Principals suffering from HAS Syndrome?

  HAS - Hyper Active Superficial Syndrome Thanks to Jackson Pollock for the painting. 

For the past fifteen years or so schools have been flooded with endless curriculum, assessment, and compliance requirements and as a result many principals are under pressure to know exactly what is it that is expected of them. No wonder many are feeling somewhat stressed even if the macho and stoic amongst them pretend all is well.

During this time of trying to guess what is expected of them many principals suffer from, what change management expert Eric Abrahamson calls, 'RCS' – Repetitive Change Syndrome. He also says when organisations are asked to implement more change initiatives than they can reasonably handle 'Change related Chaos’ occurs.Other writers call it an 'implementation dip'. One business writer calls the problem ‘corrosion of character’ because in the attempt to guess what is expected of them ‘leaders’ lose sight of what it is that is important to them causing depresssion and feelings of lack of integrity.

School now suffer from the label they give to their their students 'ADD' – 'Attention Deficit Disorder' unable to focus on what is important to them – or, more importantly, what is important to the wider community if we want to develop a sustainable creative country. All too often schools have become inward looking and competitive, turning themselves in to ‘Christmas Tree – look at me schools' with fancy brochures and doubtful narrow success achievement graphs.

Worse still, after years of being in this low trust audit culture, principals start to believe that what they have been asked to comply with is actually the 'right thing' to do and, as a result, ‘schools become over-managed and under led’.

For far too long schools have put up with Ministry‘CRAP’. This stands for the Ministry 'Continually Changing All Procedures’! No wonder many teachers and principals are suffering from degrees of stress, burnout and cynicism.

A good friend of mine used to say that, ‘Teachers have two important things they must protect at all costs – their energy and their time .If they waste it on bullshit they will have no time to teach’. We are at this point now!

Now, as the world wide ‘market forces’ public choice efficiency approach falters, there is a move towards placing greater trust in the collective wisdom within organizations and communities .

The Ministry, obviously aware of this trend, has moved away from its technocratic curriculums and a 'new' Curriculum Framework will soon offer schools the freedom and flexibility that is long overdue. Ironically schools will now have to throw out, or unlearn, what they have had to develop to take advantage of this change of direction.

'New' answers are for schools to 'transform' themselves into ‘professional learning communities’ based on shared visions and values. And now schools are being asked to work together to share their collective expertise. Teachers expertise is now seen the key factor rather than the distant ‘experts’ curriculums. High teacher expectations and ‘learning how to learn’ (‘key competencies) now 'trump' learning objectives. The new draft even exhumes an old, but important, word pedagogy – the ‘art of teaching’ and even goes as far to state that developing a ‘love of learning ‘is important.

This is a real change of direction.

The new ‘curriculum’ will be ‘Deju vu’ for long suffering creative teachers and principals but it least will be a welcome antidote to all the nonsense that has passed for education the past decades. Principals will now need a good dose of 'ODD' – ‘Opposition Defiance Disorder’ so as to place a greater emphasis on what they, and their communities, think important. Innovative principals have always had the courage to say no to ensure what is valuable is protected and done well.

As we enter an age of creativity schools need to focus on ensuring that all students have the opportunity to develop all their talents and not just be restricted to a narrow diet of literacy and numeracy; we now need ‘new basics’ and ‘new literacies’ for this new ‘post modern’ world.

One needs to ask why we have had to wait so long for those in power to face up to the obvious, that things have not been working and are beyond ‘tinkering’. There must be a syndrome which covers being blinded by ones own outdated views? Lack of reality ‘gap’ or the ability to self delude come to mind.

At least we all now know the Emperor has no clothes; the ‘Emperor Has No Clothes Syndrome’ - EHNCS ?