Page 6 - Mini-Module 1

Why Redbrick School Houses,
Seagulls and Pyramids

Some new principals believe that their role as a school leader is to
spend their day reinforcing and building a solid, strong, and stable
school. Stability is the cornerstone of learning, and words like
consistency, harmony and maintenance of tradition are part of this sort
of principal’s daily lexicon.

As a result they spend most of their time ‘laying solid foundations’ for
learning, or in taking an anchoring role through providing solid support
for teachers’ work in the classroom. Such principals see themselves as
the 'cornerstones' of the indestructible 'redbrick' school houses, or of
the big, solid, 'Ivy' league colleges that withstand the ravages of time
and continue to serve their client's children's children for time imme-
morial.

Now consider the following metaphor of leadership:

The pyramid builders built big, rigid, solid objects, in the hope
that they would resist the ravages of time, supposedly forever.
Three thousand years later there's not that much left of them.

Seagulls, on the other hand, were around then, are around now,
and are presumably going to be around for a long time to come.
Their stability comes from the stability of a living system, its
adaptiveness, its ability to grow and change and fit in with the
changes in the environment. The very natural forces that give the
seagull life - the sun and the wind and the rain - will ultimately
grind down the pyramid.

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