthusiasts want their new shiny device so badly to be the salvation in the classroom, that they won’t give it time to demonstrate whether it will be useful or not. 

Generative AI has not been around for more than a few years, and every opportunist under the sun is peddling it as the answer for all our problems, especially those in education. And, if anyone expresses concerns over its issues and problems, they are bombarded with promotional hype and labels of being a Luddite.

If I were to provide some experiential advice to all educators and especially educational leaders, stop listening to the AI cheerleading, and let’s settle down and see if this new technology offers teachers anything to enhance their teaching and students anything to enhance their learning.

Stop looking to technology to transform education. Stop looking for an invention that will somehow make learning happen. We know already what will make learning happen, and that is a well-trained, experienced teacher in the classroom equipped not with the fads of the day, but with she or he says they need to educate students.

Ultimately, let’s remember this: It’s the teacher stupid, that ultimately matters, not the gadgets!

Predictions About AI and the Future of Our Students Limit Their Futures and Should Be Questioned

One horrible consequence of all the AI predictions about the future jobs of students is that such predictions are anti-democratic. 

Predictions, when followed as fact, become self-fulfilling prophecies, and that’s what these CEOs from AI companies want, and they know it. Those who have the most interest in its widespread use also know this.

But the reality is, when you make a prediction that “you are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist,” you taking a shot in the dark, for no one knows that future. Instead of playing a game of job training whack-a-mole, educators should perhaps not prepare students for any jobs, since companies constantly outsource, relocate work to other countries, as well as automate.

Instead, educators should be preparing students for a world of total uncertainty, because that is one sure thing about the future. We shouldn’t be so arrogant as to think we can foresee where they will be and the jobs they will have. Prepare them for a world of uncertainty.

Carissa Veliz, in her book “Prophecy” makes this point about prediction:

“When predictions determine our fate, WE LOSE FREEDOM. DEMOCRACY NEEDS UNCERTAINTY TO THRIVE. It’s only when we don’t know the outcome of a future election that we have democracy.”

By simply giving credence to these predictions about AI and all technologies, the freedom of students is stolen, and that should never happen.

All predictions about AI should be viewed with skepticism, especially from those who have an interest in their acceptance.   Educators and school leaders have an obligation to prepare students, but not one based on these predictions.

AI Is Not an IT Problem? It's a Leadership Problem? What Nonsense...School Leaders Need to Be More Critical of AI Consultant Claims

Recently I saw a post where an AI consultant said that "AI is not an IT problem, it's a leadership problem." What nonsense!

So now, they are going to blame the leaders of school districts for a Silicon Valley creation that:

1) steals the copyrighted work of other authors to use in their training models,  

2) in their LLM training they exploited low-wage workers in poverty-stricken parts of the world, 

3) this product can create facsimile products that can pose as the work of creators to steal their livelihoods, 

4) data centers for these products require massive amounts of power and water, often strapping the communities who have these deceptively forced upon with resource shortages, 

5) these data centers are also having noise pollution issues in the communities where they are being placed. 

6) there is growing concern about cognitive outsourcing for students and the consequences of that in children's futures.

7) Who knows what consequences that are yet to come...

So this AI consultant says, no, there's nothing wrong with AI, and that the problem is with school leaders.

The real problems with AI consultants and opportunists who are ignore the problems with this technology and already declare it as the savior of education, all for what has to be self-interest.

Added to this problem are school leaders believe such nonsense and hire these companies and consultants simply because AI has been mystified to the point that they think they can't possibly understand it. They are wrong. AI is not difficult to understand.

Isn't interesting that no matter the technology, it is flawless and causes no problems? It's always the educators, the leadership, the parents...or whatever the AI consultant can shift the blame to. It's standard sales tactics when you do not want someone to really look at the problems with a technology.

Good, solid leadership sees through all of these AI consultant sales pitches and cheerleading and acts accordingly. Be critical of all the AI Promo Rhetoric!

