Dorsai: Jan

"I would be happy with either, or both if you have the inclination.

Jenkins, I believe some refreshment would be called for. Coffee?" he asked Kelly and I. Both of us nodded, and he went on "Irish, I think, since I'm sure the sun is over the yardarm someplace", with a smile.

I started to go into Deep Think mode, and when he saw me go kind of blank, started to say something – but I saw Kelly gesture that it was okay, and he sat back to watch me, interested.

A minute or so later, I came back, and he asked me "Do you mind if I ask what you were doing just then?"

A little embarrassed, I told him "When I have a problem, I like to free-associate with it. I kind of go inside myself and pretty much turn my mind loose to collect anything it runs across. When it gets full, I kind of pop out of it, and have enough to start working with."

"An interesting technique. How did it work here?"

"Pretty well, I think."

"Please, go on, then."

"First, you've got several problems that you need to address."

At that point, Jenkins came back in, and handed each of us a cup of coffee – and from the aroma, well-laced with a good Irish whiskey. Where he got it, I wasn't going to ask.

With a sip of his coffee, the Bishop asked "Those are?"

"First: Institutional mindset – as in, we've always done it this way because I don't know why, we just do.

"Second: Loss of focus – are you trying to cycle kids through here, or educate them and teach them to think?

"Third: With the loss of focus, you've lost purpose – are your teachers here to teach, or collect a paycheck? How are they evaluated? By who?

Using what criteria? What crosschecks are there to prevent problems one and two?

"Fourth: Beaurocracy – what is the final product of this school? It's the kids. Anything else should be secondary to graduating well-rounded, thoughtful, thinking kids, ready to face the world for the first time in their lives. Most may well go on to college – how prepared are they, really, to face life on a college campus, away from home for the first time in their lives?

"Fifth: balance. What does it accomplish if you talk to them about justice, and have a teacher with the power to arbitrarily punish them for some imaginary offense? What does it teach them about ethics if a math teacher crams them in preparation for a state test?

"Sixth, but certainly not last, quality. Get the best teachers you can, and let them TEACH their subjects. Don't micromanage them, let them teach. That's what they're educated and trained for – they know how, if you just leave them alone to do it.

"When you've got the smart, educated, motivated teachers, you'll see the student in this school come alive – they'll WANT to learn, they'll want to think, they'll want to do better and better, always wanting to know what's in the next chapter in their schoolbooks."

"And if there are problems?", he asked.

"That's why you have rules and standards – uniformly and consistently applied. If a kid sees the captain of the football team get bounced off the squad and out of school because he got caught smoking dope – regardless of how the team is doing – he's going to know that he's going to get the same treatment – no more, no less."

"What do we do about the other problems you mentioned?"

"That depends. Do you want to fix the problems, or just make them go away?"

"What's the difference?"

"If you FIX them, they don't come back. Just making them go away, they tend to ooze back in after a while – maybe months, maybe years, but they DO come back."

"Then let's fix them. How?"

"First, I expect that you're going to wind up firing about half your staff, for one reason or another."

"Why so many, and for what reasons?"

"So many because the greatest percentage of them are just the kinds of people that Kelly was complaining about. The rest will be because they either don't get the message from the first round of firings, or think that they're somehow immune."

He sighed, and asked"What then?"

"You get the word out – strongly, and in plain language – that this school WILL turn around, and will start graduating the kinds of kids you're actually proud of. The first round of firings will help make that clear – if you actually follow up on it by making the second round, which will last longer. The first bunch will be your obvious knuckleheads. The second batch will be the ones that are better at it."

"Then?"

"Then you start looking at what you're doing, and how, and why. You get your people to start looking at what they're doing – what's good about it, and what's bad? How could they make it easier, faster, better, cheaper? Then get them talking to each other, to see if they can't simplify and smooth things out. To make up an example, why would student go to the gym to get their registration cards, then go to the auditorium to sign up for classes, then go back to the gym to get their schedules signed off? Why not swap the registration or signoff with the scheduling, so that any two steps in the process are close to each other?"

He nodded, and said "I see your point. I'm afraid that even*I* don't know why we do some of the things we do."

"That's the ticket, right there: if it isn't blindingly obvious why you're doing something, you need to ask why you're doing it at all. If you can't explain what you're doing to someone else, easily, then it's too damn complicated. I'm an engineer; the questions I always ask myself about things are 'What does it do?', 'Is it good or bad? why?', and 'How can I make it better and cheaper and easier?'."

He nodded again, and turned to Kelly, asking her "Kelly, could you, or would you, tell me who some of the teachers are that you talked about – the ones that you, ah, put a pox on?"

She looked at me; I smiled and nodded, and she told him "I could, and would, my only concern is that I would mention someone that I simply had a 'personality' problem with, by accident. If I could make a suggestion?"

"Of course!"

"Don't just ask me, or a few students. Ask all of them. If you do it as a kind of survey, you can help the students distinguish between teachers they didn't like, and teachers that didn't deserve to be liked."

"What do you mean? Give me an example."

"Well, for instance, if you ask a student which teacher was hardest on him, he may give you one answer. But if you also ask him what class he learned the most in, you might find out that it was the same teacher.

But if you ask him which teacher he hated having for ANY class, you might get a completely different answer – and if enough kids give you the same answer, you know what you're looking at."

He smiled at her, and said "That's an excellent idea. Kelly, you are one student that I can honestly say that I AM proud to have graduated."

She blushed a bit, and said "And one more idea. Go back and look at how many kids did bad in which classes – and how they did in similar classes before and after."

"How would that help?"

"Well, if a lot of kids do good in Science, say, except when they had one particular teacher, you can figure that it's the teacher, not the kids. Isn't that the kind of thing you're looking for?"

He beamed, and said "It is, indeed. A most valuable insight, Kelly.

Would you like a job? I'm offering you one, right now, as a consultant to this reorganization. Tell me what you want, and we can negotiate!"

She smiled at him, and blushed again, before telling him "I've already got a job, thank you. Dan offered me one a long time ago, and I've accepted it. I don't think I'll have time to work for you like that; but if you really want my help, I can do that – for the kids that aren't here, yet."

He sighed, heavily, and said "Noblesse Oblige – a concept I was afraid had been lost. Where did you learn such a thing, Kelly?"