How NOT to be An Educrat

The news is alive with the Educrat: the autocrat of education.

Secular schools have a problem with diversity that leads to administrative decisions that ignore half the nation’s views. These decisions can trample on free speech rights, academic freedom, and diversity of ideas. Things that seem “crazy” or worth “no platforming” are different if conservative scholars are present.

Religious schools can overreact to this situation by also trampling on free speech rights, academic freedoms within mission, and diversity of ideas. Because they exist to allow a working community of scholars holding minority opinions, such schools often have tighter boundaries of discourse. This is appropriate, since they are not state sponsored, and are looking to be places where religious scholars do not have to constantly defend first-principles, but can apply those principles to their discipline and see what results.

This has a place, but the potential for abuse is obvious. This is particularly the case when a leader-figure gains disproportionate power in an institution. Let’s assume you are not an educrat or do not wish to work for an educrat. How can you avoid this problem?

Hire strong people and keep the educational team together.

If you are an educational program, know you are an educational program. That means the vision may come from the Board and the leader (whatever the title), but implementation will come from the ground up. A good leader has a strong team and is loyal to that team. A bad leader will churn in this area, even if allowing for stability in other areas.

Why?

The other areas are not the central mission: education. A good leader will have a stable team in the central area: education.

Know what the mission is and stick to one plan. 

I am the kind of leader who loves new ideas. That makes having a strong mission statement and plan and sticking to that plan until it is done important. Think like Walt Disney. Until you make enough animated classics, you cannot afford to build Disneyland.

A sure of sign of an educrat is the “plan” to implement the “vision” will change constantly. Most of us will only be leaders for fifteen years at the best situation: most Big Plans require fifteen years of not-distracted labor. You cannot be the founder of all good things that will ever be done at your school.

Size is not a plan, get a plan. 

It is good to know how big you wish to be. This is not a plan. Education takes place in tiny places and giant ones. Growth is a strategy. When you find yourself changing educational plans in order to grow, then you are confused. Educate as you wish to educate. If growth is needed to educate as you wish to educate, then find a way to grow that does not change your educational mission and plan.

For example, the College at The Saint Constantine School has four non-negotiable educational ideas:

1. Individualized classes and educational plans.
2. Dialectical education, where no idea is off limits.
3. Global Orthodoxy as an organizing idea.
4. No full-time administrators.

This may be a bad idea, data will tell us, but it is our idea. Until we have an entire class (sixteen years of education), this will be hard to know. This will be my last job if we succeed, because I cannot do it all in my lifetime. I have to lift up successors.

My dad was brilliant at pushing me to the idea that there is no success without a successor. If the project needs you, it is a bad educational project (at least after the first few years).

Be transparent with all data and trust the numbers.

Walt Disney needed Roy Disney. Get Roy. Trust his numbers. Tell everyone the truth about the numbers. Never spin the numbers. We were smaller than we wished in year one (there were reasons) and we told our Board.

Trust the truth.

The bad leader spends time thinking how to “spin” the truth. The good leader spends time dealing with the truth, explaining it, and making a plan based on the truth. If you are ever in a meeting where you are thinking about how to hide the truth, you are in the wrong meeting.

I thank God we have a numbers driven teacher and COO who tells me what is and then helps us get to what ought to be.

Do not be afraid to be forgotten.

The educrat needs prizes, awards, praise. The educator needs good students. I shouldn’t need to give the “keynote” at every conference, the speech at every ceremony, or be the “man” at every event. As a depressive, I seek attention out. This is wrong.

Lift up the team, not the leader.

Of course, Jesus would go further and say: be the slave of all if you are a leader.

Yes.

That is safest. If you are “king,” then you must also know what it is to be a slave by doing the unpleasant work.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.