Like everyone else, I have been following the upheaval at school board meetings across the country. Parents are confronting school boards over a wide variety of issues like Critical Race Theory, transgender bathroom issues and events at sports games.
I think these parents are missing the boat.
School boards are bureaucracies. That’s what makes them so aggravating. But if parents understood what bureaucracies are and how they work, they would know how to stand up to them.
Mature bureaucracies are inward facing. They aren’t very concerned with things happening outside their boundaries. They don’t care about results and instead focus on their expanding their power by using internal procedures. Administrators have an unshakable belief that as long as they focus on process outcomes will be acceptable.
That’s nonsense, of course.
My school district – Salem-Keizer, in Oregon – made national news in 2017 when teachers received notification they faced discipline if they failed to report students they thought might be having sex. Even if the students were their own kids! Since it is illegal for people under 18 to have sex the district took it upon itself to root out miscreants and report them to the police.
Fast forward to July of 2021 and the entire state education bureaucracy made news. The governor signed a bill suspending Oregon’s essential skills graduation requirement. Why? Too many students were failing. Or to put it more accurately, the schools were spending so much time and effort policing students sex lives they overlooked teaching.
That’s an example of how bureaucracies see the people it is supposed to serve: as tools to further its internal goals of power and dominance. Fascist states share the same view. The role of citizens is to further the goals of the government instead of government serving the goals of its citizens — something in direct conflict with liberal democracy.
Another feature of fascism used by bureaucracy is to target a minority as a scapegoat to justify further repression. The recent letter from the National School Boards Association to President Biden labeling dissenting parents “domestic terrorists” is a good example. (Read the entire letter here.)
The fascist nature of bureaucracies has been an issue since their inception. Here is what early organizational theorist Ludwig Von Mises had to say:
There cannot be any doubt that this bureaucratic system is essentially anti-liberal, undemocratic, and un-American, that it is contrary to the spirit and to the letter of the Constitution, and that it is a replica of the totalitarian methods of Stalin and Hitler. (Von Mises 2007, p.3)
But there are some good reasons for keeping bureaucracies around.
Bureaucratic organizations emerged in the early 20th century as a way to discourage political corruption. In those days it was common for politicians at all levels of government to pass a law and then manipulate its enforcement to make money or curry favor with voting blocs or political allies. Bribery was so accepted that it was said “a good politician is one who stays bought”, meaning that once a bribe was paid higher bids were rejected (Steffens 1904).
As we’ll see in a minute, bureaucracies resist change, but that can be a good thing. Consistency means predictability, and that’s important for some government departments. We wouldn’t want the IRS changing the way it administers tax laws, or the Justice Department to make frequent changes in the way they investigate federal crimes.
When bureaucracies contemplate a change, a panel of experts carefully studies the issue and change is slowly implemented. For example, the Federal Standards Accounting Board (FASB), makes changes to Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, (GAAP) the IRS follows.
Factories were the inspiration for bureaucracies.
Fredrick Taylor wrote the book on how to manage the new factories emerging at the end of the 19th century. He published Principles of Scientific Management in 1911, and it changed the course of economic history. It seems obvious now, but training people for their jobs, establishing a hierarchy of authorities – owners, managers and supervisors – and measuring work output were innovative ideas.
It is hard to imagine, but the late 19th century was the first time that large numbers of people gathered to tend to the needs of machines. There had been already been projects requiring large numbers of people, like shipbuilding, and assembly lines assembling firearms, but nothing like a huge factory. No one had experience in organizing hundreds or thousands of people showing up every day at factory gates to run the new technology of steam-powered machines.
And Scientific Management seemed to work. Factories became more efficient when they followed Taylor’s ideas. Complex assembly lines with hundreds or thousands of workers efficiently operating machines made their owners rich. As the power of unions increased, workers shared in the largesse and the middle class was born.
Taylor’s ideas about management of factories soon spread to the management of public policy.
Whenever government makes a law someone has to carry it out, and that’s what lead to bureaucracies. A German sociologist named Max Weber read Taylor’s book on Scientific Management and applied his ideas to his book about running bureaucracies, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (Weber, 1922, 1947).
Professional managers were hired and politicians lost their autonomy to make day-to-day decisions. Formal rules, procedures and processes were strictly enforced and detailed records kept. This is what ended the widespread political corruption of the 19th century. Formal procedures and record keeping put crooked officials out of business. It still does.
Whenever there are rules, there must be authorities to enforce them. A hierarchy of authorities emerged to make sure workers in bureaucratic offices followed the rules and procedures. Unlike most private companies, bureaucracies use threats as a motivator. Employees do not receive bonuses for following rules; they receive punishment for not following the rules. It is a natural extension of authoritarianism.
Interestingly, punishment meted out by bureaucracies is usually social in nature. Minor or first time infractions result in public shaming in the form of written or verbal reprimands. More serious or repeated offenses earn banishment – that is, suspension or expulsion. In highly cohesive social structures, these are very powerful compliance tools.
All of this applies to students in public schools as well.
