School Leaders and the Language of Hope - Brief Article

School Administrator, Feb, 2001 by William R. Capps

In this age of standards and accountability, the experts tell us school leaders should be about vision, risk, change and, of course, new paradigms.

These factors obviously can enhance school improvement, but the violent pathologies we have witnessed in our schools of late and the pessimism that pervades our public discourse convince me we must once again embrace hope as a virtue central to the educational, emotional and social well-being of our children.

Regardless of their station in American society, children are being engulfed in a sea of cynicism. Their innate goodness, their intelligence and their collective worth are regularly derided by politicians, academics, the media and, sadly, by many public school educators. Social commentators have learned there is fame and profitability in the language of decline, despair and doom. It sells!

Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, observes, "No generation of young people has been subjected to as much adult discouragement as today's schoolchildren and college students. Hopelessness and skepticism are nearly invincible foes of young people trying to find their place in the world."

Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, in their book Leaders, attribute to Confucius a homily that leaders are "dealers in hope." This insight should have resonance for every school leader. Hope is not about epiphany; it is about positive, sustained interactions with children.

Words define the lives of children. School leaders should convey the language of uplift and hope to children. The expectation that every adult in a school will model for children the language of possibilities and an endowed future must be communicated.

The Ultimate Bond

Children want to be recognized and respected for their individuality, but they also want to be accepted in and personally contribute to the larger world. Schools can be the incubators that nurture this dichotomy.

Children need social intimacy. They get lost in the large school cultures we have created. As we enter a new era of school construction, school leaders need to assess the attributes of small schools. Kathleen Cotton's research at the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory indicates small schools meet or exceed large schools on every measure of school success.

There is no formula for small school size, but a good rule of thumb might be this: A small school is one in which every adult in the building knows the name of every child.

Trust is the ultimate bond between children and adults. The effective school leader builds trust. Trust is the precursor of hope. Children are intuitive. A trusted school leader creates a present that is stable and a future that is full of promise for all those in the school community.

Children are motivated by adults who radiate spirit, imagination and energy. School leaders must avoid the "just survive another day" syndrome and engage in reflective planning and decision making. Routine has its place but it can become an addictive escape. Gerald Parshall, writing in U.S. News & World Report, says of Franklin Roosevelt that he "was hip-deep in the muck of politics and power, but his eyes were always on the stars."

It sounds trite, but the stars are an apt metaphor for the clarity, purity and possibilities school leaders should be about.

Children can be overwhelmed and confused by the fractious nature of modern society. Good school leaders create a sense of community for children. Many children must contend with broken or blended families, with communities that have no definable boundaries or characteristics, and with neighbors who value anonymity. Many have attended several schools before reaching adolescence.

Community creates meaning, and meaning invests the future for the child. Community can counter the melancholy we are seeing in many children. Graham Greene, the British novelist, defined melancholy as the "logical belief in a hopeless future." That hopelessness may explain, in part, the fact that approximately 20 percent of our children require professional mental health services.

Community implies order, structure, acceptance, caring and explanation of the larger world. Children listen for hope. School leaders should employ the moral language of high ideals. Truth honor, reason, responsibility, service and democratic principles liberate children to imagine their futures. Children who can perceive a future with hope are more likely to meet the academic standards we have established for them.

Enriching Lives

Hope can be a nebulous and difficult virtue to grasp. In one sense, it might be framed in the context of how adults answer the spoken and unspoken life questions children ask. Who am I? What am I doing here? Does anyone really care about me? Am I special? Where am I going?

In another context, there is a growing body of research related to hope. In an article on organizational hope, James Ludema, a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University, and his associates, frame hope in the context of "an affirmative form of social discourse through which communities of people, (1) generate new images of possibility for social relationship and (2) mobilize the moral and affective resources necessary to translate image into action and belief into practice."