Category Archives: Blog

School Board Work Is A Wonderful Responsibility

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To each person duly elected to the local school board, I say “Welcome.  Today you will begin to see, listen to, and think about school in an entirely new dimension.  Engage with fellow board members in a thoughtful discussion of how your board will meet its responsibilities to educate all children.  Then, get to know your school from the inside out.  We have a lot to learn and talk about.” 

An introduction to the school board was not always like this.

A few years back a newly elected school board member was chastised by the board president for visiting school classrooms and talking with teachers.  He was told, “Follow the chain of command.  Board members speak with the superintendent.  The superintendent speaks with principals and other administrators.  Principals and other administrators speak with teachers and other employees.  Don’t violate this chain for command”.  A conversation with the executive director of the state’s school board association confirmed this absurdity.  “Follow the chain of command”, he advised, “it exists for a purpose.”

And, they also should have said, “Take a firm grip on your rubber stamp, because the limiting funnel of information allowed through such a command structure will require little to no discussion by board members.  One voice.  One interpretation of information.  No discussion necessary.”

How absurd and how wrong! 

A quick review of state statutes describing the duties of a school board member disabused this new board member of what the president and executive director said.  The statutes contain no such limitations on the scope of a board member’s interaction with the district’s schools.    Our statutes tell us that our duties, among others, include these:

120.12 School board duties. The school board of a common or union high school district shall:

(1) MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT. Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have the possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district, except for property of the school district used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.

(2) GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools of the school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120.pdf

Any board policies or regulations restricting a board member’s interactions are not founded in statute and are propagated only to protect an antiquated concept of the status quo.  The only valid admonition is a board member must refrain from discussion that might compromise the board member’s future role should the board meet in a judicial hearing.  For example, don’t engage in discussion of a specific employee’s work performance or a specific student’s discipline record.  A Board may fulfill its statutory role in hearing a case related to employee termination or student expulsion and the prior discussions of these by a board member may compromise the board member’s capacity to be objectively neutral. 

Better rules to follow are – “Treat everyone, adult and child, with integrity and respect.  Be informed.  Be a voice for the future of all children.  You are a legislator not an administrator.”

  • Integrity and respect are gold standards for boardsmanship.  Each person you speak with requires these two qualities from you.  No matter the person’s role in school – parent, student, teacher, custodian, administrator, community taxpayer – that person has a legitimate claim to your attention.  You are that person’s representative on the school board.  The integrity and respect you demonstrate sets the role model standard for the school district.  If integrity and respect are not present at the school board, how can you expect them be present anywhere else in the school?
  • Integrity and respect are demonstrated by listening rather than talking.  You want to understand their perspective not overlay your own.  You can do that at the board table.  Integrity is demonstrated by sharing the multiple perspectives you have heard.  Integrity is making fact-based decisions and holding to a decision as long as the facts support a decision.  And, when the facts do not support a decision, adjusting the decision to reflect new facts. 
  • Board members need first-hand information.  The old chain of command assured that most information was second- and third-hand.  Create your information base by proactively visiting classrooms to observe instruction, the use of curricular materials, and student and teacher interaction.  I call this “perching”.  You are not in a classroom to interact or participate, but to see and listen and feel.  However, if the teacher invites your participation, do not hesitate.  Enjoy the moment.

Engage in hearty discussions about employment policies, responsibilities and expectations, and practices.  Gain firsthand information about the school environment from an employee and student perspective.  See teachers, aides, district and school office staff, kitchen and food service, custodians and maintenance staff, bus drivers, and coaches, directors and advisors doing their work. 

Then, with respect and integrity, share your information appropriately at the board table. 

https://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=13914
  • Your real constituency is the children of the school.  You may be elected from a precinct or supported in your election by voters who favor certain programs or want specific changes and improvements in the school district.  However, your focus should always be on the quality education of all children, emphasis on all.  When the board is called upon to vote on a matter, your vote is powerful.  Of all the voices speaking to the matter, when the votes are tallied, only board voices/votes are counted.  Make your vote stand for the highest quality of programming your schools can provide to all children.
  • You are a legislator not an administrator.  Board members work with policies stemming from the mission and goals of the school district.  Affirm policies that are creating desired school district outcomes and amend or delete policies that are not.  When in the school, watch, listen and feel – don’t direct.  You have no authority to tell anyone what to do.  That is a role of school administration and supervision. 