What's Wrong When a CEO Says He's Replacing 'Lower Value Human' Capital with AI? What a Perfect Example of an Awful Leader

 Bill Winters, a bank CEO said during a investment leaders summit in November of 2025, that he was replacing "lower value human capital" with AI.  (StanChart CEO Seeks to Reassure Staff Over 'Lower Value Human Capital' Comment from Reuters)

Think about that statement and what it says about the leader who says it. He has little value for humanity other than that which makes him and his shareholders more money.

This is an example of the worst kind of leader, and the worst kind of human being. The lesson to be learned is this instance? Don't follow this person anywhere!

What makes this problematic for me is that during my entire career in educational leadership, university schools of administration and school systems often turned to business and corporate leaders for models on how they should lead their organizations. We were even assigned in some cases books written by "successful CEOs."

But this incident should give any school leader pause before listening to a CEO boast about their leadership skills. It should also make one question whether anything a CEO tells you about leading a their companies can help in leading a school or district.

I have always thought that business/corporate leadership and school leadership are based on entirely different value systems, and this makes the two quite different. After reading about this incident, because the CEO is so blatantly anti-human, I am more than ever convinced that anything a CEO tells you about leadership needs to be viewed with heavy criticism and skepticism. 

I realize that the CEO said his quote was taken out of context, but that does not fly with me. The use of the "LOWER VALUE HUMAN CAPITAL" cannot ever be smoothed over by reframing and damage control. It is a clear indication of where this CEO's value system is, and sadly, he shouldn't even be granted the label of leader.

Certainly not all CEOs have these values, but this story is a powerful example of bad leadership and a model of a bad leader. 

New Must-Have Component Needed in Digital Literacy Approaches: Instruction in Screen Addiction Engineering

There should be a new component in all digital literacy efforts:

Students should be educated on the engineered addiction aspects of these devices and technologies and what they can do take away Tech's entrapment power.

They should receive training, for example, on how features such as the "Like" button were utilized to lure them to these applications and keep them there. By recognizing the manipulating factors of this feature, they can de-elevate its importance and free themselves from its tyranny.

They should be receive specific instruction about how these devices can be exploit them and manipulate them.

They should also receive instruction in how to counter this built-in addiction feature and free themselves from the lure of screens. For example, they could receive instruction on "the notification" and how it is a siren's call to return to the screen. They could learn to limit or turn off all notifications at all times or during specific periods of the day. This would eliminate one major, addictive aspect of the screen and give them control over the device.

Ed Tech should transform digital literacy from being an effort to sanitize Silicon Valley devices and transform students into "good little consumers" of these, into being empowered and critical human beings who decide for themselves when and how these intersect their lives.

This would transform the field of Ed Tech from being a cheerleader for Big Tech, into actually giving children and their parents power of these devices. 

Sadly, Ed Tech still sees its primary role as delivering new consumers to these companies.

AI Is Not Inevitable No Matter What Ed Tech Tells You

Ed Tech’s argument to educators about AI continues with the inevitability argument, a genius marketing tactic of Big Tech.

“AI is here to stay so you might as well accept it and subject students to it, after all, they are going to use it anyway,” says post after post from the Ed Tech faithful.

That’s such a poor argument on so many levels.

First of all, the here-to-stay, inevitability argument… This is Silicon Valley dogma and marketing at its best. No technology is “inevitable” but think about it. If the Tech companies get users to acquiesce without protest, they’ve won from the start! 

Sorry EdTech, we do not have to accept AI as is. We can, through our government, push for regulation and through our consumer choices, we can refuse to use their products if they are not up to our standards. Consumers always have a choice. Accepting inevitability means surrending power.

Secondly, the students-are-going-to-use-it-anyway argument… Does it really matter? Students often choose to use any number of products, and it is not education’s role to teach the proper use of these products. It is not educators’ responsibility to sanitize AI so that it is used properly either. If one follows that argument, we should be requiring gun safety for every student too, just because all students need to use guns for good purposes and not bad ones.

