Ethical Leadership

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Although the basic forms and structures of modern schooling have a seemingly timeless quality to them (even in the most modern and progressive schools there remain echoes of Tom Brown's schooldays), this generation of school leaders has presided over (or lived through) some really significant changes in educational practice and societal thinking.  And because society changes us as it changes itself (us being it, so to speak), sometimes we don't even notice it. 

 

A significant (although largely un-noticed) change has been the notion of substantive justification - and more specifically, how we go about accepting truth. I know that in my own days as a scholar it was simple - we accepted things as truth simply because they were - if the teacher said it was so, if a deity could be invoked, or parents or the government said so, it just was. We accepted as truth something on the basis of it being anchored to an already held belief, and our acceptance of the authority of that anchor was absolute. 

 

How things have changed (in a good way) - today schools specifically develop critical thinking skills as one of their key educational outcomes, where students construct their own web of belief, and the ability to question is fundamental to the educational process. On top of that, the commodification of factual knowledge, the formative role of social media, and the ability of artificial intelligence to create and use knowledge creates an interesting dilemma - students can hold strong and justified, but at the same time very shallow beliefs. We can be both clever and stupid at the same time. 

 

Our political discourse is similarly challenging: Reverend Bongani Finca (2011 Tiyo Soga Memorial Lecture) described South Africa  as living 'in  the time that is between times – or a land that is between two lands. There is a South Africa from which we have departed, an old order that is behind us. But there is a New South Africa to which we have not yet entered. A new South Africa for which we continue to yearn, and strive. The new land of our dreams'. 

 

And in-between those two countries, there is this time and this place where we are now – a land that is not the same as the land from which we departed in 1994, yet a land that is not yet the land of our dreams – a land between two lands, a time between two times. Systems of state have declined steadily since then, and uncertainty with respect to the governmental 'anchor' has never been greater. 

 

Times of such fluidity require of educational leadership an intentional and deliberate focus on ethics. In a world where the old 'anchors' of church and state are increasingly diminishing in their influence, where politics is increasingly characterised by a lack of leadership and moral decline, and where intersectionality creates an almost infinite array of decision options for our young learners, schools remain the one place that can (and must) equip learners to discern right from wrong, and make ethical decisions. 

 

In a world where less and less is certain, and sacred cows are increasingly endangered, our one true and sure anchor is that of an ethical, values-based education. If we are not exposing our students to the very best ethical practice, we fail them before they start. 

 

 

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