Once upon a time…a superintendent asked how his district could discourage schools and departments from spending surplus funds unwisely before the cut-off date. Some staff members suggested a higher level of monitoring, others… tighter controls, and an earlier freeze date. The business administrator asked a different question… Why not let them carry forward their surplus? This question was the source of a financial revolution that resulted in more creative decision-making as well as more judicious spending and saving in every school and department in the district!
In the early eighteenth century some people were inadvertently buried alive because it was not always known for certain that the person was dead. The question was asked as to how the people making the burial arrangements could be sure that a person wasn’t buried alive. One group came up with elaborate plans for alarm systems that would be triggered by any movement of the coffin’s occupant. Another group suggested that a long stake embedded in the lid of the coffin just above the occupant’s heart would also ensure that when the lid was closed the occupant would not be buried “alive.” *
We can never arrive at the right answer (or the best answer) if we ask the wrong question. We often ask the wrong question because we are viewing a situation from a closed perspective. We keep asking, for example, how we can keep kids in school because, evidently, we equate school directly with education. As long as we focus on how to keep kids in the structure we currently have (and have had for over a hundred years!) we aren’t going to begin to imagine how else we could achieve the essence of educating youth.
We have attendance boards which, in some places, have the authority to fine the parents (up to $100 a day) if their children do not attend school! I guess we could send a posse around to collect them… lock them in. Or maybe we shouldn’t be trying to keep them in school. Maybe what’s going on there is not relevant for all students…
Shouldn’t we rather be asking how we can support the development of learners in order to prepare them to participate as citizens, to contribute to society, and to lead healthy, successful lives? Maybe we need to start imagining all the ways, outside the box, and perhaps outside the books that young people can become educated…
*Note: In the early 80s creativity consultant, Roger von Oech, wrote a great little book about thinking called A Whack on the Side of the Head. The ideas are as relevant now as they were then. You can find him on the Internet under his company name, Creative Think. The stake-in-the-coffin example is his.
