How to create angry [fill in the blank]

September 2, 2006

Ben Franklin’s satire was top notch.  Witty, engaging, well-written, there was always a barb — and the targets of the barbs had to be complete dullards to miss them.  If a pen can be as powerful as a sword, Franklin showed how words can be used to craft scalpels so sharp they can leave no scars, or stilettoes that cut so deep no healing would be possible. 

Franklin wrote a letter to ministers of a “Great Power,” noting the ways by which they might act in order to reduce the power of their nation over its colonies, “Rules by Which a Great Nation May Be Reduce to a Small One.”

It is in that vein that Mr. Angry, at Angry 365 Days a Year, offers “Top Ten Tips for Creating Angry Employees.”  As he explains [please note:  some entries at that site may be unsuitable for children, or contain strong language]:

This is not intended as a how-to guide for wannabe satanic managers. I did briefly consider that this might be akin to distributing a bomb-making recipe (very dangerous information in the wrong hands) but I actually believe most bad managers aren’t deliberately bad. They are far more likely to be ignorant of how destructive their actions are. As Hanlon’s Razor states: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

So please, anyone in doubt, this is top 10 list of things NOT to do.

Without mention of Herzberg, Likert (see here, too), Argyris, MacGregor, Maslow, nor even resort to Frederick Taylor, Mr. Angry lays it out.  He aims for general offices, and especially automated offices — but these rules apply equally well to college departments and faculty at public and parochial schools.  It’s not Franklin, but it’s useful, for non-evil purposes. 

1 Comment | Business, Business Ethics, Current History, Dissent, Education, Ethics, Freedom - Political, Leadership, School discipline, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Recruiting a few good men, to teach

September 1, 2006

Our local paper has been full of interesting stuff the past week — as it should be.

On August 30 the Dallas Morning News editorialized in favor of more men in teaching — citing a study that found men in the classroom improve the academic performance of male students.  (The newspaper said it is a study by economist Thomas Dee at Swarthmore, but it provides a link to a Hoover Institution magazine that does not mention the study . . . [grumble].)

For anyone looking for new arguments to get more men into the classroom, it’s tempting to hold up the new study as a manifesto. Could more men teachers help stem the hemorrhaging dropout numbers for boys? Or reverse the dwindling percentage of boys headed to college? Are more single-sex schools the answer?

The study is certainly not the last word on the matter; the author hopes it could be a jumping-off point for fine-tuning how schools entice youngsters into absorbing information. We hope so.

We also hope the study could be an enticement for the next young man to hear that calling to the classroom. And the next. And the next …

There should be no mystery about how to attract qualified male teachers.  How about we start by paying a competitive wage?  Teaching is a profession where one can take time out, spend seven or ten years getting a Ph.D., and then get a job that pays roughly what a garbage collector would make had he started collecting garbage at the time the teacher starting the march to the graduate degrees.  A recent graduate of our local high school spent a few months’ training with the Army Reserve, and upon return has an administrative job with a local police department — at a salary equal to a degreed teacher with a few years’ experience.  Cops on the beat don’t make enough, either — but someone who spends a decade getting ready to teach should do better than a rookie cop not on the beat.

In contrast, MBAs at accounting firms start out around six figures.  They often have less education and less experience than the teachers — and they are expendable (look at how many are weeded out by the firm in the first three years).  But with that kind of salary offered, a kid might make a well-reasoned calculation that two years of graduate business school and a life in accounting would be better than a Ph.D. and a life teaching in public schools.  I think it patently unfair to say that teaching then gets the leftovers — but it makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

Public schools are the only enterprises where we demand higher standards for the employees, and then hold salaries down until the employees reach the standards.  In every other line of work, the market raises wages.  We might learn a lot by observing (was that Stengel or Berra?)

For those conservatives who ask that education be treated more like a free market — do they really anticipate what would happen were that to occur?  A good teacher is easily worth as much as a starting accountant.  Why not use market devices to improve education?  Raise the wages. 

More men, and more highly-qualified women, will pursue teaching when we let the salaries float to levels comparable to other industries with similar demands and education requirements.  I read Milton Friedman — vouchers or no vouchers, he makes the case that education will be mired in mediocrity until we spend the money to attract the best people possible to teaching, and to keep them there.

6 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Economics, Education, Education spending, Public education, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

. . . and it will trickle down to education

August 4, 2006

Heard this one before?

“Income-tax cut urged, Huntsman says it would benefit schools, but educators are wary,” is a headline in this morning’s Deseret Morning News in Salt Lake City.

Gov. Jon Huntsman, Jr., wants a cut in the state income tax. Education funding shrank a great deal as a priority in Utah in the past decade, and educators want to make up lost ground — much of the state income tax goes to support education. Read the rest of this entry »

1 Comment | Business, Current History, Education, Public education, State school boards | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Applied history

July 31, 2006

Here’s a profession where history reading is a critical skill:

Robert Young writes down the measurements recorded by state-of-the-art digital equipment held by survey party chief Barry Brown.

Photo by J. G. Domke, special to Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

Caption: Robert Young writes down the measurements recorded by state-of-the-art digital equipment held by survey party chief Barry Brown.

See excerpts of the story, about George Washington’s profession, below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Business, Current History, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, George Washington, History, Texas, Texas history | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Day to remember: Ken Lay died, avoided jail

July 6, 2006

P. Z. Myers over at Pharyngula has some comments on the “death of corporate vision statements” and the death of Ken Lay, with links to some harsher views. Some of the commenters accuse Myers and others of gloating over Lay’s death. These are my comments at Myers’ blog:

Tom Peters used to say (may still say, for all I know) that no corporate vision neatly framed on a wall is worth a damn — the only one that counts is one that is engraved on the hearts of the people who make the company go. It was such a vision that saved Johnson & Johnson during the Tylenol tampering crisis — and perhaps a few dozen lives.

But it’s clear that, at best, Enron and Lay failed to live up to that vision. At worst, the officers cynically avoided doing anything close to the corporate vision.

High ideals are not folly by themselves. Nor are they folly when people don’t live up to them. The folly is in the hypocrisy, in the intentional frustrating of the dreams those ideals may hold.

Gloating over Ken Lay’s death? As usual, the knee-jerk conservatives (emphasis on “jerk”) miss the point. Lay will spend no time in prison; under the law, he is now clean as a whistle, and under the criminal law it is extremely unlikely his estate will pay a dime in restitution to the thousands of good people made paupers by Lay’s misdeeds. It is those knee-jerkers who are cynical, and wrong, for defending a rip-off of so many. Ken Lay was no Pretty Boy Floyd — Lay stole from little guys to give to the rich, and Lay put into foreclosure more properties than Pretty Boy Floyd saved. The contrast should give one pause to defend Lay.

Gloat? Over a bad guy avoiding justice? That’s for the Bushies, for the Cheneys, for the DeLays, who have made such gloating a way of life, a legacy to warn our grandchildren with.

3 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Current History | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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