EdTech is so biased on the issue of AI they have become a 24-hour-a-day commercial for it. Is there not anyone with a critical thought among them?

The field of Ed Tech’s future depends on the acceptance of AI, cell phones, and all manner of gadgets, and that’s why it is a marketing arm of the Big Tech. After all, creating students who are CRITICAL USERS might mean that they can choose to not use, and that’s bad for business.

Educational leaders, parents and teachers should take all arguments about AI and cell phones, etc. coming for Ed Tech with a grain a salt. 

It's Time to Rethink the Teacher Shortage Problem and It Does Not Involve Pay

 Perhaps the real problem with the shortage of teachers is that fewer and fewer people want to do the work as it has evolved over the past 30 years or so. 

When I started teaching in 1989 teachers operated in classrooms that allowed for independent creavitity, initiative, and excitement. There were no testing surveillance systems. You could operate without the intrusion of administrative experts and consultants who claimed to know how to teach content better than you. Parents were generally supportive of teachers and were not engaged in antagonistic tactics to what you were doing. They came to you if their were problems usually, and the teacher could work with the parent.

Classrooms have become culture war zones. They are places where the teacher often receives less and less professional deference. Instead, there are so many voices out their saying, “No, you need to do it this way, not that.” In a word, teaching has been transformed into a mechanistic scientific management task where one is surrounded by a troup of experts all telling the her/him how to do the job. 

There is no art to teaching anymore, because the administrators and their cadre of experts have transformed the instructional act into a scientific management work task.

It’s no longer rewarding to be a teacher. So, the answer seems to be in focusing on pay. Certainly you can find someone willing to do this work for the right pay, the idea goes. The problem is apparently you can’t pay enough for someone to do the teaching work today because fewer want to do it.

The reality is, teaching has lost what librarian-researcher Fobazi Ettarh calls “vocational awe.” 

Vocational awe is defined as a set of notions that Librarians have about their institution and themselves. To have vocational awe, the worker has to believe in their institution’s goodness and rightness. Also, the worker has to believe that their profession, the work they do is inherently good and sacred. In other other words, the worker believes their work is a calling, which means they will endure and persevere in the work tasks because of the good, sacred and worthwhile big picture.

Teaching has lost this vocational awe. Schools are constantly labeled failing by everyone. Even administors focus on the negative always in an environment of so-called continuous improvement. In addition, the teacher’s work is no longer seen as sacred, as special because it has been turned into tasks to be carried out scientifically. The teacher’s institution and the teacher’s work is fundamentally degraded by a system paranoiacally obsessed with trying to improve or change, in the worship of constant innovation.

What’s more, administrators and school HR recruiters can no longer capitalize on “vocational awe” to fill teaching positions. That’s because the “awe of teaching” and “being a teacher” is gone. 

The profession of teaching has been destroyed by politicians who want to cut budgets and continuously impose new requirements on teachers. 

It has been decimated by administrators who think they know how to teach so well, they constantly intrude into classrooms with their so-called coaching and feedback, treating teachers as if they don’t know anything. 

The teaching profession has been decimated by a consultant industry made up of experts who say they know teaching better, even though some of them spent less time in the classroom, and sometimes no time there.

The teaching shortage problem will not be solved by pay alone. 

It will certainly not be solved by relying on the vocational awe myth any more because no one is buying it. 

The teaching problem will only be solved if those who have degraded the work of teaching to the point that no one wants to do it, no matter the pay, are convinced to change their ways. 

No one wants to be a teacher anymore because vocational awe no longer exists.

Educational Leadership, Business Management and Becoming Witch Doctors

Wooldridge (2011) describes four charges against the discipline of management that also have some truth to them when thinking about the discipline of educational leadership. 