Leadership Longevity Is Tenuous

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(This article was first posted in 2015. It remains germane to day.)

Leaders, who are not self-employed, live in a fragile world of employment security made increasingly more tenuous with each passing year. Making a career as a leader is a role to which many aspire but few will achieve longevity. Their reality is that leadership is the art of swimming in deep water while carrying the weight of their decisions. The sign on the leader’s office door says, “No lifeguards on duty.”

In The Anguish of Leadership (2000), Jerry Patterson describes a leader as a person always swimming in deep water. At the beginning of his tenure, a leader swims quite well. He enjoys the honeymoon of employment when his employers and most employees wish him well and their support gives him buoyancy. Also, his pockets are empty. He has no experiential record, good or bad, in this employment.

I paraphrase Abraham Lincoln with “You can be successful with all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot be successful with all the people all the time.” Every time a leader is unsuccessful, a rock is placed in the leader’s pocket. Events that are hugely unsuccessful load in larger and heavier rocks. And, rocks in the pockets make it increasingly more difficult to swim in deep water. On the positive side, rocks may be taken out of his pockets by professional successes. Interestingly, there is no correspondence between the rocks taken out for a success and rocks placed in for a failure; the rocks of failure are heavier and more numerous than the rocks of success.

Adding a second paraphrase, this from John Wayne in Big Jake, “ … my fault, your fault, nobody’s fault, I am going to hold you responsible.” Patterson believes that a leader’s professional well-being is affected by the successes and failures of everyone in the business for whom he is responsible. When a subordinate is unsuccessful, rocks may be placed in that person’s pockets but always some rocks will be placed in the leader’s pockets. When President Truman placed his famous “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk, he also was saying “This is my rock pile – all grievances, disagreements, and disenchantments with my leadership go here.”

Eventually, Patterson writes, the total weight of the rocks in his pocket will pull almost every leader under the water. Or, the constant burden of swimming with heavy rocks in his pocket wears down the leader and he succumbs. Few leaders escape significant drowning as they work through their careers. Some leaders will re-emerge in a similar leadership position in a different organization and many may enact a resurrection several times over the length of their career, but almost all will drown once.

Head coaches for professional sports teams are a case in point. As the person leading a professional team, the coach is ultimately responsible for the success of the team as expressed in the team’s win and loss record. Wins are good and losses are “rocks”. Too few wins and too many losses creates a heavy pocket of rocks. On Monday, December 29, the day after the final game of the 2014 National Football League season, four head coaches and two general managers were fired. Each had accumulated too many rocks in their pockets. 2014 is not unique. The average tenure of a head coach in the NFL is 2.39 years. The average tenure in the National Hockey League is 3.0 years, 3.03 in the National Basketball Association and 3.8 years for Major League Baseball head coaches. Leaders drown in the deep water of professional sports every year and sometimes at mid-season.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-02-29/managers-coaches-tenure/53376918/1

Public education is no different. The keeping of wins and losses is not as dramatic in education as it is in sports, but school leaders are handed rocks just as often as head coaches. The average tenure of a school district superintendent is 5.5 years. The rocks for urban, super-large districts are heavier. Their average tenure is 3.3 years. Approximately 15% of all superintendents professionally drown each year.

http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=740

Superintendents are hired and drown in the shadow of the Lincoln paraphrasing. Few are fired due to a criminal act or professional malpractice. These do happen, but they are rare. The great majority of drownings are the result of a general loss of confidence in the superintendent. A loss of confidence may occur with major stakeholders in the school district, such as parent groups or special interest groups. These groups control large piles of rocks. Local religious and business leaders have their own stockpile of rocks. Students, the most important group of people in a school district, also control rocks albeit smaller rocks. And, of course, the confidence of the Board of Education is essential. When the Board loses confidence in the superintendent a professional drowning is soon to follow.

A superintendent making important decisions for a school district will inextricably offend some rock holders even with the best of decisions. It is a fact of life for a leader. Creating smaller class sizes is a good thing for students, teachers and most parents, but it stirs the rocks of taxpayers who object to increased costs. Cutting costs is a good thing for taxpayers, but diminishing the resources for schools and classrooms stirs the rocks of the teacher’s union and PTAs. Allowing school events on Wednesday evenings wins the admiration of sports and fine arts fans who enjoy more games and concerts, but it raises the rock throwing ire of church leaders who lose time for religious education generally held on that night of the week. No matter, rocks find their way into the pockets of every school leader and even the best eventually sink lower and lower into Jerry Patterson’s deep end of the pool.

