Haim Ginott inspired me. I implore every teacher and educator to read his work. He was a Jew who survived the horrors of a concentration camp. He saw the gas chambers that were designed by qualified engineers and children who were murdered in cruel experiments by highly skilled doctors.
He, like me, was more than suspicious of education.
He believed that the primary purpose of education should not be to instil knowledge but to encourage kindness, empathy and compassion. In this way the world might be free of highly educated monsters and psychopaths like the Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao.
I agree with him one hundred percent.
Teaching about maths, reading, writing and how to pass exams is pointless if we are not teaching our children to be caring human beings.
That should be the first aim of any teacher.
Leadership is about empowerment. If a leader doesn’t enable their staff to take risks and grow they aren’t worth their salt. A good leader should encourage all their staff to reach their potential.
A school is like an ocean liner. It builds up a head of steam and gets carried along by its own momentum. It cannot stop or change course abruptly. You have to guide it and plan each change of course well in advance. It takes all the ‘sailors’ working as a team for it to run smoothly.
Headship is like a race down a steep snow run on an old tin tray. You have limited control and your journey is perilously at the mercy of events and obstructions that cannot all be foreseen.
Yet a Head sets the tone for everything that happens in the school.
The art of Headship is to sell your vision so that the whole community is pulling in the same direction.
Paradoxically a Head is largely impotent. As a Head you have far-reaching responsibilities but limited power. There are good things about this. Many Heads proceed to Headship out of a desire for power, control and money. They are ambitious and can be overbearing, ruthless, and self-centred. At least the system limits their desire to exert a regime of fear and control
A Head has limited control over poor teaching. The kids may deserve better but there are no quick fixes. Headteachers are prevented from exercising much power by a series of legal requirements. These can be frustrating but on the whole having restraints is better than having a tyrannical Headteacher. A Head therefore has to eliminate poor teaching through example and by supporting and leading their staff.
You always find when you reach the top that you’re actually in the middle. A Head is in the middle of everything pulled by the governors, staff, students, government, local authority and parents, you soon find you are not ‘in charge’. You have to juggle everything to keep all the balls in the air.
It is said that the fact that someone wants to be a politician should automatically ban them from standing; the same thing is true of Headships. Those that think they know what they are doing are usually the worst. If a Head starts Headship by asking for more power or money it is likely that they are doing the job for the wrong reasons.
The only reason to become a Head is a passion for trying to make the world a better place. Education is the only way of achieving this. After all, education has to be better than war, religious hatred and sectarian violence.
. Education is all things to all men/women. To politicians it is a way of maintaining social order, reinforcing class or enabling mobility and addressing the economic needs of the country. To many it is purely about careers while to others it is about expanding minds, opening horizons and creating wonder. I’m very much in the wonder and awe camp. I am also of the repairing damaged kids persuasion. All my students were equally important and equally valuable. I hope I succeeded in making some of their lives better. That’s what I set out to do. Their chosen career and economic value was secondary to their self-esteem and happiness.
Before starting this I checked on ‘Rate my Teacher’, a scurrilous website that has given a voice to some rather dubious individuals, but one which reflects how some others see you. It offers a modicum of objectivity. It was a little unsettling to see oneself described as an obese penguin from the CIA but on the other side there was also the recognition of the care and respect. It showed a career that was not entirely wasted.
