Authority Pleasing and Rule Following will not Prepare us for an Uncertain Future

20 Agust 2012

I am the process of reviewing more than 600 blog postings with the thought that I might include some of them in a book.  Here is one that I thought merited a repeat posting at a time when US university education is undergoing serious scrutiny and change, not necessarily for the better.

The authority pleasing, questioning suppressing, rule-following approach to education may have served to provide society with assembly line-workers and bureaucrats, but it does not do much to prepare us for a new Renaissance.

Leonardo da Vinci’s life was an exercise of creative problem solving of the very highest order. The principle of Curiosita provides the primary key to his method. It beings with an intense curiosity and an open mind, and proceeds with a stream of questions asked from different perspectives.

Michael Gelb, How to think like Leonardo da Vinci, pp. 66-67.

Did you know that the Latin root of "education" is educare, which means "to draw forth?"

A Humane, Creative, Empowering Culture

As readers of this all-too-infrequently posted blog know, I will be completing my full-time service at American University, this spring, after 35 years. The recently published School of International Service Newsletter (The Diplomatic Pouch) included a “farewell” interview in which I described creating a “humane, creative, empowering culture” in AU organizations that I helped develop and lead as a major accomplishment. (The complete interview is posted at

http://www.american.edu/sis/news/upload/DPouch_Spring_2011_F_web.pdf )

A colleague wrote that she liked the concept but that it was new to her. In response, I provided the following elaboration.

I’m glad you liked the concept of a humane, creative, empowering culture, (perhaps sub-culture would be better) though I haven’t thought of it as all that revolutionary. This was my goal both as Director of Doctoral Studies and especially as Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence. Creating such a culture simplifies the task of leadership since those functioning within it come to behave appropriately as a matter of habit - like not picking up food with your left hand in rural India and Sri Lanka and presenting a credit card or accepting a cheque deferentially with both hands extended in Singapore. If the culture is, indeed, humane, creative and empowering, members of the organization come to look forward to their work day - my staff often told me so and they stayed on, turning down higher paying jobs. I believe most human beings want a work environment where they feel productive; feel that they are making a difference; feel that their creativity is being affirmed. This is a self-reinforcing process. In such a culture individuals become more productive and the rewards they receive, both intrinsic and extrinsic grow.