De Rebus Scholaribus

By Kevin J. Ruth

Independent schools are semi-sacred spaces of intrigue, action, and innovation. Yet they can be loci of drudgery, strongholds of status quo, and crucibles of hostility toward change. Culturally interesting, they command our attention and pique our curiosity. They are dramatic and complex. They are also home to generations of school folks who have labored to instill respect and admiration for a vie formative that is family-oriented, highly personal, and advocates the Renaissance ideal of the honnte homme as an educational model. This volume introduces readers to thoughts, insights, and critiques of independent schools as they adapt to the twenty-first century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 31, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453546932

Kevin J. Ruth

Kevin J. Ruth has devoted his professional life to independent schools, serving in roles from teacher to trustee. A self-avowed “independent school junkie,” he commits substantial time to thinking about these schools and how they will continue to benefit society throughout the twenty-first century. Kevin holds bachelor’s degrees in French and German, a master’s degree and doctorate in Comparative Literature, and is a certified project manager through Stanford University. He lives in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two children.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Kevin J. Ruth.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2010913265

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4535-4692-5

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4535-4691-8

ISBN:   Ebook   978-1-4535-4693-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Advancing the Institution: Admission, Development, Marketing

Chapter 2: Crossroads of Alignment: Governance, Leadership, Mission, Strategy

Chapter 3: Cogito ergo sum: Teaching, Learning, Growing

Chapter 4: Entering the Warren: School Culture, Evolution, Change

Preface

Dramatic and complex spaces of cultural intrigue, independent schools pique our curiosity and command our attention. For those of us who have embraced the independent school way of life, we harbor deep affection for them and cannot imagine life without them. We treat them as our own children: we praise them for their strengths, and we offer constructive criticism on their behavior. Such an approach makes sense to us, since they are anthropocentric organizations at their core, even if, on paper, they may be corporations.

Schools nonetheless inhabit both worlds—the anthropocentric and the corporate—simultaneously, and this bimodal existence engenders frequent conflict. Consider how often faculty members criticize the actions of the board of trustees. They’re out of touch! one might hear; or perhaps, They’re so corporate they can’t even think of what it’s like to be human. Now consider how often board members criticize the actions of faculty members. They’re out of touch—we’re a business, not a Marxist commune! They want a raise?! Don’t they realize that, in the real world, people work more than four hours each day—that’s all they teach! On both sides, there are sets of tangibles and intangibles that are rarely translated in a manner that allows each side to better understand the pleasures and constraints of the other. Everyone associated with independent schools, then, lives to some degree in a state of tense joy.

This book represents an effort to address that tense joy by entreating independent school folks to focus on the nature of what we do and how it is changing before our eyes, to the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Schools rarely, if ever, provide the space and time for groups to have meaningful discussions of the evolution of independent education. Board meetings do not have enough time woven into agendas in order to accommodate such discussion; neither do faculty meetings. Where, then, are we to have these conversations? The answer is, elsewhere. For some, it might be the work room or at home; for others, it might be within the context of an online group.

My elsewhere is my blog, begun in early 2009 during the midst of terrific economic upheaval that has come to affect all independent schools in some way, seen or unseen. I have been pleasantly surprised by how many educators are reading blogs, but, at the same time, I remain underwhelmed by the rate of participation relative to the size of the independent school community. The online medium affords so many possibilities and benefits, including that digital literacy that independent school students are expected to master in order to be effective in their future places of work, that I am surprised that more independent school folks do not take advantage of it. A book, it seems, is still the primary means of conveying a message to the independent school audience. Yet, the trend is changing and will continue to change, as publishing itself changes. An admitted bibliophile who adores the smell of antiquarian book shops, I recognize the importance and immediacy of using an online medium to reach an audience. The basics of my old friends (books) are here, but in different form. If we can learn that form, then we can continue to help this medium grow into a respected source for information that is well-written and informative.

A Note on the Cover

The title, De rebus scholaribus, translates to on school matters. The choice of Latin was deliberate, as I wished to make a connection to the language of education through the nineteenth century as well as to suggest a connection to Classics departments, the sine qua non of our schools from their nascent days until the relatively recent past. Once the language of the educated elite, Latin has been disappearing from independent schools, being replaced by modern (spoken) languages. There was a time when many independent educators would have been able to read the title of this book quite easily; that time has passed, and that is the first point I wished to make.

The second point is contained in the image below the title. The apple, as we know, is the symbol par excellence of education, yet it is dreadfully outdated. Enter technology, which has come to be such an integral part of the educational experience that we do not look at things the way we once did. This apple, therefore, is seen through a new lens, one that permits us to see the breakdown of the apple’s contents. This new lens is here to stay, although it will undergo more permutations, without doubt.

