"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." --Lao Tzu as seen on a “motivational poster” in a school district office.

A few years ago, when a new superintendent took over in the district I work in, there was the usual shuffling of people to new positions. Some were “retired” and some reassigned to campuses. Nothing unusual about it, until we all were given a copy of the book “Who Moved My Cheese”. For those of you not blessed to have read this book, it essentially told the parable of what happens if you do not work together when change comes...Everyone that read it assumed that their cheese was being moved, and spent the good part of the next year cowering in fear  of the new Super and his associates.

We then were subjected to listening to the story of how geese fly in a “V” formation as a team, and when one falters, the others fill into help. When the leader gets tired, another comes to lead the flock. (Never mind the fact that as lifelong citizens of the Chihuahuan desert, hardly anyone of us had ever seen a goose, much less a flock of geese, so we all just assumed that this was the leaderships way if saying we were all about to get “goosed.” Also, never mind that fact that anyone who has seen geese fly actually knows they undulate back and forth and rarely stay in the “V” formation for long.)

Then we were asked to read “High Velocity Culture Change” which was supposed to be a how-to guide on creating quick turn around in a slow moving organization.  Everyone got a copy. Everyone shook in fear as they read it, thinking not how the culture of the organization needs to change, but rather reading between the lines and thinking that  they would be part of the fast moving train that was about to crash through the education central offices and wipe all of us out.

So over the years, I have seen many examples of how education has tried very hard to imitate business models.

How many pieces of business jargon have made their way into the culture of education? The first I remember, from way back in the 80’s was “paradigm shift.” (Our district made all teachers  watch a movie about paradigm shifts, something about how some fellow invented a bicycle seat that wouldn’t cause you to become sterile from too much riding...So all of us fatties that the last time we got on a bike was before puberty sat in wonder as we thanked the good Lord that we stayed away from bikes and at least we still had viable sperm. Now we knew why Mr. Rodgers the soccer coach who rode his bike 20 miles a day to a from work was childless. His testicles were squashed.)

Since the mid 1980’s, the language of business has slowly started to make its way into the language of education. How many of these pieces of business jargon have you experienced in your education setting?

1. •Accountability
   

2. •Actionable
   

3. •Benchmark
   

4. •Best of breed
   

5. •Best Practice
   

6. •Bring to the Table
   

7. •Business Model
   

8. •Buy-in
   

9. •Circle Back Around
   

10. •Center of Excellence
    

11. •Core Competencies
    

12. •Critical Path
    

13. •Data Driven Decision Making
    

14. •Deliverables
    

15. •Dialogue
    

16. •Drill Down
    

17. •Driver
    

18. •Ecosystem
    

19. •Globalization
    

20. •Huddle
    

21. •Leapfrog
    

22. •Leverage
    

23. •Low Hanging Fruit
    

24. •Mindshare
    

25. •Mission Statement
    

26. •Mission-critical
    

27. •Next steps
    

28. •Paradigm shift
    

29. •Proactive
    

30. •Quick win
    

31. •Roll out
    

32. •Repurpose
    

33. •Scalable
    

34. •Solutions
    

35. •Standards Based
    

36. •Surface
    

37. •Synergy
    

38. •Take away
    

39. •Task
    

40. •Tipping Point
    

41. •Touch Base
    

42. •Turn Key
    

43. •Value added
    

44. •Value Chain
    

45. •Win Win
    

46. •World is Flat
    

47. •and my current favorite:
    

48. •Win-Win-Win Situation
    

There are of course lots more.

How many of us have read the following BUSINESS books and have applied what they said to education:

1980-2008 Business Bestsellers:

1. •Peter Principal
   

2. •Out of Crisis
   

3. •Future Shock
   

4. •The Third Wave
   

5. •In Search of Excellence
   

6. •A Passion for Excellence
   

7. •Trump: The Art of the Deal
   

8. •Megatrends
   

9. •Organizational Culture and Leadership
   

10. •Wisdom of Crowds
    

11. •Who Moved My Cheese?
    

12. •The World is Flat
    

13. •The Fifth Discipline
    

14. •The Tipping Point
    

15. •Good to Great
    

16. •Built to Last
    

17. •The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
    

18. •The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Organizations
    

19. •The Long Tail
    

20. •Built to Last
    

21. •Dilbert Principle
    

22. •Death By Meeting
    

Like the jargon list, it goes on and on. I suspect most of us have at least one of these business books on our shelves our office or classrooms.

So I got to thinking about how business certainly influences what we do in education, from the old “Industrial Revolution model” of public school creation to the current standards-based- test-crazy-data-driven education world we have today?

How many presentations have you seen/listened to/ watched on YouTube that mentioned the phrases “the world is flat? and “tipping point” Pretty much any keynote in the last 5 years at any conference had those two.

(Hell, even I have fallen into the the “Business is education’s business” mantra. Here and Here and Here.)

So we seem to have, within the last few decades or so since “A Nation at Risk” was published and H.Ross Perot got his panties in a wad and demanded that Texas start testing students, reaffirmed business’s strange hold on the education world. Politicians are quick to jump into bed with what business says, because most of their reelection money comes from fat-cat corporate types.

So, many fellow readers in my enormous audience would be quick to point out, we are supposed to create students that are ready for the workplace, and that the workplace is influenced greatly by business, because the workplace IS business. Okay, I will agree to that to a point, but I also would say that most of the things that have slipped into the education world from business have slipped in from business management, the MBA’s of the world if you will, not small or middle sized business, which make up the bulk of all business in the world.

It is pretty clear that business MBA’s influence education through this process. Write a bestseller, get superintendents to read it, become a de-facto education rock star even though your target audience wasn’t even education to begin with.

