I saw in the most recent Public Education Network “NewsBlast” that Part 1 of the “MetLife Survey of the American Teacher 2009: Collaborating for Student Success” has been published, this part focused on “Effective Teaching and Leadership”. It reminds me once again of the issues faced by our democratic system of governance and whether our public school systems promote or run counter to the ideals of democratic governance.

To set the context (and as I have said repeatedly in other posts) we are in a historic transition in the world and its institutions from patriarchy to partnership, from hierarchical pecking orders to circles of equals. In a patriarchy, the governance model exists within a hierarchy of “superiors” and “inferiors”. At the top of that hierarchy are the people considered to be “leaders”, below them are the rest as “followers”. The “leaders” are charged with making the important decisions and exercising control over (and have responsibility for) all the “followers” below them.

The partnership model with its circles of equals is just the opposite. There is no big hierarchy, and “leaders” don’t make decisions that “followers” then follow. Leadership is in fact reframed as facilitating decisions that are made by everyone involved, generally by using the democratic processes of majority rule or even consensus, either formal or informal. In the business world some companies have experimented with or even adopted more of a partnership model, I’ve heard it described at some business seminars as “turning the org chart upside down”. In the political realm, we talk about countries governed “by and for the people” by its “citizens”.

I’ll stop for a moment and recommend you get used to the word “governance” if you have not done so already. It is a general term for all the methodologies groups of people use to make decisions. It is applicable to both a handful of people planning the agenda for a PTA meeting, to thousands of people formally playing their roles in making decisions in a national government. In many cases these days, I think it is a more appropriate substitute for the word “leadership”, the latter connoting more the patriarchal subset of people at the top of the hierarchy considered leaders.

So given all that, let’s go back to the MetLife survey of teachers that caught my eye. According to the survey, 69 percent of teachers across the country believe their voices aren’t heard in the debate on education and the governance (there’s that word) of their schools. The survey also finds that 67 percent of teachers and even 78 percent of school principals believe increased collaboration among teachers and school leaders would have a major impact on improving student achievement. When I read this my first thought is that these schools are caught up in the patriarchal model, and the adult staff sees a benefit to transitioning to more of a partnership model.

The survey also finds that 80 percent of teachers and 89 percent of principals believe that a school culture where students feel responsible and accountable for their own education would strongly improve student achievement. I can’t resist wondering what percentage of school students across the country believe their voices aren’t heard in the educational debate and governance process. What do you guess? High 90s?

Further survey results show that 73 percent of school students agree it’s their responsibility to do the work it takes to succeed in school, but only 43 percent of teachers say all or most of their students exhibit this sense of responsibility. My first thought again is that these teachers and students are caught up in the patriarchal model, with the majority of students acknowledging they are responsible for their learning but a majority of teachers indicating that students are not exercising that responsibility. From the point of view of the transition from patriarchy to partnership it all makes sense.

Just look at the parallels. We live in a country that decided to fight for its independence because of “taxation without representation”. We have a country built on the premise that citizens have a stake in America and are therefore more likely to take responsibility and accountability for it (including fighting to preserve it). We have a history of more and more disenfranchised people fighting successfully for the right to vote and become fully enfranchised citizens.

We also look around the world and see that the countries that are more authoritarian, more blatantly patriarchal, and do not fully enfranchise their people as citizens tend to be more corrupt, and have a populace that feel less responsible and less willing to apply their energies for the common good. So we continually push for all countries to move more in the democratic direction, because it is better for us and better for the whole world.

Yet given all that, why do we continue to have a public school system where two-thirds of the teachers do not feel they are involved in the governance of their schools? To make an analogy, most teachers don’t feel like “citizens” of their schools. They are not part of a circle of equals governance model and instead are the “inferiors” toward the bottom of a patriarchal hierarchy where the real governance decisions are made by far-away “superiors”, educrats, politicians and other decision makers they don’t know and will probably never meet.

And taking this one step further, why are the students generally not involved at all in that governance? No wonder most teachers feel that students are not taking responsibly in their education. Students are not “citizens”, not “stakeholders” of their schools!

I urge you to ponder this dilemma, and consider that it may be well past time that we transform our venerable public education institutions from the patriarchal to the partnership model of governance. My mom always said that “the teachers should run the schools”. My thinking now is to agree, but take it one step further and let students participate in that governance as well.

FYI… the survey questioned a national sample of 1,003 public school teachers and 500 principals of grades K through 12, and 1,018 public school students in grades 3 through 12. The complete survey report can be found at: http://www.metlife.com/about/corporate-profile/citizenship/metlife-foundation/metlife-survey-of-the-american-teacher.html?WT.ac=PRO_ML-Foundation-TeacherSurvey_5-9383_T7988-AB-metlife-foundation&oc_id=PRO_ML-Foundation-TeacherSurvey_5-9383_T7988-AB-metlife-foundation