First of all, like management, the discipline of educational leadership is currently often incapable of “self-criticism.” In its embrace of practicality and praxis, there is little room left to genuinely critique the discipline of educational leadership. Without any analytical or philosophical reflection, for example, there is little questioning of the marriage between the discipline of educational leadership and business management. It is automatically assumed that leading practices used in business can be directly imported into the practices leading schools. But to make this assumption ignores that these two organizations exist for different purposes and have different structural qualities. What’s worse, when one, like myself, engages in this criticism of the educational leadership discipline, words are construed to be blasphemous at worst, or simply irrelevant at best. Criticizing the ideas, practices, and tenets of educational leadership is seen as a taboo subject. The truth is, mature disciplines are engaged in self-criticism and reflection of any assumptions and practices.

Like management, educational leadership also likes to favors terminology that confuses rather than educates. In fact, education as discipline is guilty of this too. Just thumb through almost any of the latest educational leadership books and you’ll see a common list of jargonistic language that sometimes isn’t really about explaining anything. Words and phrases like “empowering teachers,” “including stakeholders,” “visionary,” “strategic plans,” and so on, are found in many of the educational leadership tomes, and what’s more, these books often say the same thing. The effect of this is that now, like business managers, educational leaders have placed themselves in a echo chamber where words and phrases reverberate back and forth, but in the end really mean little to being a human in the leadership role of a school or organization. Educational leadership, in using these words borrowed from business management, shows that perhaps it is incapable of inventing its own terminology, its own language, and becoming really its own discipline.

In addition, Wooldridge (2011) points out another quality of the educational leadership discipline procured from the management discipline: “neither of the disciplines rarely rise above the level of basic common sense.” In the educational leadership guru literature, much of what is discussed is just common sense to any one who finds themselves in charge of schools. For example, take the idea that people are important. How could anyone expect a school, whose purpose is to educate “people” to view people as irrelevant or not important? There’s no research needed here: it’s just common sense that the people—students, teachers, parents, and custodians—are important. Many of the books I have read that offer principals "10 things they can do improve their schools” are usually simply 10 common sense things anyone who rises to the position should already know.

Finally, like the management discipline, the discipline of educational administration, or leadership is “faddish, fickle, and bedeviled by contradictions that would not be allowed in the more rigorous disciplines” (Wooldridge, 2011, p. 12). Perhaps I am a bit unfair here. Education as a discipline itself is just as faddish and fickle as educational leadership. Both pilfer other disciplines constantly for an idea that can generate a new practices that can be packaged and sold to practitioners. 

Educational leadership, however, has proven itself particularly faddish and fickle, because over its one hundred year existence, it has mirrored closely the fads that have occurred in the discipline of management. For example, when Taylor’s scientific management became the fad of business at the turn of the twentieth century, educational leaders adopted it. In the 1930s and 40s, when the human relations movements that sought to focus on the conditions of work were in vogue in business management, educational leaders procured those ideas as well. In my own life time, when Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management became the salvation of business and manufacturing, the school systems in which I worked began slinging the jargon of TQM around like it was a gospel passed down from on high. Today’s fads? About every book or article related to educational leadership I’ve picked up recently talks of “managing mindsets” and installing “grit” into our students. The discipline of educational leadership seems to simply on the lookout for the latest fads promoted by business and psychology gurus available. It even contradicts itself as well. You hear educational leaders talk about the importance of authentic learning experiences in one breath, then in their next, they're cutting the arts, music, drama, which are the most authentic learning experiences we can provide our students.

With all this negativity about the discipline of educational leadership, I do acknowledge that there are ideas from other disciplines that we can learn from. The borrowing has not been all bad. Still, there needs to be more critical examination within our discipline and its practices, including those borrowed. In his book, Masters of Management, Wooldridge points out: 

“Modern management theory is no more reliable than tribal medicine. Witch doctors, after all, sometimes got it right—by luck, by instinct, or by trial and error.”

Educational administration can't afford to engage it its form of "tribal medicine." Educational leadership can’t afford to “sometimes” get it right when it comes to the lives of our students. When we adopt any practices—those procured from the business world, or those sold to us by the latest educational leadership guru—we have a moral obligation to avoid harming the present lives of our students and our teachers as well as everyone else in our buildings. We also have a moral obligation to not harm nor hinder our students’ futures. There’s no more noble task for educational leaders than that.