The third and final point is to be found in the hand that holds the technological device: it is that of a woman, signifying the central role of women in independent schools, from teaching roles to top leadership roles.

I would like to thank designer Mac Funamizu for his permission to use the cover image, Looking Glass. This image, winner of the Red Dot Design Award in 2009, represents Mr. Funamizu’s vision of the future of internet search. Please visit his other design concepts at petitinvention.wordpress.com.

How to Read This Book

The book is arranged in four chapters, each comprising several related topics, although the order of the chapters holds no significance. Each chapter has multiple entries in bold, followed by pithy or lengthy commentary, written predominantly in conversational style, though a few are more formal. The design of the book is such that the reader may open it to any section and begin to read, with no specific start point or end point in mind. The individual entries correspond to the entries in my blog (introit.typepad.com), although I have elaborated on some in the interest of fleshing out some thoughts in the book that I had not done on my blog. Furthermore, the entries are meant to serve as points of departure for discussion, and perhaps for argument. I adore independent schools and desire to spend all my days in them, yet I am at times concerned about our ability to keep up with the century in which we live, with all that is good and bad. Evolution and change surround us, and, as such, they are the predominant themes contained in these pages.

Kevin J. Ruth, Ph.D.

http://introit.typepad.com

Chapter 1

Advancing the Institution:

Admission, Development, Marketing

It may seem plain to some readers that admission, development, and marketing benefit from many interconnections, making it logical that this chapter would include all three areas. To some, however, the lines may be blurred. Think of these areas as research, sales, and customer service, if that is a more helpful model. All three are necessary to ensure a vibrant and thriving independent school, yet sometimes they do not receive the attention they should, for various reasons. As readers peruse the multifarious entries contained in these pages, specific and repeatable themes will emerge. Above all, these snippets are meant to prod the imagination and prompt conversation.

Meaning-Based Computing

The May 10, 2010, issue of Forbes has an interesting two-page ad by a company called Autonomy, The Dawn of a New Era—Meaning Based Computing.

The writers of the ad proffer that we now live in an era of unstructured data. They point out that companies that keep their data in rigid, structured databases will have difficult succeeding in a world that, from a data point of view, is seemingly chaotic. Their solution is an approach called Meaning Based Computing (MBC), which has been sweeping every industry.

I wonder how schools might benefit from this approach to mining what appears to be unstructured data, or if the independent education industry is different from all others (highly doubtful). Like many other businesses, we are using data-collecting websites, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like (some schools do this more than others, obviously). These social networks turn the tables on traditional data-gathering strategies, meaning that customers (families, in our case) are more in control of how they communicate with our schools . . . and about our schools . . . on these networks, apart from how they communicate with us via our website, email system, etc.

The authors of the ad provide a scenario that should be of interest to us: After observing a dramatic spike in positive sentiment on Twitter around a particular product line, a company automatically updates its homepage to give that product more prominent billing. The company then tests which messages about that product are most effective in engaging customers on its website, and then passes along those insights to agents in the call center, and updates its online advertising campaigns. By injecting this understanding throughout every phase of the marketing cycle, a business can maximize revenue across all channels.

To translate this concept in school terms, let us suppose that your school introduced an amazing service learning program, and that you informed your constituents about this program via multiple communication vehicles. If your school then received real-time (or as close as we might get) results that showed positive buzz about the program, you could update your digital, real-time media to reflect that positive sentiment. The next step would be to test several messages about the service learning program to see which ones push the most traffic to your website, then allow those same messages to permeate your communications. If you could do this each time you propose something innovative and/or meaningful, it would help your communications to remain fresh and interesting, and would result in increased attention to your school (i.e., your product); that increased attention, if mined correctly, could result in increased applications to your school.

This approach necessitates more time and dollars allocated to marketing and communications, but I submit that, in the new normal, such a hard turn in this direction is necessary, and it may remain so for a long time. It would require education of the faculty and staff as well, as everyone would be participating in this marketing effort. Admission is the name of the game, and everything that we can do to 1) retain current families and 2) attract new families will be central to our existence, going forward.

Symptom or Root Cause?

Your school is suffering from a significant drop in enrollment. Your leadership and your board look at falling enrollment and develop multiple tactics to address that fall. The tried-and-true drop the price mentality is applied because, after all, that’s what works in the business world: drop your price, and generate enough sales to at least break even, if not overshoot the difference, ending up in the