So, knowing the reality of a leader’s professional world, those who aspire to be leaders, those who are still above water in the deep end of the leadership pool, and those who employ leaders should honor Robert Herrick’s verse to The Virgins. Leaders must lead as well as they are able to and for as long as they are able to remain above water because no leader survives the eventual weight of the rocks in his pockets.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles to-day

Tomorrow will be dying.

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time

Change And Institutionalization Are Inevitable

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A constant tension exists in every organization for persons who see a need for change.  How can I cause necessary change in the window of time that change requires before I become institutionalized and part of the status quo?  Change takes time.  Time creates status quo.  Ugh!

What do we know?

Change is a constant.  It happens all the time and everywhere in our world.  The more we think things are staying the same, the more naïve we are about our world.  What seems to be staying the same actually is in a slower motion compared to other things that are changing more rapidly. 

Change is a dynamic of motion, sometimes slow and evolutionary and sometimes immediate and revolutionary.  Yet, everything is in motion relative to its momentary position.

Change can be a pendulum swinging over a more normal status.  They direction of swing is not just back and forth, but also elliptical.  We feel the change when the pendulum swings beyond the center or area of normalcy one way or the other and we feel normal when it swings back toward and over the center.

Though revolutionary change can be quick in terms of time, quick change can cause unanticipated consequences.  Some the of the unanticipated outcomes may be less desirable than the pre-revolutionary status.  Revolutionary change can have a life of its own.

Though evolutionary change can be slow and inevitable, it experiences an inertial resistance of the status quo that limits its full potential for change.  Evolutionary change is a series of compromises.

Yesterday’s change is today’s institution.  Every significant and successful change redefines the institution until the institution looks like the change.  Institutionalization is as inevitable as the motion of change.

What more do we know?

Planned change is a bumpy road.  Planned change experiences immediate opposition from the status quo.  Stalwarts of the status quo and doomsayers oppose change that upsets their normal.  Often the opposition to change is so strong that it not only defeats change, but moves the institution backwards.  If that resistance can be overcome, there is a brief acceptance lull.  This feels like “wait and see”.  The second bump in the change effort is the learning curve.  Planned change requires new behaviors, new attitudes and dispositions, and new skill sets.  Sometimes, new people.  It takes time for new behaviors, dispositions, and skills to be learned and new learning always experiences unsuccessful initial learning and a need for second-instruction.  More ugh!  This is all uphill work against the inertia of the past.  Once “new” is learned, there is trial and error time.  This is a series of less severe bumps.  Working with the newness will expose its problems and “See, I told you so” from recalcitrants.  Objective and subjective data is required to demonstrate that what is new is better than what was old.  Eventually, the “working it out” brings back some of the old to be mixed in with the new resulting a hybrid that is mostly new.  Voila!  Change.

How does this play out?

Consider the evolutionary change in the automotive industry from gas-powered to battery-powered motors.  This change may seem revolutionary, but it has been in the making for decades.  With a step back, one can observe initial opposition, a break through in technology, a wait and see, slow learning of new attitudes about cars, changing skill sets within the industry, compromising with hybrids, a second break out with more commitment, and, voila! – change in the industry.

Planned change with its calendar of initial presentation, resistance, learning curve, adaptation, and institutionalization takes approximately seven to eight years start to finish.  Changing things is easier.  Changing people and their behaviors is harder and takes a lot of time, energy, and constancy.

The status quo counts on change agents losing energy because of the opposition of time and the entrenched past.  Time is not on the side of planned change.  In order to overcome the opposition of time, change agents must engineer micro-changes.  A series of changes, each one a significant change in itself, but just a link in the chain of change, allows change efforts to surpass the usual clock of seven to eight years.

Institutionalization of change agents carries its own clock.  Every person in an institutionalized organization slowly becomes institutionalized.  That process is inevitable.  A rule of thumb is that within five years of accepting an employment assignment the employee is routinized into the status quo of that assignment.  Once institutionalized, change agents are part of the normal and defenders of the usual.  They have been neutralized.