Wooldridge, A. (2011). Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World--For Better and For Worse. Harper Collins: New York, NY.

NC Legislative Still Manages Devalue Public Ed with New Principal Pay Scale

After this year’s North Carolina General Assembly sessions, what can one say about principal pay? Somehow we have a legislature that thinks administrators in North Carolina should be somehow grateful that they’ve alotted an additional $35.4 million dollars to principal and assistant principal pay increases, and that increases to $40.6 million in the 2018-19 school year, but took away longevity pay and established a pay system tied directly to test score performance. As has always been with our North Carolina Legislature since republicans have assumed control, let’s say the truth is really in the details.

First of all, the North Carolina Legislature ditched any connection between pay and experience in their new pay scale. Maybe this was because some economist out there has determined there’s no connection between experience and the raising of test scores, so experience is seen as meaningless. (Never mind that test score performance is not the entire end of education.) I think it is perhaps more truthful that we have a legislature really does not want principals to stick around anyway. Experienced principals are more expensive. They want newer, cheaper administrators anyway. We now have a principal pay system in North Carolina perfectly designed to encourage new and young principals to move in but quickly leave because the system does not value experience at all.

In fact, the new principal pay system completely dissolves a long-time practice of giving experienced longevity pay to experienced principals too. Now, the budget language says this longevity pay was absorbed into the pay schedule, but that makes no sense. The fact is, our legislature took away longevity pay to create their new merit pay system. Ultimately, with the actions of our North Carolina Legislature in recent years, our state is becoming the kind of state where educators are much better off looking for jobs elsewhere, and now principals are no exception.

Secondly, the new principal pay scale employs a merit pay system with substantial bonuses tied to test score performance. In spite of many studies and research pointing out the fallacies and failures of such pay schemes, our legislature still assumes that principals are motivated by greed, and that test score performance is the end of all things in public education. By dangling a few thousand dollars in front of principals this legislature believes that somehow principals will figure out how to increase student growth with less textbook money than ever and less resources than ever. Our state government has been cutting public education for years, and now, our legislature with its merit pay scale wants to use money as a hammer to beat principals into getting more out of teachers in this state with less resources than ever. We don't even have enough money to purchase textbooks and supplies any more, never mind professional development funding.

Finally, let’s stop kidding ourselves: our republican-controlled legislature just does not value education. Phil Berger and the republican elites in our legislature want to appear from year to year that they are increasing education funding, and by the numbers they are, but they are increasing it to strategically to harm public education and not support it. The principal pay scale is a perfect example. It is not designed to encourage educators to take principal positions and remain in them as careers. It only wants principals to stay around until their pay is too high. Like almost everything else this legislature supports, it is short-term and short-sighted, with the ultimate goal of harming public education in the end.

In North Carolina, despite the boasting of many republican legislators, we have a state government controlled by those who still want to end public education.  Why do we in education deceive ourselves from year to year. They might be actively trying to appear to support it, but their tactics have gotten more devious than ever. They strategically fund programs and initiatives that actually undermine public education. That’s why the political activism of educators is all the more important in the coming elections.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: One aspect of this new principal pay scheme adopted by out North Carolina legislature that I forgot in my original post is this: It also ends pay for advanced  and doctoral degrees for principals. As usual, this legislature continues to ignore the value of further education for educators. Now, any principal in North Carolina can no longer expect extra pay for obtaining an EdS degree or EdD degree. In the history of North Carolina I don't think we've ever seen a governmental body so anti-education from the public school level through the university level. Perhaps they still think if we keep the public ignorant, then they will continue to buy their baloney. It's time for a major change in North Carolina.

Be Careful of Your Quotes: Einstein Probably Didn't Say That Insanity Quote

We've all heard this quote, or might have even used it:

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

I've heard ed reformers and educators pushing change and innovation use this quote many times, and attributing to Albert Einstein. I honestly have to admit I might have done so myself. The truth is, there's no solid evidence he ever said it. It's not in any of his writings or interviews. It may be just made up.

