School greatness takes humility first

Now what a bunch of pabulum does that sound like?

Did I just write myself into a corner with that first post on what makes a school great? I went and listed the second item as:

2. Humility of spirit, shared among leadership and woven into the very fabric of the school community. Otherwise, it will blast apart or sink into bilious intrigue by ego and private agenda long before greatness is seen.

I have lead schools for 23 years now. Item #2 comes from experience, especially the distressing experience of the second sentence of that point. “Otherwise, it will blast apart or sink into bilious intrigue by ego and private agenda long before greatness is seen.”

Humility is clearly a virtue in my book. Not for Aristotle, for what was it a mean between? Magnanimity won out as the character of the “great-souled man.” It didn’t cut it for Nietzsche and his ubermensch either. I differ, but won’t plead the case at this point.

My argument is simply quite practical.

You’re dealing with people’s children. Their feelings. Their futures. What could be closer to home? If school and home, teacher and parent are not connected in relationship and partnership with explicit, nearly continual attention to the child’s good (which may definitely not coincide with the child’s preferences), then how is this going to work?

In the best of school communities, you will differ at times on what is good for the child. What then is the ground upon which to work through those differences?

If even a small fraction of the time, the parent-teacher relationship in community is about a parent reliving or revising a childhood through today’s child, things are going to get ugly. If that relationship is about a teacher (or principal or coach or Headmaster) seeking ego satisfaction in being proven right or compensated by power or pacified by control, then it’s going to get uglier still. Jockeying for position or power is just not about caring for children. If these are the preoccupation of parents or teachers, the kids just can’t come first.

Certainly, much in schools is tinged by these unpleasant aromas and distasteful flavors. But if humility is not present to win the day, greatness is not in the cards. Children suffer, parents suffer, teachers suffer, and the school is like many other schools and unlike the great ones.

Whether you laud humility or not, you can certainly recognize where ego and private agenda tend to lead. The work of a school can and should be quite ennobling and uplifting, for its students but also for any involved with its work – teacher, parent or friend.

Humility is not servility. It’s a journey beyond humility to find the virtue of being a servant to all. A journey I believe is worth making, but not a necessary step for a school to approach or attain greatness.

Without humility, though, the fundamental interaction of a school – that of giving to those who are weak but growing stronger – is displaced. I don’t care if names are on buildings, or if titles and trappings seem oh so important. I don’t care if beauty and even grandeur are sought in the place called home for a school.

These aren’t the testing ground of humility. In relationships are found its fabric and its fruit. With humility, possibility remains for the weak to become strong and for giving to unseat taking as the fundamental currency of relationship. That’s a taste of greatness.