Corporatization, Schools, and Machines
By
Shahid
Siddiqui
Gareth Morgan, a professor of organisational behaviour and
industrial relations at York University in Toronto, is the author of a popular
book titled ‘Images of Organization’. In an intriguing manner, the book tries
to describe the dynamics of an organisation with the help of metaphors.
For instance, organisations can be viewed as machines, organisms,
brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons, flux and transformation,
and instruments of domination. If we look around us at various educational institutions,
we notice that most of them are being run like machines. In the neoliberal
tradition, educational organisations are viewed and treated as machines.
Decision-makers and managers also consider educational organisations to be mere
machines and expect them to operate like machines in a routinised, efficient,
reliable, and predictable way.
In a number of educational institutions in Pakistan, we observe a
mechanistic model of management as it divides the responsibilities of employees
into small units, which can be conveniently monitored for evaluation, leaving
little room for creativity. A significant perk for managers in such a
mechanistic and bureaucratic model is the exercise of power by treating
employees as tiny screws in a big machine who have no emotions or ideas.
This kind of management was initially proposed for the production
units of factories to ensure enhanced productivity and precision in the product
that can be supervised, monitored, and measured.
The model became popular with
the corporate sector where employees were treated like robots and expected to
be devoid of ideas and emotions. In modern times, famous food chains are good
examples of ‘efficient management’.
The problem, however, started when the corporate model of
management was applied to educational organisations in the hope for enhanced
efficiency, ignoring the fact that factories and educational institutions are
completely different entities, with dissimilar requirements, and need a
different approach to management.
A prevalent approach, more so in private schools, is that of a
highly straitjacketed environment where teachers are ‘non-thinking’ objects who
are just supposed to implement instructions without any reflection as all the
thinking is done at the top level. In a highly-structured and bureaucratic
model of management, teachers’ creative initiatives are quashed without any
remorse. They are made to realise that they are not there to think, reflect,
propose and initiate, but to act like consumers by carrying out given chores in
a robotic manner.
In his seminal book titled ‘Schools That Learn’, Peter Senge
suggests that: “Our assembly line thinking forces us to treat the natural
variety of human beings as somehow aberrant because they do not fit the needs
of the machine”. With the passage of time, enthusiastic teachers lose their
passion and confidence, and become passive robots in a fearful environment of
centralised monitoring. But the managers believe that this mechanistic approach
is a safe mode. They may be right to the extent that in the absence of opposing
voices, one gets the impression that all is well when, in fact, teachers as
well as schools emerge as losers in this cold and so-called rational way of
operating.
Gareth Morgan believes that “both employees and organisations lose
from this arrangement. Employees lose opportunities for personal growth, often
spending many hours a day on work they neither value nor enjoy, and
organisations lose the creative and intelligent contributions that most
employees are capable of making, given the right opportunities”.
Is it important for educational institutions to have an open
environment of learning, thinking and managing affairs? Is it vital to give
academic freedom to teachers? The answers to these questions vary depending on
the philosophy of education that one believes in. If the management believes
that the function of education is to fit into the slots of society, then the
instruction required is neutral, apolitical and unidirectional where teachers
act as passive workers.
If the management thinks that the purpose of education is not just
to fit into the various niches of society, but also to develop critical
thinking and reflective practices among students to enable them to apply their
knowledge in different contexts, it should adopt a learning organisation mode.
What is a learning organisation mode and how can an educational institution be
turned into a learning organisation?
There has been ample research on the need to shift the paradigm
from a highly narrow and skewed view of school-effectiveness to a broader
holistic view of school-development where the development of teachers as
individuals and the school as an organisation are interdependent.
To turn educational institutions into learning organisations, it
is important that teachers are considered important stakeholders in the system.
They must be provided with the opportunities to develop themselves as
professionals and individuals. An institution of learning revolves around the
spirit of inquiry. This should be evident in the curriculum, pedagogy,
evaluation, and research projects.
Educational institutions must also encourage the culture of shared
decision-making, which is only possible through frequent meetings and
dialogues. It is also important for managements to realise that creative
conflicts are useful for the growth of such organisations. Conscious efforts
need to be made to create an environment where teachers feel that their jobs
are meaningful and satisfying. This sense of purpose makes one’s task more
enjoyable and valuable. It is this enabling atmosphere that helps develop
creative teachers who can then produce thinking citizens.
The writer is an educationist.
Email: shahidksiddiqui@gmail.com
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