The Day that It Changed for Me

Some of you are aware that I am working on a new book.  I wrote about it here, in I Can’t Believe that I’m Doing this Again!  The initial intent of the book is to describe the history of educational technology, as I have witnessed it.  However, I won’t really know for sure what this book is about until I finish it.  Like all living things, it’s becoming…

Reaching the vicinity of 1994 has provoked a long forgotten memory, an event that convinced me that my days, in my cushy government (NCDPI) position, were numbered.

Here’s what happened.

The big thing in leadership circles at that time was Total Quality Management (TQM). It was developed by Edward Deming, at least partly during the post-war years helping Japan rebuild its economy.  I have shamelessly forgotten all of the tenets of this movement, as with all of the improvement schemes of the 1990s. But TQM was really big thing at NCDPI, as the Associate State Superintendent, Henry Johnson, had recently attended a set of workshops. So inspired was he, that hire the consulting firm and required the entire instructional services staff to attend.

I do not remember the name of the firm that delivered the workshops, nor the name of the little woman who led them. I just remember that she came in about every other week, with two or three young minions in tow, prepared to change the way we did things. Although we felt that we could better use the time, we also recognized that we could alway improve our services.  So we came with learning and self-reflection in mind. What we didn’t expect was to have our steady-enough legs swept out from under us.

It was near the end of the day of the third or fourth session, when she asked us, “Who do you work for?”

We said, in unison, more than a hundred of us, “The Children of North Carolina.” She looked a little puzzled, and then repeated the question, “Who do you work for?” We looked at each other, our turns to be puzzled. Some people, hesitantly called out, “Communities of North Carolina?” “Parents of our students?” “The schools of North Carolina?” “The teachers in the schools of North Carolina?” ..after each attempt that little lady would repeat,

“Who do you work for?”

Our frustration turned to horror when she blurted out, “You work for your General Assembly (legislature)!”

We, in instructional services, had all come to the Department of Public Instruction because we were educators. We were not there working jobs. We had missions. We believed that we were contributing to a better world by serving the education of our children. The North Carolina General Assembly was viewed, most often, as a barrier to our work, restricting us with budget cuts, politically motivated dictates, and the effects of increasingly blaming teachers and NCDPI for what these politicians called, “Failing schools.”

Horror probably best describes how we felt when she told us that we worked for the General Assembly, and even more horrible was the sudden realization that she was right. The job of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction was to enforce and support the laws passed by our law-making body.

That was the day that I realized that I would be doing something else, sometime soon.

I Take this kind of Disappointment Personally

I take this kind of disappointment personally. I should have done more.

I voted.

I also voted with my checkbook, writing checks to my candidates’ campaigns – probably more than was fair to my family.

But, my checks can’t compete with those from millionaires, billionaires and huge corporations.

The sad thing is that according to exit polls, most Americans seem to side with the positions of Democrats’ on many of the actual issues.

Yet this election was not about issues.

This election was about volume. ..and volume is $bought$ before the voting begins.

This election happened in dark rooms where checks were written, adding zero after zero, with the expectation that the writers would soon be legally freed from many of the consequences of acting to add many more zeros to their bank accounts.

I wonder now if this was the intent of our “Founding Fathers.”

Vote Today! Vote for…

On this election morning, I am reminded of the second half of Jeff Daniels’ speech in the the first episode of “The Newsroom.” Here’s my slightly edited version…

“We sure used to be (the greatest country). We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons not self-interest, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons not for greed or spite.

We waged wars on poverty, not poor people.

We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest.

We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest scientists, artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men.

We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior.

We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, we voted for the best government, not the most or the least – and we didn’t scare so easy…”

And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed and educated. By great men and women who were revered.”

(full & unedited speech here [http://goo.gl/QSJUP], C/O Brian Hines)

If you vote today, vote for the aspirations of our original patriots, not those of the corporate CEOs and boards of directors, who camouflage themselves with terms like patriots and TEA party.

My 2¢ Worth…