CULTIVATING INTELLIGENCE, LEADERSHIP, AND DIVERSITY.

The following summary of information presented about three major themes at the ISACS conference in Cleveland Nov. 11-12, 1999 is based on the contents of six sessions:

Jane Healy, Creating Intelligence for a Digital Age

Marc Frankel and Patricia Hayot, Building Leadership for To-morrow

Sally Gries, What a Difference a Leader Makes

Lorene Cary, Creative Tension: Making Diversity Work

Nina Marks, Creating a Multicultural Philanthropic Culture

Anne Chapman, 21st Century Schools: Preparing for Probable and Preferable Futures

Cultivating Intelligence

Computers have become virtually indispensable in education, often without enough thought as to the role they can most beneficially play. As more and more computers are in use at earlier and earlier ages, both potential pluses and minuses of their educational uses are being discussed. But to the following key question, we do not have any adequate answers.

What happens to human intelligence as a result of living with computers?

It is known that brains are shaped in part by the environment: they build themselves by constructing meaningful patterns from experience. The brain's building blocks are neurons. There is fairly robust evidence that those neurons that get used increase in size, complexity, linkages, and numbers. Unused, neurons atrophy.

In this context, computer-induced passivity is a danger. Many experienced educators claim that much software is "edutainment," and 85-90% of it is a waste of time. Instead of engaging their minds in learning, and using listening and speaking skills, children using computers not infrequently just push buttons in order to get the reward of a new game, the help screen, or just to get to the end of a program. Creativity is affected: elementary school teachers report that children no longer want to use crayons, because crayon-drawings do not look as glitzy as those done by software; and parents proudly claim their child is creative "because she loves changing the color-schemes on her computer."

Quality software that empowers learning does exist, such as some science and math simulations at middle and high school level. Some systems theory and geographical concept software is exciting. To get the most out of good software however, there needs to be the backing of a strong curriculum, and teachers knowledgeable in their subject-area as well as in the best ways technology helps to support student learning. Tech support for teachers, enabling them to continue working with students while someone else fixes crashed computers, is essential. In its absence, while teacher wrestles with equipment, girls abandon their computers in favor of chatting, while boys find non-productive ways to use theirs.

It is also known that there are "critical periods" for learning language, especially speaking and listening, and for socialization. Exposure to computers during the same period may interfere with these. If language skills, for instance, are short-changed during the critical period for their acquisition, their further development is inhibited and long-term impaired. Moreover, a lack of "inner language," putting mental talk between urge and behavior, is linked to impulsiveness and acting out.

Computer-use is time-consuming, largely solitary, and may inhibit the acquisition of listening/speaking and social skills, though the computer is not the only culprit here. TV is worse, being even more passive and currently more time-consuming. The average American 17-year old will

have watched TV for some 17,000 hours--considerably more time than he or she will have spent in school. The typical Internet user now spends about 10 hours a week on line; but the time spent on e-mail and computer games, while assumed to be extensive, is unknown.

Some question the wisdom of introducing children to current computer technology at a young age, arguing that what they now learn will have become obsolete by the time they are old enough to really need it. For the various reasons given, the public mania for very early introduction to computers, currently strongly parent-driven, could actually be counter-productive. Preferable might be priority for computers in high school, then middle school and upper elementary. (It is not until about age 7 that the brain is ready for abstract, conceptual, problem-solving use).

In planning for the use of computers in education, it must be remembered that 90-95% of to-day's white-collar jobs are estimated to have disappeared or become unrecognizable within the next ten years. Our current students may have 8-10 careers within their lifetime, and will have to confront issues that we have not even heard of. They will be faced with an exponentially expanding information base, uncertainty, decisions that must be made in the absence of sufficient, or sufficiently validated, information, and having to live with problems that are insoluble. All this suggests that we should aim to help students become efficient lifelong learners who are generalists rather than specialists. It also suggests that we must adopt a constructivist model of education, that focuses on students actively engaged in building knowledge, and developing techniques for assessing information, situations, and problems for themselves. Appropriate use of computers offers the possibility of recasting the teacher from the sage on the stage to facilitator of student meaning-making.

There is a known link between all neurohormones, so we know the cognitive is linked to the affective and to social development. But how neurohormones are affected by digital technology (for instance, whether exciting videogames change dopamine levels in the brain), is an open question. We do not know what effects the content and delivery system of technological tools has on brain organization and chemistry.

In the short run, in trying to cultivate intelligence in a digital world we should be asking ourselves two questions, at a minimum:

1. What can any technology, what can this particular technology (whatever it is) do educationally that we can not do better with another medium?

