Over the course of my life, I have engaged in deep thought about engineering, economic and educational processes; yet analytical thinking has never spurred me into action – meaning it did little to motivate me to change things. Cognitive analytical thinking, at least for me, is a deep-seated reflective process to better understand some issue or behavior. This analytical introspection could go on for hours, days or even months, but more than anything else, it was a slow, passive metacognitive deliberation of curiosity. It was never a call to arms to enact change.
In contrast, it has been my experience after walking the face of the earth for more than six decades that we are heavily influenced and motivated both intellectually and physically by our emotions. It may seem as if there are a slew of human emotions that human beings experience; but surprisingly, psychologists define only four basic emotions that define human conduct: happiness (joy), sadness, afraid (fear), and anger.
Personally, I rarely feel angry, but I do experience the other three emotions in my personal and professional life. Like analytical contemplation, two of those emotions, ‘happiness’ and ‘sadness’ do not press changes in my behavior. I have discovered that both of those emotions are more sedentary in response, and I reside in that mental state for varying periods of time, depending on the situation. Now, anger and being afraid (i.e., fearful) do tend to motivate me – they are both actionable emotions. In the rare occurrence when I am angry, I am heightened to respond in some form or fashion. Now, I do my level best to control those urges until cooler thoughts prevail, and I can better grasp the predicament, facts and consequences. Fear, on the other hand, has the immediate ability to motivate me mentally and physically into action – Full-Stop! When I am fearful of an event occurring, I am thrown into a planning and corrective state of mind, and I engage in actionable steps quickly to curtail the severity of that event in both my personal and professional life.
For example, when I was professionally employed as a structural engineer, if I doubted my ability to complete my designs by the project deadline, I repeatedly worked long past the normal quitting time. Then, I would return to the office in the middle of the night to continue my efforts to ensure I made the completion deadline. Why? I was fearful I would not finish my part of the project, and I was more than aware of the ramifications it would have on my levels of freedom to self-manage my engineering projects in the future – or the potentiality of far worse consequences than that. That fear would drive me to work 18-hour days for weeks on end, if necessary. Analogously, that same state of trepidation is involved in my personal life where finances are concerned. When there is a large expense or a sizable unanticipated expense that arises, the overt fear of that financial obligation results in immediate changes to my upcoming vacation plans or spending habits. Why? Not meeting financial obligations has current and lasting consequences in this country. Thus, I immediately curb or end all discretionary expenditures to satisfy the upcoming monetary demand. In the end, that fear of financial difficulties drives me to action and ultimately, with concerted effort, success. Of course, it can be a stressful period in my life, but I am motivated by the consequences of not productively meeting a goal, objective or deadline. In short, it is the fear of consequences or failure that motivates me to take actions to positively change things.
When there is no fear or anger in my life, for the most part, I am left with the other two emotions: happiness (contentment) or sadness (disappointment). For most Americans, these two situations are status quo living as well. As most people would likely agree, this emotional situation is very comfortable living from day to day. Generally speaking, it is satisfying and comfortable. If sadness is a heavy burden due to a significant loss in our life, we can seek the comfort of others we trust and depend upon, as needed, to assist us in our grief. However, with happiness and sadness, there are not the emotional vertical spikes, and the immediate stress derived from experiencing fear or anger.
No Fear of Consequences – The Downside
The subtitle of this last section may seem odd, but unfortunately, it is not! There is a downside to a lack of fear – consequences! This effect is harmful on a personal level, but if it is a cultural attribute of an organization or industry like public education, it can have disastrous ramifications. As an administrator in the public schools for well over a decade, I never feared the consequences of academic failure at my campus. Why? District administrators rarely, if ever, remove a school principal for stagnant or low academic results at their campus, and fortunately, if a school administrator is removed, they are usually promoted to a higher paying central office position despite clearly demonstrating instructional campus leadership ineptitude for years. Now, I feared removal and serious repercussions while I was a school principal, but it was from money mismanagement issues or a difficult personnel situation at the campus that went sideways. I did not fear removal based on the academic situation or climate at my school – the school’s main function for existing.
As a matter of fact, in my twenty-five career as an educator in the public school system, I have never had a conversation with a traditional or charter public school elementary Title 1 principal that was overly concerned about their removal due to their school’s chronic academic performance. It does not matter how many children failed, for all practical purposes, life on the campus went on just the same the next school year. Of course, the associate superintendent usually placed the academically struggling campus on some sort of intervention plan, but it has been my professional experience that almost all those plans never successfully bore fruit either in the next school year or the following ones.
Similarly, the same lack of fear of consequences for professional removal can be said about district administrators. They are also not overly troubled about professional accountability for the lack of student performance at their many Title 1 campuses they supervise. Now, they may have a slew of meetings to discuss the situation and schedule campus visits throughout the school year, but in general, public-school administrators at any level possess little fear of losing their high salaried positions over continued academic lethargy. Consequently, they do not significantly change their behavior either instructionally, or with effective curricular implementation, to improve the social and academic climate at their many failing campuses. They do not seek out counsel on what is academically effective at other Title 1 campuses. At the end of the school year, when the student outcomes are approximately the same as the year before, administrators acquiesce to continued student performance with external excuses that range from blaming teachers to standardized testing – the metric that indicates their low levels of performance. In early June, they quietly adjourn for the summer months until August when the children return for another nine-month go around.
Why is this situation continually occurring in both rural and urban school districts across the United States? Answer: The local school board allows it. Currently, there exists no fear of failure that jeopardizes an administrator at any school or district capacity to seriously challenge the status quo of daily practice. This is an important point for the non-educator to understand that the lack of academic performance in this country’s Title 1 school is not a federal or state issue; it is a local governance issue. Consequently, when school board trustees decide to enforce administrator accountability (e.g., demoted/termination for non-performance), district officials and subsequently, campus administrators will opt for self-preservation and implement curricular or pedagogical improvements that are effective – that address children of poverty’s social and academic needs.
However, if the local school board is not willing to hold the superintendent and senior level management accountable, the administrators below them – their direct reports, will have little incentive to implement effective change or alter the social and academic landscape at their campus. In short, until the school boards trustees of both urban and rural school districts begin to press administrator accountability, low-income parents, taxpayers and politicians can fully expect Title 1 elementary schools’ student outcomes to continue to be inequitably depressed.