A second rule of thumb is that within five years the institution will weed out revolutionary change agent personnel.  The objective of an institution is stability, predictability, and minimal change.  This definition explains why so many of our social institutions are in trouble.  Life is changing faster and institutional change is slow; they can’t evolve fast enough to be viable servants of their stated missions. 

What does this mean for education?

Change in public education is constantly happening in an evolutionary way.  The world around public education historically exerted a drag effect that moved the institution to change across time.  Slowly and sometimes defiantly.

Integration of schools.  Title IX and girls sports.  Mainstreaming of children with special needs.  EL learners.  School choice, charters, and public support of private schools.  The schools of 2021 are not the schools of 2011, 2001, or 1991.  With hindsight, we can observe the change phenomenon of demand, opposition, acceptance, learning curve, compromising, and creation of a new order within education. 

Schools feel the shift of Republican or Democratic administrations.  Consider how Leave No Child Behind affected teaching and learning and the power of statewide testing.  NCLB was a change or suffer event that slowly was resolved by the recalcitrance of those being asked to change and the anticipated pendulum swing back toward the status quo.  Although NCLB seemed revolutionary, its story was foretold in conservative fiscal policy and perception of public education’s lack of accountability for academic outcomes.  Too much money and too few results.  The concerns have not gone away, only the popular use of NCLB as its title.

Ironically, the more institutional public education acts in opposition to change demands, the more it attracts demands for faster change.  This has been observed in school district policies during the pandemic.  Schools were never just about teaching and learning.  Schools are the nation’s largest day care operators and when schools closed their doors as a pandemic protocol, business, government, and working families became demonstrably oppositional to school policies focused on the safest way to protect children and teachers in a school.  The need for day care was greater than child and teacher health.  Millions of families left public education and may not return when schools are open to in-person teaching and learning.  The institution of public education will be changed by the pandemic in ways we yet do not know.  That story is still playing out. 

The Big Duh!

If you want to be a change agent, understand the dynamics of change theory.  Understand the nature and machinations of the status quo and that institutions are based defined by their status quo.  Understand the calendar for change activity and the calendar of institutionalization.  Understand that revolutionary change brings unanticipated outcomes, hello pandemic.  Understand that planned change and micro-changing can modify our world, hello Tesla.

Above all else, understand that your world is changing and there is nothing you can do about this fact other than understand and work within its phenomenon.  Or, become a revolutionary and look out!

The “Community”. Who Exactly Is this?

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“… the community…”.  We hear these words spoken, often as either preamble to or closing of a strong statement.  “The community is frustrated/concerned/angry about …”.  We also hear, “The community is proud of …”.  There are operative words in these statements, the most important being “community”.  Who is the community being referenced?  Who is the speaker in relationship to the community?  What should we know?

Listening carefully is the first step in all communications.  We need to listen to and note the words spoken.  Better yet, if they are in writing, read them carefully.  Showing respect to the speaker is the second step.  No matter if we agree or disagree with the words, there never is a reason for not showing respect to a person who communicates with school leaders.  There must be something behind the words to overcome the usual inertia of status quo and cause a speaker/writer to act.

The third step is understanding the meaning of the word “community”.  This single word is used and abused in communication from persons in the school district to school leaders.  Sometimes with purpose and most often not.  Who is the community referenced?  Most often, a reference to community” is used to inform the board “I am not alone in this.”  Or, it is used to imply a consensus of opinion.  Or, it is used to imply a very large number of people.  There are implications when people refer to the weight of community.

What should we know about community?

I draw virtual concentric circles around the schoolhouse to illustrate the meaning of this word. 

The largest circle is the community at-large.  They are all the adults who reside in the school district.  There are 8,000-plus souls living in our rural school district.  We reside in seven villages or towns or townships.  Each is a distinct geographic, political, and economic area of the district.  The adult population is 81% of the full population; 19% being 19 years or younger.  Focus on the number 6,480 when thinking about the entire community.  6,480 approximates the number of adults in the community.

100% of the adult population are local taxpayers and potential voters in school elections.  Less than 35% of the taxpayers and electors have had any personal connection to the school.  The majority are spectators of the school, if they think of the school at all.

More than 70% of the voters in school referendum elections vote in favor of proposals that increase their local property tax.  Voter turnout for school elections usually is 65-70% of the registered voters, or 70% of the 70% of adults who vote cast a positive vote on school issues.  Voters with and without personal or familial connection to the school readily provide favorable support to the school. 

