A sense of urgency is MIA—2
Yesterday, I told you about a meeting I attended. I also said I was dissatisfied and explained a bit about why I felt frustrated.
However, in talking with my pal Bill yesterday morning over a delicious veggie omlet, I was able finally to verbalize the underlying characteristic that drove me nuts: there was at the meeting (and there is today amongst lots of educators) a stunning lack of urgency about learning, schools, the flat world, our future as a democracy and our students’ ability to deal with change. Bill reminded me that I’d sent him an article by John Kotter, “It all starts with a sense of urgency”. So I did a little research on my web rambling and here’s what I found.
I received the Change This Newsletter in my mailbox September 10. In it was a link to “50.02 – It All Starts With A Sense of Urgency by John P. Kotter“. It’s a wonderful little pdf (11 pages) that explores conditions that lead to complacency, the difference between complacency and false urgency, and the consequences of not adopting a sense-of-urgency stance in a period of great change like now. While schools are not mentioned specifically, the descriptions of situations resonated deeply with me.
So, without a deep sense of urgency, it is understandable why we talk about the same old shit—lack of time, we don’t have the money, there’s too much to do, there are so many obstacles, etc. ad infinitum et ad nauseam. It is understandable why we don’t even address the problems we can (like a decent program for new teachers). Educators seem paralyzed, dazed, anesthetized, yet angry.
I’m glad Barack Obama is talking about doing things differently with renewed energy. Perhaps it will give some of our young educators the hope and words to tell truth to power. Or I’m afraid we are doomed to slip further and further into mediocrity. I think it was Deming who said that survival is not mandatory.
Read this article (and others), start some fierce conversations, interrogate reality, challenge ideas, look for allies, and begin to grow a network of committed educators that will not stand for this crap any longer. Start somewhere!