In his book, Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up, William Poundstone calls this "Churchillian Drift." That's when a quotation by the marginally famous gets attributed to someone famous, like Winston Churchill. Turns out, Einstein probably didn't say it. Just Google the quote and you'll see the dispute.

The truth, at least for me, is clear: even if we really believe in what we're peddling, we still need to get our quotes right.

"It may sound good at the time, he who gets one or two of his quotes wrong, or facts, can't be trusted to be speaking all the truth."

You can quote on that, at least until someone else says it better!

By the way, Poundstone's book, Head in the Cloud: Why Knowing Things Still Matters When Facts Are So Easy to Look Up is a fascinating read.  Highly recommend it. Probably even will convince you to stop using those quote sites for quick quotes to add to your presentations.

When Transforming & Innovating Your School Seems Hopeless: 3 Things You Can Do

"You got to use the power that you got." Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Most of us face situations where success seems impossible or improbable. Many of these situations involve what Malcolm Gladwell calls "Goliaths." These are adversaries or adverse conditions that appear to be insurmountable. In education, we often find ourselves in these "Goliath" situations where our initial assessment is that we can't possibly succeed, because we are out-manned, out-resourced, and out-powered, but according to Gladwell all is not lost. At the heart of our problem is our misconceptions about the situation and about who really has the power.

So what can we do? According to Gladwell, we can do the following:

• Rethink the idea of what an "advantage" is. Conventional wisdom sometimes tells us what is an advantage. For example, being a small school might seem to place that school at a disadvantage. It might not be able to offer all the extra-curricular activities, classes, and programs that a much larger school would be able to offer. Yet, the "advantage" the smaller school might have has to do with its ability to be more flexible, and hence change and improvements might be implemented much easier and more quickly than in a larger school. Nimbleness is certainly the case with smaller schools with smaller staffs. Often they can react more quickly and gracefully to changing conditions. We can as Gladwell tells us, turn our disadvantages into advantages.
• Change the rules. Often, in the midst of situations where we face adverse conditions, and we feel that loss is eminent, we feel hopeless. We feel hopeless because, in that situation, if we play by the rules, we are certain to lose. But, who said we had to play by these rules? Why can't we change them, modify them, and approach the adversity in an entirely new manner? Like the David and Goliath story, David chose not to engage the giant in a conventional manner, because he would have surely lost. Instead, he fought unconventionally and in a way his adversary wasn't expecting and won. Changing the rules is climbing out of the box systems put us in and reinventing the game. When you're faced with a sure loss, what do you have to lose?
• Use what you have. All of us in adversarial situations facing sure defeat, begin to engage in "What-if" thinking, such as, "What if we had more computers?" Or, "What if we had more money for teacher salaries?" The rest of those questions are outcomes we would like to see. Sometimes, though, in the face of adverse and adversarial conditions and sure loss, we have to turn to what we have, and often what we have and what we control is more than we think. For example, if you want a 1:1 computer program and can't find funding to purchase computers for every student, then "use what you have." Perhaps enough students have their own computers and you can open your network for BYOD and just purchase computers for those who can't afford them. This accomplishes the goal by "using what you got."

Sure defeat isn't always a sure thing, as Gladwell makes very clear in his book, David and Goliath. We can prevail in more situations than we think by being willing to rethink our advantages, changing the rules, and just using what we've got.

Empowerment? Slippery Word for Leaders to Use and Practice

“Empower” is another slippery word, used with good intentions, but when we really break it down, it can have a very negative connotation." Mark A. Adams, Courageous Conflict: Leading with Integrity and Authenticity

If you watch any presentation on leadership, or lurk in any Twitter discussion regarding reform or change, chances are, your going to hear the word "empower" mentioned. It is a pet word of sorts. School administrators toss it around a great deal when talking about ideas such as continuous improvement, school change, or school improvement. But what does the word actually mean in these contexts?

