Values-Vacuum Education

Servant-Leadership. Now there's a concept I can bitch-slap The Fools with from here to eternity. And as satisfying is that is, it is the intellectual equivalent of beating up hydrocephalic monkeys with a dictionary.

Back to Our topic concept. From The Servant-Leadership Blog comes this brief discussion of this topic in education. The intriguing--and ultimately depressing--angle of this discussion is that it originates from an essay written in 1972.

Nineteen. Seventy-two.

As you will see, We've wasted Our time criminally. And by "We" I mean the educational fiasco We share with the U.S. as part of A.

The essay is titled Servant Leadership in Education and was written by Robert Greenleaf. In the essay, Greenleaf postulates three failures of the educational system:

1) "...(T)he refusal to offer explicit preparation for leadership to those who have the potential for it."

2) "...(T)he lack of opportunities for the poor to be prepared to return to their roots and become leaders among the disadvantaged."

3) "...(T)he state of confusion around the teaching of values."


Having been a student on both sides of the pond, I can easily and whole-heartedly agree with Greenleaf. One only has to look at failure #3 to understand the other two failures of the educational system to develop leaders, for without a framework of values, education is but an organized waste of time.

Why? Because knowledge without a value context is merely instructional--do this, follow this order, here's your path--and not constructional, as in build, create, expand and explore.

Without values, can you truly develop leaders? You can only develop bullies, cheats, swindlers, backstabbers, con men and hypocrites. Witness Enron, WorldCom and the current Oval Office.

Without values and without values-based leaders, can you reasonably expect leaders who will actually help develop their communities, their society, their nation? You can only if you find the concept of mining the Sun for helium reasonable.

Funny how all this is reflected in yesterday's bold front headline in local papers: Puerto Rican schools score poorly versus U.S. schools. Allow Me to add that U.S. schools score poorly versus those of other industrialized and non-industrialized nations, so We have the nauseating distinction of being "D-" students compared to "D+" students.

I'm sure this gives a handful of people in the U,S, a sense of superiority, knowing that "dem little brown people" have schools that aren't as good as those of Average School District, U.S. of part of A. It always helps lackwits to find someone to feel superior to, even if they have to deny reality to do so. But though We report the tragedy with blaring headlines and We gnash Our collective teeth at the continuous scandals, incompetence, inefficiency and sheer stupidity of Our educational system, are We actually going to try to fix it?

Oh, yeah, sure, the same day We start mining the Sun for helium.


The Jenius Has Spoken.