On Educational Leadership as Emancipatory Practice: Problems and Promises

151 Pages·2022·2.413 MB·English

by  Duncan Waite

ON EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP AS
EMANCIPATORY PRACTICE
As a critical reflection on education and educational leadership today, this book
makes use of the ideas of some of the major thinkers of our time—Adorno,
Arendt, Biesta, Brown, Apple, Hall, Marx, Nietzsche, Rancière, Said, Williams,
and others—in an examination of the emancipatory potential of education.
AuthorDuncanWaiteexploresthepolitical,social,systemic,epistemological,and
cultural barriers and roadblocks that inhibit liberatory education, discussing the
concepts of corruption and abuse of power; systems and structures that hobble us;
ideologies such as neoliberalism, capitalism, and corporatism; identity and con-
sciousness; and conceptions of learning, growth, and development. Ultimately the
authorunpackshowtheseissuesrelatetoliberation,emancipation,andsocialjustice
forstudents,teachers,andeducationalleaders,aswellastheroleleadershipcanplay
inrealizingtheemancipatorypromiseofeducation.
Duncan Waite is Professor of Education and Community Leadership at Texas
State University, USA, and Editor of the International Journal of Leadership in
Education.

ON EDUCATIONAL
LEADERSHIP AS
EMANCIPATORY
PRACTICE
Problems and Promises
Duncan Waite
Coverimage: ©GettyImages
Firstpublished2022
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CONTENTS
Preface vi
Acknowledgments ix
1 By Way of an Introduction 1
2 Contextual Considerations Considered Differently 13
3 On the Shortcomings of Our Organizational Forms 50
4 The Imperium: Class, Caste, and Control 71
5 Imperial Hubris: The Dark Heart of Leadership 91
6 Notes towards a Conclusion 114
Index 137
PREFACE
We humans are incredible creatures. We have such potential—as individuals and
groups. We are resilient, we overcome adversity and loss, and we are able to
inhabit the most inhospitable of environments. At our best, we are creative and
compassionate. We produce transcendental works of art—the Sistine Chapel; Bach
concertos; the oeuvres of Shakespeare, Cervantes, García Márquez, and Tolkien.
Creativity and compassion are two of humankind’s most laudable characteristics. A
sense of fairness and justice is another; as is the freedom impulse.
And yet there is that other side, adarker side of humanindividuals and groups.
Often beyond our comprehension, humans are capable of the most heinous
atrocities—the Holocaust; Rwanda, Serbia-Kosovo, Syria, and Myanmar; racism,
torture, starvation, and child abuse; slavery; and the decimation of the natural
world, to name but a few of the horrors we precipitated.
What differentiates the two? Why the one and not the other? Can we cast off
the dark and move towards the light? If so, how?
I’m not the first to wonder about such things. As early as 1665, Spinoza asked:
Why are the people so deeply irrational? Why are they proud of their own
enslavement?Whydotheyfight‘for’theirbondageasifitweretheirfreedom?
Whyisitsodifficultnotonlytowinbuttobearfreedom?Whydoesareligion
that invokes love and joy inspire war, intolerance, hatred, malevolence, and
remorse?
(as cited in Deleuze, 1988, pp. 9–10)
Some two hundred years later, Friedrich Nietzsche (1874/2014) considered
similar questions when he wrote:
Preface vii
every human being understands very well that he is entirely unique on this
earth… he knows, yet he hides it like a guilty conscience—but why?
Because he fears his neighbor, who demands conventional behavior… But
what forces an individual to fear his neighbor, to think with the herd, and to
take no joy in himself?
(p. 1)
This Nietzsche wrote in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Third Untimely Meditation in praise
of his teacher, Schopenhauer, a teacher whom he never met. Nietzsche knew
full well the power of a teacher and the influence a teacher can have. A teacher
can help the student towards liberation, educating themselves ‘against our times’
(p. 27, emphasis in original). But the teacher can only show the student the
path, which the student must walk themselves. ‘No one can build you the
bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life’ (p. 4). In his later
years, in a reflective piece, Nietzsche admitted that crediting his own becoming to
Schopenhauer,nomatterhowgreataneducatorhewas,wasmisguided,that‘even
thegreatesteducator…[cannot]relieveoneoftheburdensofself-education’(Pellerin,
2014,p.xiv,emphasisinoriginal).
Education alone won’t ensure our emancipation, though it is an essential
component of that project. We need education to see, but we need courage to
act. Courage allows us to overcome our fears and inhibitions.
Stuart Hall (2017) summarized the issues:
The material and technological means for complete human freedom—a
freedom within which man could develop a true individuality and a true
consciousness of himself and his possibilities—are almost to hand. But the
structure of human, social and moral relationships are in complete contra-
dictionand havetobeset over andagainst ourmaterialadvances…Untilwe
can throw over the system within which these relationships take place, and
the kind of consciousness which feeds the system and upon which it feeds,
the working class will be men as things for other people, but they can never
be men for themselves.
(p. 42)
This book explores these issues, and more—issues such as freedom and emanci-
pation and the role education plays. More specifically, this book examines the
possibilities, and the problems, of educational leadership as emancipatory practice.
Education and emancipation are twinned, complementary. Together they can aid
our individual and collective journey into the light.
References
Deleuze, G.(1988).Spinoza:Practical philosophy (R.Hurley, Trans.).CityLightBooks.
viii Preface
Hall,S.(2017).Selectedpoliticalwritings:Thegreatmovingrightshowandotheressays(S.Davidson,
D.Featherstone,M.Rustin,&B.Schwarz,Eds.).DukeUniversityPress.
Nietzsche, F. (2014). Schopenhauer as educator: Friedrich Nietzsche’s third untimely meditation
(D.Pellerin, Trans.).DanielPellerin. (Original publishedin 1874)
Pellerin, D. (2014). A note on the text. In F. Nietzsche Schopenhauer as educator: Friedrich
Nietzsche’sthird untimelymeditation(pp.xiii–xiv).Daniel Pellerin.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank Susan Field Waite, Stephanie Chitpin, and Michael Apple for their
encouragementandsupportofthisproject.IwouldfurtherliketothankMonicaRuiz-
Mills,HeribertoArámbula,andElizabeth‘Libby’Belasco(atdogearedghostwriter@
gmail.com)forassistancewiththepreparationofthemanuscript.
PortionsofChapter3wereadaptedfromWaite,D.(2010).Ontheshortcomings
of our organizational forms: With implications for educational change and school
improvement.SchoolLeadershipandManagement,30(3),225–248.
Portions of Chapter 5 were adapted from Waite, D. (2014). Imperial hubris:
The dark heart of leadership. Journal of School Leadership, 24(6), 1202–1232.