2. Which technology is the best for this particular job (whatever it is)?

In the long run, serious questions arise about our values. A significant danger already exists that the brave new technology movement is becoming hijacked by commercial interests, to the detriment not only of the intellectual development of our students, but also of their emotional and spiritual needs. On another note, it has been said that the artificial computer-mind is amoral, limited, and lacks imagination. In these ways, it runs counter to traditional humanistic values in education. What effects will spending a lot of time engaged with such a tool have, especially on human minds during their most impressionable stages? In the last generation, the percentage of students taking a BA in the humanities has already been halved. How much higher do we value the mechanistic than the humanistic forms of intelligence? How will we set priorities for whether to send our children to computer camp, or pay for their cello lessons? What will be the long-term results of our own, and our children's, choices?

Cultivating Leadership

Strong, flexible, and broad-based leadership is essential if we are to navigate the currents of change. It is important for all of us to be able to think of ourselves as leaders, to practice leadership, and to take responsibility for helping others to become leaders as well. We need to begin viewing leadership less as something one is born, appointed, or elected to and more as something that has to be part of everyone's personal development. At the same time, the leadership role is becoming more complex, and more diverse followers along with rapidly changing circumstances demand the use of more than one leadership style.

It is impossible to reverse the fast-forward flow of instantaneous information demanding swift decision making. It is impossible to disconnect from a world that has very diverse peoples whose often very

different ways of thinking and behavior must be understood and taken into account. Leaders must deal with burgeoning knowledge and proliferating links with increasingly varied peoples. The World Wide Web is doubling each year, and the number of Internet hosts has increased by over 1000% since 1990. Quite apart from the expansion of contact with the rest of the world, within the U.S. itself about 1/3 of all teenagers now belong to a minority group, projected to increase to 1/2. Immigration adds to our diversity: in public schools in California you may now find students speaking up to 14 different languages in one classroom.

America's people are not only becoming more diverse, but also changing due to longer lives, the increase in dual-earner couples, and the trend to smaller families as well as to more people living alone. Since 1960, both women and men have gained about seven additional years of living, and a girl born to day has a one in three chance of reaching her hundredth birthday. The percentage of married women working for pay outside the home has doubled, and of mothers with children under six has tripled. The wife now earns more than her husband in some 20 % of dual-earner marriages. Among baby boomers, 20% have no children, and another 25% only one, while persons living alone have grown from 8% to 25% of American households. These changes have brought with them new opportunities, new problems, new ways of thinking, and new behaviors.

In the independent school context, there is rapid change in the tenure of leaders as well. A recent electronic survey of ISACS heads that generated 54 replies found an expectation of fast turn-over in leadership, with expected head retirements in this sample at nearly 40% within the next 5 years or less, and only some 30% expecting to stick around for over ten years. This is in line with the known national pattern of generally short tenure of heads. While only 20% said that no capable internal candidates existed, 55 % reported that the expected source of a new head was a head from another school. Another16% looked to an outside school administrator. While over half the respondents said succession planning was important at all levels, fewer than 10% reported any actual formal succession planning. This "recycling existing leaders" phenomenon does not serve our schools well in a world where diversity, varied points of view, and new ideas are needed. We must find ways to encourage the emergence of leaders from currently underrepresented groups: those not already in administration, minorities, women.

A research instrument, R.F.Bales' SYMLOG, has since the 1940’s tracked what people in educational as well as business and health organizations consider effective leadership. On SYMLOG'S three basic dimensions, the ideal leader is mildly dominant, moderately friendly, and moderately accepting of being a "company person" as opposed to a rebel. On the more detailed scale, most often called for in effective leaders were loyalty to a united organization; efficient, impartial management; responsible idealism, collaborative work; democratic participation in management; protecting less able members, giving help; obedience to the chain of command; and trust in the goodness of others. Seen as rarely appropriate were self-protection, self-interest first; rugged, self-oriented individualism; resistance to/non-cooperation with authority; and rejection of conformity /established procedures. Interestingly, none of the characteristics being rated was considered to be counterproductive for an ideal leader under all circumstances. The only slight deviation of independent schools from the very consistent results through time and type of organization is their greater valuing of collegiality and participatory management.

It was suggested that in order to prepare, future leaders needed to work on the following areas among others: change-management, conflict-resolution, consensus building, delegation of responsibility, and balancing multiple challenges. To help them, and to overcome the reluctance of many to seek or accept leadership positions, we need to work on providing leadership opportunities without adding further layers of named administrative posts; articulating more clearly the positive features of leadership beyond increased power and pay; and promoting greater respect for leaders, without being mired in the authoritarian "great man" model of leadership.