There is no patience for questioning rules or suggesting changes because doing so implies the organization may be wrong, something intolerable in an authoritarian organization. This leads to another feature of bureaucracies, the maintenance of the status quo. Resistance to change at all costs is the norm. Even a hint of criticism implies the bureaucratic managers are doing something wrong, and that undermines their authority and power.
But bureaucracies are a poor choice for managing education, or any other social service.
The central goal of education is to explore new ideas and question existing knowledge and assumptions. Critical thinking and questioning authority is what education is all about, but the bureaucratic organizations running schools finds these things intolerable.
The very reason for the existence of social service bureaucracies is undermined by their origins in managing factories.
Factories depend on interchangeable parts coming into the assembly line, because machines cannot tolerate differences very well. Factories are also designed to create identical and standardized outputs. But people are not identical or interchangeable. What works well for educating one person might be useless for the next person. That’s why public schools label children and create endless classifications to define their needs.
This is also why people working in bureaucracies often complain about feeling as if they are only a number. As far as the organization is concerned job titles define everything about employees. People with the same job title are interchangeable, like parts on an assembly line. This is what makes bureaucracies so inhuman and soul crushing.
Montessori Education, charter schools and home schooling do not follow the rigid authoritarianism and unbending procedures of public schools. They acknowledge the unique nature of each student and adjust teaching methods to meet the needs and learning styles of individual students.
Here’s where parents lose their way when dealing with school boards.
School board members do not see themselves of servants of parents. Instead, they see themselves as powerful defenders of the local school system who are above criticism or disapproval. Because power and dominance are their primary tools, the only thing they respond to is the threat of dominance and power.
Attempting to persuade school board members is a waste of time. Parents need to avoid arguments and pursue avenues of applying superior power instead.
Parents are victims of their own public school education. Because bureaucracies are so authoritarian and protective of their power, they go to great lengths to convince students they have no power.
Those students grow up to be parents who continue to think they have no power.
But that is simply not true.
Parents can elect, recall and replace entire school boards. But school board elections generate the lowest turnout of any election in the United States – between 5% and 10% of registered voters – but only about 70% of people eligible to vote actually register. School boards are not carrying out the mandate of the people. Instead, a very small group of supporters votes their own interests.
As strongly as parents seem to feel about school boards, they don’t tend to show up on Election Day. They have the power to replace the entire school board any time they want, but don’t bother to take the smallest of steps in that direction. So the real problem is apathy.
Or maybe it’s not apathy. Maybe it’s resignation to the belief of powerlessness — the lasting effect of a bureaucratic education that robs future voters of the knowledge and courage to exert their political power.
In any case, here are a few facts about the rights we have as citizens in a liberal democracy:
Recall
Most states have a mechanism for removing elected officials from office. Generally, an application is made to the secretary of state, petitions are drafted and their wording approved. When some portion of the people who voted in the previous election sign the recall petition and when the secretary of state certifies each signor the official is removed from office. Gavin Newsom, governor of California, recently survived a recall attempt.
Initiative
The initiative process is much like the recall, except it creates a new law. Generally, the state legislature has to approve initiatives, but when enough people support an initiative legislators avoid inviting their wrath in the next election.
Referendum
When a state legislature hands over a proposed law to the voters for a decision, it’s called a referendum. This usually happens when an issue is popular, but too hot for politicians to address. Doctor assisted suicide and medical marijuana are examples.
Jury Nullification
If a jury thinks a prosecution is unjust because the law itself is wrong or because of prosecutor or police misconduct they can nullify the law for that particular case. This is a fundamental precept of law that has existed for centuries. The Supreme Court has upheld it, but judges are not required to inform juries about it, and rarely do.
The parents are in the driver’s seat. They just don’t know it.
They can get involved in school board elections. Simply informing registered voters about the issues and encouraging them to vote is an easy first step. Put up a web page, write an editorial, organize a MeetUp. It’s not that hard.
If parents don’t like their school board, they can recall as many board members as they choose. If they don’t like the laws governing school board elections, they can launch an initiative to change the laws. If a jury thinks a parent is being unjustly prosecuted they can invoke jury nullification.
But that’s not all. There is an instruction manual containing techniques for making bureaucrats miserable. The title is Rules for Radicals and Saul Alinsky wrote it.
Alinsky coined the term “community organizer” during his work with marginalized groups between the 1930’s to 1960’s. The Democratic Party uses his tactics to great effect even today. Conservatives are very critical of him because of that, but his methods work for any group bullied by bureaucracy. Best of all, he makes political activism fun.
Alinsky opens the book with a quote from Thomas Paine, a prolific pamphleteer during the American Revolution:
“Let them call me a rebel and welcome, I feel no concern for it; but I would suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul.”
Rules for Radicals is available at Amazon, and if you click on the link I’ll earn a few cents for this article. Thank you for your support.
References
Steffens, L. (1904). The shame of the cities. New York, McClure, Phillips & Co.,.
Von Mises, L. and B. B. Greaves (2007). Bureaucracy. Indianapolis, Liberty Fund.
Weber, M. (1922). Bureaucracy. In Shafritz, J. M. and A. C. Hyde, Eds (2012). Classics of public administration. pp.33-36. Australia, Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
Weber, M., et al. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. New York,, Oxford University Press.
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