Submitted by Flickertail

5 Signs of Educational Mediocrity

UND should take a look at these, as many of these reasons a abundent with examples shown on this site.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/2839585.html

Syl Jones: Five signs of militant mediocrity



Published May 17, 2002
The poet Robert Burns wrote, "A man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?" We nod instinctively as we read this, but few of us acknowledge that militant mediocrity seems to be the order of the day, especially among Minnesota's nonprofit education sector. How do you know whether you work for such an institution? Here are five sure signs:

• The boss is afraid to act. Whether frozen by fear, misplaced loyalty or incompetence, the head of the institution cannot or will not act to resolve problems. This paralysis may present at first as thoughtfulness, perhaps even high-mindedness, but it quickly devolves into an intellectual hardening of the arteries that makes quality all but impossible to achieve. When the person who represents the institution talks a good game but refuses to take decisive action, the result is inevitably mediocrity.

• Bad hires abound. Mediocre institutions often hire persons who will maintain the status quo no matter what. They seek out friends and even relatives as employees, and attempt to circumvent normal hiring processes, excluding those who are different. This ensures that the culture of mediocrity will not be challenged.

• Everyone looks the same at the top. In the Twin Cities, the senior staff of some organizations literally resembles a Euro-American family trying to resolve their childhood difficulties. The most frequent configuration is the "All My Sons" paradigm, wherein "Dad" hires junior executives who vaguely remind him of himself when he was young. These juniors play out various intrigues, intent on gaining "Dad's" favor at the expense of those perceived as interlopers. Women and people of color -- who invariably find themselves placed in the category of adoptees -- are forever burdened with the necessity to prove their competence, while the "boys" are allowed to romp. This would be bad enough by itself, but when the "boys" turn out to be chips off the old block -- glacial in their ability to think and to act -- mediocrity results.

• Niceness means supporting the system. Being well-liked in such organizations is dependent not upon one's work ethic or personality, but upon one's support of systemic deceptions. When meetings in your organization generate either absolute agreement or stony silence, you know you've found rock-bottom mediocrity. Even in institutions that claim to be "church-based," the kinds of deceptions promulgated in the name of self-protection can be shameless. Such deceptions include secret meetings to which only certain members of the staff are invited, and side conversations that result in resources being shunted from one program to another. If employees are scheming against each other while pretending to be nice, you can be sure that militant mediocrity is in play.

• Their problem becomes your problem. Because there is a lack of true enterprise, these organizations slowly lose their appeal to the outside world, growing dated in their communications and stale in their performance. At some point, in order to survive, employees in these situations often find themselves imitating their superiors: tattling on each other and succumbing to all sorts of pettiness. If you've reached this point, it may be too late.

The good news is that market forces are sending strong messages to such institutions. In the case of colleges that allow senior staff and faculty to behave as mentioned above, enrollment wanes as the inbred management fumbles desperately for ways to stop the hemorrhaging. Lucky for us, because these kinds of organizations institutionalize the same militant mediocrity into their students as they display on the job, thus perpetuating the cycle.

The bad news, however, is that until they are routed from the marketplace by those who demand quality, until they are denied their automatic grants and yearly donations by a discerning public, these organizations will continue to spread the gospel of militant mediocrity far and wide. Let us pray they do not contaminate us all. Otherwise, we may one day need to rewrite the words of the poet to read, "A man's grasp should exceed his reach, or whats a nonprofit educational institution for?"

-- Syl Jones, of Minnetonka, is a playwright, journalist and corporate consultant.