The second circle is the community of adults whose grown children attended our school as children/students.  These are older community adults.  Less than 35% of the adult population had their children attend our school when their children were school-aged, or, more than 65% of the adult population has not had a “parent of a student” relationship with the school.

The third largest circle is the community of adults who attended the school as students.  Our community retains many of our high school graduates.  This is a good place to live and raise a family, if an adult can find and sustain employment in a predominantly tourist industry.  Less than 25% of the adult population attended our school when they were school students, or, more than 75% of the population did not have an “I attended this school” relationship with the district.

The fourth circle is the community of adults who have children attending our school currently.  Less than 15% of the adult population has a school-age child attending our school, or, more than 85% of the adult population does not have a child attending our school.

The smallest circles, and there are several inside the fourth ring, are the communities of parents whose children participate in the various school programs.  Small circles are elementary or middle school or high school parents.  Small circles are parents of children in sports or theater or music or forensics or other specific school programs.  The smallest inner circles are the parents of children in a specific program, such as football or band or students receiving special or gifted education or in a single grade level.  Most small, inner circle communities contain fewer than .005% of the community at-large.

The governance of the school board is transactional.  Although the powers of the board are limited by state statute, the decisions of the board are influenced by the community of its constituents.  Board members vote on recommendations and proposals based upon what they perceive is best for educating the children of the community.  Their votes also are influenced by the wants and desires of the adults within the communities.  Conversely, those adults rely upon the votes of board members to develop “best” practices for educating all children and to obtain wanted programs for their children.

The first intersection of board members and community occurs when board members are elected to their office and when the community votes on school referenda.  Our board is non-partisan.  Board members describe their experience, values, and the focus they will give to their board work in anticipation of election and the electorate chooses board members that best match the electorates values and focus. That is the theory.

Most board/community intersections are informal and casual.  These are the comments and questions that are shared at the grocery store, gas station, pharmacy, hardware store, restaurant, church, and anywhere a board member and other communities of adults come into daily contact.  It is natural and non-confrontational, and usually just conversational in nature.  Most of the time, these casual exchanges allow board members an opportunity to inform and clarify understandings about the life of the school.  They also give a board member a measuring stick of issues.  If few are talking about the same issue, the measure is different than if many talking about the same issue.

The next intersection occurs at board meetings when members of the community attend a board business meeting in-person to voice their wants and needs, concerns and frustrations, and sometimes anger.  There seldom is a turn out of community at a board meeting to applaud or commend board actions.  In the Time of COVID, this intersection is via Zoom.  Interestingly, fewer that five persons attended most business meetings before COVID.  Now, 50-60 persons are in the virtual audience.  There are more virtual audience members for controversial issues.

An in-person intersection is the most telling and compelling transaction between a school board and the school communities.  The circles really tighten and the power of “perceived community” is distorted.  A small group of vocal adults, for example ten (10), representing one tenth of one percent of the adults in the community, who personally confront the board have a power disproportionate to the number of community adults they represent.  In a small room where the board meets, ten vocal adults have more power than fifty adults who make isolated phone calls to a board member or who send an individual e-mail to the school board.  Ten in-person adults are perceived as a critical number; it feels much bigger and awesome than it is.

There are issues of equity and equality in which one (1) adult making a righteous request or demand of the school board should expect a favorable outcome.  The power of a person speaking for equity and equality should garner board member attention and action.  These issues arise, but not often.

The majority of times when adults address the board in-person are not about equity or equality, but about wants for self- or group-interest and advantage.  Create this program.  Allow this event that current policy prevents.  Hire a preferred person for this new position.  Change a policy or create a new policy.  And, more commonly, redirect or countermand an action by an administrator or teacher.  Most in-person intersections are not macro issues but micro issues.  And, almost all such in-person intersections have unknown and unanticipated consequences. 

These are moments when board members face the issue of their office.  Is the board elected to provide the community with what the community wants when the community wants it?  Or, is the board elected to create policies under the state statutes and rules and recognize that some community wants are not appropriate under those policies, statutes, and rules?  Saying “yes” or “no” to ten in-person community adults defines a board’s understanding of its legal functions relative to various community groups and the relative value of each community.  These events also define the board’s balance between macro and micro governing the school district. 

Board members live and work and prosper within their community at-large and, given their personal and familial interests, populate many of the smaller circles of the community.  These also are realities.