As Mark Adams points out, "Empower is a slippery word" and I am quite positive school leaders use the word with good intentions, but very often, it can be used as a means to manipulate others to do something we want them to do. It those instances it takes on a slippery nature. As Adams points out, in these cases, we are nothing more than a father telling his child that he is "empowering that child to clean his room." That's a clear abuse of the word empowerment, and you can bet your staff will see through that in a minute.

In many school leadership situations, empowerment is more of a "giving permission." In these situations, the school leader is granting a staff "permission" to simply carryout his or her wishes. This type of empowerment does not lead staff to experiment, to innovate. They simply carry out the leadership program established from on high. There's no ownership; staff simply do as they are told or "given permission to do."

If you really want to empower, you have to relinquish your authority and trust others to act in your stead. You allow them to make decisions, and, because you empower them, you let go and allow them to act, not necessarily as you would have acted. They are acting because you have given them ownership of the situation, and your job now is to accept and support what they do.

Today, and for the coming school year, pay attention to how you use and employ "empowerment." Are you manipulating or truly trusting someone to act in your stead? There is really a difference.

Welcoming Innovative Disruption: Embracing Those Who Ask the Tough Questions

"The people who ask questions that no one else is asking are the inventors and entrepreneurs and leaders who will create the next wave of innovative disruptions." Jensen, Bill. Disrupt! Think Epic. Be Epic.: 25 Successful Habits For An Extremely Disruptive World

Often, as we work within the education system, we are actually discouraged from asking tough questions. Questioning is often seen as disrespectful and not being a team-player. The teacher at the back of our staff meetings who begins to ask question after question on some new initiative the school is preparing to roll out, is seen as a "naysayer" and a "supporter of the status quo." These are sometimes apt labels for these individuals, but sometimes, the questions being asked need to be asked. They need to be listened to, and they need to be answered carefully.

Certainly, it is possible that the one asking the questions about our new initiative and project just want to sabotage our plans as school leaders. But can we really take that chance? Especially, if as Bill Jensen points out, that these are often the inventors, entrepreneurs, and leaders who create innovative disruptions that turn our schools and the educational system upside down?

As school leaders, those who ask tough questions might or might not have ulterior motives, but if we really want to be innovative, we perhaps need to listen rather than dismiss them. As Jensen points out, those who wish to be proactive "disrupters" of our organizations need to join in and "actively question every system, structure, and rule" placed before us. This is embracing the potential of "disruptive innovation in our schools."

Authentic Empowerment from School Leaders Requires Trust and Letting Go!

“Empower” is another slippery word, used with good intentions, but when we really break it down, it can have a very negative connotation." Mark Adams, Courageous Conflict: Leading with Integrity and Authenticity 

What does it really mean that we have empowered those in our schools and those who are followers? Lately, you hear this word "empowerment" a great deal in educational leadership discourse. It's almost a cliche. Yet, does it really have any meaning? Does it really mean that those in subordinate positions have any real power? Perhaps it means the head "Dude" in charge has decided to relinquish a little sliver of power to his underlings in order to give those below just a bit a hope that they have a bit of say. When empowerment is more about making the leader feel "good" about his lording over others, it is probably not effective. Empowerment is too often the "crumb" dangled before those in subordinate positions in order to motivate them to carry out the leader's agenda. 

You can't motivate people with fake declarations of empowerment. You can't deceive people in carrying out your program by getting them to believe that they really have a say in the organization.

My advice to those who are told that they have been empowered is the same that Mark Adams offers:

"Consider that you have just been empowered.   What does that mean? Concisely, it means that those who have power are now saying they are temporarily giving us the power to do something, but we really do not own it or possess it."

Rhetoric about empowering others in our leadership is empty if we really do not mean it. It can't mean that we are temporarily giving power to others to do something; it means we are really willing to let go of control and trust others to carry out the tasks we have empowered them to do. Effective leaders who really empower others let go and trust. And, if things fail, they accept that failure and own up to the blame too. That's leadership integrity.