(One wonders why business MBAs are the group with so much influence? There are other professions that are just as educated, just as talented as Business, yet their share of influence in education is minimal at best. Medicine and the military come to mind immediately as professions that have just as much influence in the world outside of education, but not much influence inside the classroom.

So I  wonder how much of education influences business? I would suspect not too much. Here is an example of why not:

In the 1980’s there was much interest in education circles about brain research and the use of problem-based learning. Medical schools had already adopted the methodology, and it was slowly working its way into K12. So much so, in fact, that some entire schools, such as the Illinois Science and Math Academy  were based on the idea that curriculum could be taught using brain-based problems.

PBL was probably the most interesting, most researched, and most based-on-how-the-brain-actually-learns  way to teach ever developed. Yet, at the time, especially after “A Nation at Risk,” and H.Ross Perot, drill-and-kill was what business was calling for. We were at risk dammit. We didn’t have time to waste with your silly PBLs. Drill, kill and test.Accountability! Since then, and fot two and a half decades we have been testing, drilling, killing and essentially teaching an entire generation how to take multiple choice tests. Choice A, B, C or D ain’t too difficult if the workforce only has to ask questions like Combo 1 2, 3 or 4? But when you are competing against a flat-earth-tipping-point-long-tail global economy, multiple choice simply will not do.

So, lo and behold, after finding that their workforce couldn’t solve a problem if a gun were held to their heads, (What do you mean you DON’T want the special sauce with that Combo Meal #1?) business woke up one day and said “Jeesh, we really could use a workforce that could actually think. We wonder what is out there. We wonder if there are any curricula that are based on real-world problem solving? We need a workforce that knows how to “think out of the box,” not just be able to assemble the box, because the box assembly plants  have all been moved to China where Ling Ling can do it for 5 cents an hour.” Welcome to Problem Based Learning. What a revolutionary idea!

So now, we have a whole new set of business books talking about how we actually need brains in order to compete in that damn flat world. Ken Robinson has made a trade out of reminding everyone that creativity is more important than just knowing facts alone. Various videos have reminded us over and over that the Chinese and Indians are graduating more honors students than we have citizens and that the only way to stay competitive is to become more creative. remember al that stuff we said about test takers, er, what we really need now are thinkers.

Add “A Whole New Mind” to your list of business books now on every educator’s bookshelf. Wow. A business book about how we should be educating our kids based on..hang on for it boys and girls...what educators were proposing and what any teacher of GT kids has known since way back in the 1980’s: Problem based and its sister, project-based, learning.

The business bookshelf is now full of “Hey, lets use our brains to think” books:

1. •Five Minds for the Future
   

2. •Mind Wide Open
   

3. •Free Agent Workforce
   

4. •The Only Sustainable Edge
   

5. •Outliers
   

6. •Power of Unreasonable People
   

7. •Everything is Miscellaneous
   

8. •Corporate Agility
   

and on and on...

Duh.

What interests me here is that it seems that education is quick to jump onto the business bandwagon, but we have seen time and time again how these business models do not stand the test of time. Even “Good to Great” which highlighted 12 businesses that were examples of greatness and what made them “great” has major flaws. The businesses in that book, since it has been written, have almost universally all gone through major management changes, or have had to restructure due to business losses. But since most educators are NOT business people, they look at these tomes and take the words as gospel.

Should we, as educators, really be emulating the world where failure is not only an option, it is a way of life? I remember when Lee Iacocca was business’ golden boy who took Chrysler out of near bankruptcy and “saved it” from certain death. Where is Chrysler now? Even Mercedes Benz who bought it in the 1990’s couldn’t make it work, and eventually didn’t want anything to do with it and sold it. (Check out this list of major business failures.)

Bank failures, and the current mortgage crisis should be a sign to any intelligent educator that modeling from an industry that cannot even keep its own house in order is probably not the best way to work. We often hear of education-business partnerships. (Enron was an example of how GREAT the American business dream was and model to be emulated. Oops. Never mind.) In most cases, where policy is involved, the “partnership” is telling education what to do.

In Texas, we have even gone as far as reorganizing our high schools based on the 16 “businesses” that are most prevalent in Texas. It is a system called Achieve Texas. In other words, we are again, basing our education system on what businesses wants. I am not saying it is bad, per se. it is just an example of how education reacts to trends in business. Rarely, as far as I can tell, does business react to trends in education.

From the Achieve Texas website:

Welcome to AchieveTexas which is an education initiative designed to prepare students for a lifetime of success. It allows students to achieve excellence by preparing them for secondary and postsecondary opportunities, career preparation and advancement, meaningful work, and active citizenship.

AchieveTexas is designed to help students (and their parents) make wise education choices. It is based on the belief that the curricula of the 21st century should combine rigorous academics with relevant career education. When schools integrate academic and technical education, students can see the “usefulness” of what they are learning. The system also facilitates a seamless transition from secondary to postsecondary opportunities.

This initiative uses the sixteen federally defined Career Clusters of the States’ Career Clusters initiative (www.careerclusters.org) as the foundation for restructuring how schools arrange their instructional programs. A Career Cluster is a grouping of occupations and broad industries based on commonalities. The sixteen Career Clusters provide an organizing tool for schools, small learning communities, academies, and magnet schools. Programs of Study (POS) have been developed for each of the Career Clusters. The POS represent a recommended sequence of coursework based on a student’s interest or career goal.

Finally, how many of you have heard the phrase that our students, parents, and the community are now our “customers?” They are no longer our students, they are a number, a statistic. One of the “Billions and Billions served.” 

Hey first grade kid...take a number.