Borrowing from the Independent World

Wow...two posts in one day - after nearly a month without one! After writing my earlier post, I was going through my Google Reader looking for a blog post I'd read elsewhere when I came across an article written by Patrick Bassett, President of the National Association of Independent Schools. Independent schools are non-public, private and tuition funded, yet I've found recently that there are many parallels between their fight to sustain and market themselves and the plight of many public school systems in America - on top to that, Bassett is an engaging and thoughtful blogger.

His recent post, which is pasted below, is very relevant to my earlier post today, and to the battle education faces in America. Some of it is probably controversial from a public school standpoint, but it is thought-provoking:

By: Patrick. F. Bassett
Published: March 1, 2011
Updated: March 25, 2011


NAIS President Patrick F. Bassett

In the opening scene of The Social Network, the character of the young Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) has an exchange with his girlfriend that is so exasperating to her, she breaks off the relationship on the spot, telling him, “…you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an (expletive deleted).” A colleague of mine observed the Zuckerberg character’s affect was so obtuse and emotionally oblivious that it could be characterized as “on the Asperger’s spectrum.”

When I saw the film, I wondered whether or not the next Mark Zuckerberg is applying to one of our independent schools. An admissions officer had sent me an application essay from a very smart (2200 SSATs) but slightly different eighth grade student. In response to the typical high school admissions essay question, “Imagine where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing in thirty years,” the student wrote a raucously funny and clever response, indicating he anticipated being married to a world class chef, who was mute, and he and his wife would by living near her restaurant in NYC, and be happy, “having very few expectations of one another.” I’m hoping one of our schools does admit this kid: He may be a handful, but if its tact and social awareness, and “social networking” he needs (EQ to balance his outsized IQ), then where better than one of our schools to get it?

So, I believe I can say with some degree of confidence that what makes independent schools great is our success in educating the whole child/student to navigate all waters of life, not just intellectual/academic ones. But since the theme of the 2011 Annual Conference was “Advancing our Public Purpose,” I wondered out loud at the conference, “Is being a ‘great school’ public purpose enough?”

Given the generally deplorable state of public education in the US (whether considered in its own right or evaluated in contrast to that of high-performing public education systems, such as that in Finland, where there are no private schools to speak of, because there is no need for them), shouldn’t there be a larger commitment by independent schools to the common good of effective public schools?

I read recently an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review, “The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value: How To Reinvent Capitalism — And Unleash a Wave of Innovation and Growth” (Jan.–Feb. 2011) by Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer, whose main themes were… Often when I read such materials from outside the realm of education, I transpose the subject and a few phrases to see what it might sound like if we applied the thinking to independent schools. What if the article had read like this? “Creating Shared Value: How to Reinvent Schools — And Unleash A Wave of Innovation and Growth.” If it had, the themes might have been…



The capitalist system is under siege. Business is now seen as the problem — as prospering at the cost of the local community, favoring short-term profit over long-term stability and growth, unconcerned with the well-being of employees, the environment, customers, suppliers, or the economic distress of the community.

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The education system is under siege. Schools are now seen as the problem — as dithering at a cost to the local community, favoring the interest of adults over those of children.

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Companies must take the lead in bringing business and society back together, going beyond the corporate social responsibility mindset via the model of shared value, beyond philanthropy and even sustainability to creating value as the core principle of the economic model.

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Schools must take the lead in bringing education and society back together, going beyond the social responsibility/service learning mindset via the model of shared value, beyond philanthropy and even sustainability to creating value as the core principle of the educational model.

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Re-conceiving the connection between society and corporate performance is already happening in forward-thinking companies: Google, IBM, GE, Intel, Nestle, Johnson & Johnson.

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Re-conceiving the connection between public purpose and private schools is already happening in the most forward-looking independent schools, where we find laboratories of experimentation; outreach programming to serve the educationally underserved; centers of civic engagement; partnerships with public schools.

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Businesses acting as businesses, not as charities, could be the most powerful force for solving society's challenges.

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Private schools acting with public agency, not for themselves alone, could be a powerful force for solving society's challenges.


If my imaginary version of the HBR article had been a HGE Newsletter (Harvard Graduate School of Education) article instead, it might have cited for inspiration and grounding some important thinkers on the topic:

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." ("Letter from a Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.).
"America has a long heritage of educational diversity, of public schools working alongside our independent schools, and this tradition has done much to contribute to our nation's greatness." (President Ronald Reagan, speaking at our last NAIS Annual Conference in Washington, DC, 2/28/1985).
"We must migrate from 'silos of separation to communities of collaboration'." (Margaret Dowling, director of the Department of Education’s Office of Non-Public Education, speaking at the NAIS Annual Conference in National Harbor, MD, 2/24/2011).

And I would add, "For America to prosper, public schools must once again be good, and private schools must be great."

So, dear reader, what do you think? Is having a great school that educates well future leaders “public purpose enough?”

Planting Acorns...

A man I admire, Mark Scharenbroich, uses the analogy of planting acorns to describe the role teachers and parents have in the lives of young people. With care and nurturing, the acorn will grow into a sturdy oak that will outlive the planter by several lifetimes, and be a lasting testament to the care invested in its growth. In today's world of immediate gratification, the frustrating problem for some is that we may not see the payoff on the investment in the futures of our young people for many years. A sturdy, healthy oak takes decades to develop.

I'm constantly reminded that while we work every day on student achievement, instruction and delivery, and measurable outcomes for students, some of the most important outcomes will not be measurable, and not evident, for many, many years. As I have advanced in my career (some would say advanced in years...), it has become more and more apparent that the role educators play in shaping people is far more important than the role we play in teaching grammar and mathematics.

For years education has struggled to attract the best and the brightest to our profession. The pay is relatively low compared to jobs that require commensurate training. The status of educators in American society is probably at an all time low as American education is attacked from every angle. Nevertheless, somehow, we are still able to count among our professional educators people who care about more than comma splices and quadratic equations. Every day our teachers are invested in the whole child - their successes are our successes, their failures our failures.

Education and education funding is a hot topic in Michigan. This is not a political blog, yet I urge anyone reading to recognize the critical juncture we have reached in Michigan. With the loss of industrial and manufacturing jobs, educating young people to be creative solution finders with the capacity to think their way to a living has never been more critical.

I question whether the problem lies in the schools, or in our approach to them. Are teachers valued appropriately? Are schools valued to the degree we value businesses and infrastructure? The unquestionable truth is that the future of our state and nation depends on how many acorns are cultivated into strong long-lasting oaks in schools and homes. Now is a time for all to be invested in the education of our youth as the critical issue before us.