Millersville University Matthew J.

Monahan
EDLD 610 October 29, 2014

Reflection 4- Sergiovanni’s Vision and Mine

As Thomas Sergiovanni’s outlined his work in Leadership for the Schoolhouse through

the preface, I felt as though he presented me with some good news and some bad news. The bad

news is that my epiphany, which I was excited to express in our second reflection paper, about

the undemocratic nature of the industrial model of education, is not original. The good news is

that I arrived at those conclusions independently of Sergiovanni’s work. In addition, I hoped that

his text would provide an extensive commentary supporting that assertion, as well as a

framework through which school leadership can improve education through Enlightenment and

democratic ideals. Sergiovanni’s work satisfied my hopes that he would provide a valuable

framework for school leadership, separate from other leadership models. I was disappointed that

this text did little to unpack the educational applications of some roots of American democracy,

to which he alluded early on.

The basic thrust of Sergiovanni’s work is that general models of leadership have been

incorrectly applied to school leadership. Part of the problem is that these models are outdated.

A larger problem is that leadership theories that apply to business, and other fields outside of

education, are bad fits for education. Application of business leadership theories to education is

detrimental to the educational process. They lead schools to strive to be something that they

should not be.1 Like Mary Parker Follett, Sergiovanni sees industrial models of leadership based

on hierarchy as problematic. These models place an inordinate amount of stock in the leader’s

1
Thomas J. Sergiovanni, Leadership for the Schoolhouse (California: Jossey-Bass, 1996), 84. “What schools should
not do is function as businesses. And school leaders should not function as the owners of businesses.”

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abilities and viewpoint at the expense of shortchanging the expertise and contributions of

teachers, parents, and students.

In Sergiovanni’s view, the ways in which schools function obscure the true purposes of

education and schools. He believes that the purpose of schools should be to establish places of

inquiry, grounded in moral communities. Because industrial models of education and school

leadership have focused on products, rather than process, inquiry has become subordinate to

uniformity and empirical measures. “Assessment is about following directions, answering

questions, and passing or failing.”2 Roger Martin also disapproves of the value that Western

models of education place seeking one correct answer rather than the process of problem

solving.3 Sergiovanni’s thesis is that industrial models of leadership and organization are

incorrectly applied to schools. For example, corporations benefit from economy of scale in

terms of production and trade. Conversely, schools do not necessarily benefit from being big

because economy of scale does not apply in the same ways if learning is truly the goal of a

school. He argues that a new kind of school leadership must be developed that will better serve

communities of students, teachers, administrators and parents.

Leadership for the Schoolhouse provides a rich contrast between leader-centered school

leadership with learning-centered school leadership. The effective school leader should take a

learning-centered approach by being a moral leader, a lifelong learner, and a colleague. This

learning-centered school leader derives his or her power from dedication to a school’s purpose

and mission and from relationships. His or her rank in the school hierarchy should not be the

sole source of his or her power. Mary Parker Follett argues that hierarchy-based industrial

2
Ibid., 25.
3
Roger L. Martin, The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking
(Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press, 2007) 126.

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models of management and leadership are anachronistic and inefficient while operating at a

disadvantage to those that use an integrative approach.

Sergiovanni’s argument is reliant on differing concepts from the field of sociology:

gesellschaft and gemeinschaft, with gemeinschaft being more appropriate to the purposes of a

school.4 Sergiovanni also encourages readers to consider schools as institutions rather than

organizations.5 Steve Denning agrees, juxtaposing outcomes with outputs. He advocates a

“…shift from a focus on things to a focus on people.”6 Sergiovanni’s “means-ways-ends

approach” “concentrate on people first…then concentrate on ways by letting them figure out

what to do and how.”7 Businesses, and other organizations, can benefit from the gesellschaft

concept because of their purposes and goals. However, because schools are not businesses the

gemeinschaft approach is more apt to help schools become places of inquiry and moral

communities.

The amount of information and viewpoints available to people in the 21st century is

staggering. The possibility of one person gaining universal knowledge or mastery is unrealistic

and “trying to master everything often results in mastering nothing.”8 With this in mind, savvy,

learning-based school leaders will make use of the gifts and talents of those around them. Martin

also applauds such integrative leaders for employing the use of “Renaissance teams [that]

broaden salience, maintain sophisticated causality, and create a holistic architecture in their drive

for creative resolution.” 9 This approach invites more people into the educational process and

4
Sergiovanni, 49. In the gesellschaft concept “individuals decide to relate to each other to reach some goal, to gain
some benefit” like a corporation. In the gemeinschaft concept, “natural will is the motivating force.”
5
Ibid., 44. Organizations are made of standards which can be manipulated, while institutions are “unique in their
purposes, structures, and ways of doing things.”
6
Steve Denning, “The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education,” forbes.com, September 9, 2014
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/09/01/the-single-best-idea-for-reforming-k-12-education/
7
Sergiovanni, 35.
8
Ibid., 128.
9
Martin, 82.

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draws on the experiences, needs, and opinions of interested parties in furthering the purpose and

mission of the school.

Elements of Leadership for the Schoolhouse frustrate me. I agree that schools have a

responsibility as moral communities and concede that the United States was founded by a culture

rich in Judeo-Christian traditions. Some of the liberties that he seems to take with scripture,

however, lead me to wonder if a theologian would agree with the relevance of his usage. He also

spices this work with references to the Constitution and other founding documents of American

democracy, but falls short of using them as main ingredients in his arguments. The most

frustrating element of his work to me is Sergiovanni’s contention that private schools,

particularly Catholic schools, enjoy advantages in creating moral communities because of their

commitment to morality. While he provides research to support this claim, he glosses over the

fact that private schools decide which students to admit, and that they can more easily remove

students who do not subscribe to community standards or whose behavior does not square with

the school’s moral code.10

When I began reading Leadership for the Schoolhouse, the potential trajectory of the text

excited me. The preface led me to believe that this book would be an inquiry into a new type of

school leadership rooted in enlightenment philosophy and the American democratic experiment.

I thought that Sergiovanni might even treat us to some strong connections between school

leadership and the nascent democracy of ancient Athens.11 I was expecting a more in-depth

analysis of the democratic nature of school leadership rooted in the foundations of American

democracy, government, thought, and philosophy. Sergiovanni’s preface is either misleading or

I allowed myself to be mislead by hoping for a text that he simply did not write. At first I

10
Sergiovanni, 80-81, 114.
11
Ibid., 22. ““…few corporate restructuring ideas are original…part of our democratic legacy as promulgated by the
American founders…roots of this legacy were found in the traditions of ancient Greece.”

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thought that Leadership for the Schoolhouse might be the lynchpin of my vision for leadership.

Mary Parker Follett’s ideas remain preeminent in my vision, however, with the other sources that

we’ve read and discussed supplementing her work.