Regarding community, listen, show respect, understand the present use of the word community, and act as an elected school board member.  Easy peasy.  Or, given the community, not.

Room For Many On The High Ground

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A lawyer-friend provides me with insight and advice that is invaluable.  She inserts into our conversation at just the right time, “… there is room for many people to stand on the high ground” or “there is room for more than one person to stand on the high ground.” 

In our democracy, we prize and favor free speech and the right of every person to their opinions and the opportunity to voice their opinions.  We start from this premise in every consequential discussion.  The more opinions expressed, the richer the discussion and likelihood of consensus with an outcome.

Knowing which opinions create the best answers can be subjective.  Today too many public conversations are dominated by loud voices that drown out other voices and loudness should not be equated with best.  Media can be a fog-horn – loud and blaring.  We are equally troubled with strong expressions of self-interest.  Those whose interests are threatened or ignored add to the cacophony of voices and noise.  A democratic process fundamentally is noisy.  As I have written in the past, Occam provides us with a tool for paring possible answers to the best answer.   Occam tells us to maintain the heart of the objective, its simplest expression, as the only objective to be achieved.  High ground is the simplest, most ethical, just-for-all response to the question.

Another writer, Sun Tzu, teaches us in The Art of War, to find and stake out the high ground.  He says the high ground allows a leader the strategic view of all that surrounds him.  He recognizes the low ground and its limitations for seeing all possibilities and for successful advancement against an elevated and often-obscured goal.  The analogy of the high ground translates from a military advantage of higher terrain to finding the highest ideals in a multi-opinioned syllogism leading to a best resolution of a question.  When all things are not equal, we should always seek the high ground.

Many claim they are on the high ground and often do so without examining where they stand.  It is as if the first person to claim a superior position is superior by default.  Not so.  The high ground is not where you stand but what you stand for.

Words help us understand the concept of high ground and I favor one word in particular – transcendent.  To transcend means to rise above or go beyond, to overcome adversity, and triumph over the negative.  Transcendence formulates an “ideal” that describes the “best” for all concerned and then works to make it “real”.  Taking the high ground is to not accept the usual or possible lesser outcomes.  Instead, taking is and strive for better and then best.  To be on the high ground is to have a better argument, one that overcomes negative and destructive comments.  A transcendent statement or belief shuts down opposition because it cuts to the heart of the matter and sheds prejudice, self-interest, and malice .  It is hard to argue against an ideal without painting oneself into the corner of one’s bias.

Public education contains many solid high ground positions.  In each, there is an aspiration for transcending what has been to what needs to be in order for the ideals of public education to live.  Equitable access.  Equal opportunity.  Just and fair treatment.  Free.  Diversity of opinion.  High standards.  Many chances.  Individual potential.  Universal literacy.  Each is an ideal we build practices to attain.

In every instance when education has moved to higher ground it has been the result of individuals and groups of people who have made aspirational arguments and pointed the way upward.  As an institution, public education tends to rest at a status quo – institutions are only what they are required to be. 

Schools, as expressions of their communities, have not always sought the high ground.  Often the judicial system of government has helped schools transcend lower ground practices regarding race, gender, poverty, and special education.  Even with legal decrees, it still takes local initiative to move an institution to higher ground.  Aspirational people are needed to hold an institution’s feet to the fire of doing what is right.

There are inherent problems with taking the high ground.  The high ground becomes personalized.  Those who claim it, assume a superior status over others.  The high ground becomes moralized.  Those who claim it assume a moral superiority over others.  It becomes possessive.  Those who claim the high ground want to personally own it and fight, often wrongfully, to retain it.  There is an assumption that the high ground is reality – it is not.  The high is an ideal to be striven for.

The power of a high ground position is when more and more people take a stand for it.  Some may think that the gravity of numbers defeats high ground.  Additional people necessitate compromise and compromise dissolves the clarity of high ground.  Too many people weigh down and flatten the argument.  Too many people look like a crowd and crowds do not comport with our conception of high ground.

To the contrary, when more people want to affirm a high ground ideal, they create a new standard for better practices.  This new standard becomes the base from an even high ground ideal can be postulated.  The higher the number of people who affirm a high ground ideal, the more likely higher ground can rise to new heights.

My lawyer-friend says, “affirm a high ground ideal and then move over so others can join”.