To help educate our students and potential future leaders in a way that will contribute to their thriving through time, we should give them the compass of traditional values to help navigate the shifting currents of change; a rubber band, as a reminder to stretch and be flexible; an exercise outfit, to emphasize the importance of being fit and strong; string, as a reminder of connectivity; a scale, to facilitate balancing tradition and vision; a mirror, so they will look inward for their identity; a variety pack of lifesavers, representing managed risk; a cell-phone, to keep in touch; and, of course, a computer.

Cultivating Diversity

The good news is that we are sitting together in this room, and may argue and fight, but we are not killing each other. Color and accent no longer equal caste. We have come to some sort of resolution about differentness. But there is a residue of stigma and privilege that students are still living out, in such things as name-calling, in who sits with whom at lunch, in the resistance to hiring from non-traditional groups for positions of power. It is hard for us to see what cultural/racial wholeness would look like, to know what would work--let alone to see what would work in different places and contexts. We have to commit to a new level of relationship, and doing so is urgent; we may have a only a very small window of opportunity for building economic structures other than ones where some people's labor is free, or paid at only half or a third the rate of others'.

The institutional response, which occurs in independent schools as well as businesses, that "we didn't have a race problem until you came here--it was you that brought the problem" is a problem. Culturally, there are differences and students recognize it. What they bring to the encounter, however, often remains opaque.

Independent schools are the friendliest places--they really care-- but, built for the privileged sons of another age, they do not always feel that way to those entering from different backgrounds. One student recounted that on his first arrival from the inner city to the welcome of lights, food, greeters at the college prep school he was entering, what he saw was the woods beyond, and what he thought was "if any boy wants to jump me and take me into the woods, no one would know..."

Students not from the mainstream are various, and have various problems. Many carry unrealistic, unreasonable family expectations, and get contradictory messages. They are urged to cleave to the values of their family, culture, race, while making it in the white world. They often have the burden of needing to excel in every way as justification for the sacrifices undertaken on their behalf. They must learn to put white people at ease, and not to threaten them--a skill forced on them, with no credit given for success. There is unadmitted institutional pressure on them to assimilate while the message they get from society is that there is only one "right" response, and that they haven't found it.

Complex cultural issues and non-Eurocentric values impacting on our students may not even be recognized, let alone dealt with: cases such as the Korean girl in deep but muffled revolt against her parents; the half Greek, half black student, an outsider in just about any group; the bewildering shuttling between radically different values of a girl spending vacations from her U.S. school with her family in the United Arab Emirate; the white teenager raised in a Sikh commune, struggling to fit in somewhere; the girl whose only family was her single mother, with whom she'd always slept in the same bed until she left for school. Torn between different lifestyles and values, students rarely recognize that their cultural/racial maturity is a process; that while they will make mistakes, they can talk to each other, admit it, and learn from their experiences. "Affiliation," the choice to stick with one's own kind, has become a bad word. Yet through it, participants could learn useful strategies as their subculture butts up against the mainstream.

In order for them to be able to do so, however, they do need to know about their mistakes. There needs to be a creative tension in dealing with race, about the importance of which there is an enormous, hidden denial. An example is the case of a black secretary, whose work was less than perfect and whose employers were unhappy with her performance. However, they backed away from telling her what she was doing wrong, so she never had a chance to do it right. When, finally, she left, her employers would never hire a black secretary again. Suppose a school had a problem with the white headmaster. Would the reaction be "we'll never again hire a white man as head"?

In the school context, dealing with diversity mandates thoughtfulness in many areas. We must get more adult role models with whom non-mainstream students can identify into the schools, and the power-situation has to change. The dialogue about curriculum must be kept going, and it need not be framed in terms of a choice between teaching them to write a real sentence or having them read Cisneros, with one side winning and the other sulking for five years. We have to ask searching questions, such as: How do we decide what level, and what kind, of diversity is desirable for our particular school, and why? How do we decide what, and how much, should be done to integrate the values, perspectives, customs, learning-styles, mind-sets of diverse populations into the culture and curriculum of the school, regardless of the level of actual diversity in terms of numbers? How is the level of effort to be expended made possible in terms of time and energy? How is it monitored, evaluated, rewarded? How can we gain understanding of base values of those from other backgrounds, and keep alert to the many individual exceptions to cultural generalizations?

We may be so anxious not to give offence that we freeze, and miss genuine opportunities for communication. When in doubt, talk to people, even about things that may be difficult; admit to the validity to others' point of view; and, most importantly, keep the dialogue going.

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Author: Anne Chapman. ISACS Annual Conference, Cleveland, November, 1999.