Someone To Watch Over Me
We
are a culture that has a religious belief in the curative
power of measurement. Our love of measurement is
messianic and runs deeper than any simple wish for data
and knowledge about how we are doing. The impulse to
measure is a philosophical statement about what matters
in the world. It is a life stance that declares that the
world is knowable and ultimately predictable. It holds
that in mysterious aspects of life, the mystery will
eventually disappear with the advance of science and
understanding.
The impulse to measure our way to greatness
reduces the human condition to a subject for manipulation
and questions the actual value and meaning of those
things that are essentially un-measurable. It is the
engineer in us that loves a measurable and predictable
world. This is what questions the place the mysteries of
motivation, learning, love and compassion have in the
effort to create a habitable and effective society.
There are limits to the utility of these
tools for human systems. Human systems, like
organizations, groups and families, are less amenable to
tools of predictability and control. We give misplaced
credibility in the human arena to the idea that watching
something closely will make it better. When it comes to
people and living systems, the act of watching impedes
what it watches. An example is our cultural passion for
imposed universal standards and oversight.
Is Your Glass Half Full?
Oversight is an optical illusion. It is a companion of
super vision. It is a religious belief in the power of
the observer and its capacity to change what it watches.
There is truth to the idea that what you see is what you
get. But if you only look for what is missing, then what
you create by watching is a litany of what falls short in
the world. Oversight is a tool for researching
disappointment.
Tools, and their watchful use, are not the
point. We are not placed on this earth to measure it. We
are here to experience it. The fact that we have amazing
measurement tools and amazing technology does not mean we
have to use them. The fact that management can instantly
know the telephone calls made by each employee does not
mean they have to use this tool. Because we have
computers that give us access to a limitless information
base does not mean a child is going to learn to read or
write.
The extreme statement of our mistaking the
tool for the point is the statement that the way to
improve performance is to measure it more closely and
dictate consequences for someone who does not measure up.
Most of what is most precious in life defies measurement
and does not wish to be watched. The development of a
child in school is an example.
What we want from our measures and our
watching is assurance that things will get done, that our
intentions will be acted upon. This is fine up to the
point where the measuring becomes a weapon. We are at
that point in our performance management systems in adult
organizations and with the movement to have our children
subjected to more national standardized testing with
high-stakes consequences for failure. These strategies
mostly express our lack of faith in each other and border
on contempt for people’s desire and capacity to
learn and produce.
Truth or Consequence
There are ways to bring our intentions into reality
without the impeding effects of measured watching. We
need to set aside our faith in technological tools and
the ruler and restore our faith in personal involvement
and the power of relationships. Learning and performance
in adults and children is a social event. If we believed
this, our debate would shift from a discussion of ways of
better goal-setting and standards to methods of deeper
and wider participation. When the language shifts, the
experience shifts. The language of participation is
different than the language of standards. Standard
setting is a mechanical expression of our intentions.
Participation brings an element of what is sacred into
our intentions. Standards are
instrumental—participation is personal.
The threat of oversight or super vision
believes that weapons are needed to force people to act
in the interest of the institution or larger society. We
do not have to induce commitment with the reminder of
manufactured pressure. Each human soul knows that there
will be consequences to poor performance without us
having to convene the judiciary. Consequences are
inherent in the act of living.
In fact it may be that it is our belief in
the curative power of oversight that deflects us from our
purpose. Our penchant for engineering performance
actually works against it. If we think that people need
to be watched, rewarded and punished to perform well,
then we make this true. If you take schools as an
example, we create a world that is maize bright and
uneducated. We learn how to get good grades at the
expense of learning. We enter each class wondering what
the teacher expects of us rather than facing the question
of what we came to learn.
God Bless the Child
In public education, this question is most urgent in our
concern with the next generation—our children. We
are worried about the quality of public education but our
way of improving it may be destroying it.
We have been operating with a belief in imposing
goals and strong measures for ages, and how is it going?
We now have a world that measures more and more without
ever questioning the value of measures or the social cost
of watching the measured closely. When will we see some
research that measures the return on the cost of
measuring and watching?
I would like to recommend that you conduct
your own experiment and spend four hours in an elementary
school classroom. I have been doing that lately. When you
see kids wandering around a little lost, or staring at a
piece of paper not knowing how to subtract fractions or
compose a sentence, ask yourself whether better testing
is going to change that child’s life. Watch how a
teacher spends those four hours and ask yourself whether
they have a problem in motivation.
During those four hours, sit with a
10-year-old and work with him or her on a math or reading
problem. You will see that a small amount of your
attention and care makes an enormous difference. The kid
who was lost and staring starts to pay attention. When
you slowly go over a lesson with them, they start to
believe that the problem that was a mystery might be
solvable. You will be reminded that it is their faith in
themselves that is the problem with learning, not the
lack of tools or the lack of clear and consequential
goals.
We are willing to spend millions on computers
for schools and millions for testing and standards
development. When it comes to spending more money for
more human attention, we claim that teachers are overpaid
and underperforming. Most of those who complain about
teacher salaries are making a lot more money than the
teachers.
It is not the teachers that are
underperforming; it is us as citizens. The solution to
public education is solved if every adult decides to
spend time instead of money, and decides that the life of
a child, especially one that is not your own, is more
important than your own advancement.
It is human connection that makes a
difference to the education of a child or the performance
of an adult. For every dollar we spend on more
technology, measures, standards and oversight, we are not
spending that dollar on more personal attention or wider
participation. Plus, technology and aggressive measuring
changes the learning and behavior of a human being to the
same extent as meteorology can change the
weather.
March 2001 News for a
Change Homepage
Issue Highlight —
Someone To Watch Over Me
With A Little Bit
Of Luck
