Alfie Kohn is a first-rate thinker. His analysis deserves a close reading, especially now, when many schools are beginning to implement “Total Quality.” The chief problem with his commentary is a failure to distinguish between adopting W. Edwards Deming's methods—which would be foolish for schools—and intelligently adapting them.
Kohn wrestles with metaphors in Total Quality and is gravely concerned with how educators are using its language “uncritically.” In truth, practicing educators deserve credit for perceiving that some of the language and concepts from industry have profound implications for helping children learn. When so many teachers, as well as Albert Shanker and William Glasser, regard worker as a useful metaphor, it is at least possible that (1) they are sufficiently aware of the distinctions between children and employees, and (2) there just may be some value in the word.
None of these terms has to be exclusively assigned. By recognizing this, educators have avoided the excesses implicit in words like worker and supplier and, instead, found something fresh in what this language reveals. As we more successfully address this concern, these metaphors may fall away of their own weight. In the meantime, they remind us of the importance of providing an education that sustains children's interest. For instance, though it is useful to regard parents as customers, it is at least as useful to assign this term to students. As Fullan tells us (1991), we have historically overlooked students' (and customers') needs and preferences. This remains one of education's major blind spots. The use of the word customer thwarts the misperception of students as “passive receptacles,” disdains and which has kept students from finding school, again in his words, “engaging and relevant.” It reminds us that engagement is central to a child's (and a good worker's) pursuit of quality. School work points up our responsibility to promote purposeful effort in everything from the humanities to preparing students to someday earn decent wages doing something they care about.
Kohn disparages the use of data and the emphasis on performance. Are such data important? Absolutely. For one thing, Deming places a healthy emphasis on gathering data about processes as well as outcomes. Of more central importance is that the lack of data and feedbackmdash;as well as their analysis—is precisely what accounts for the failure of past school reforms, and the historic failure of schools to deliberately and systematically learn from their mistakes, build on their successes, and thus continually improve (Miles 1987, Lortie 1975).
It is also encouraging to note that when data are gathered and analyzed by teachers in areas they select themselves, the outcome is energizing (Fullan 1991). Still and all, Kohn's concern that data-driven education could favor trivial, easily quantified tasks is legitimate—and the most salient point in his piece. Fortunately, some of the most prominent Total Quality efforts have promoted higher levels of achievement in less discrete, more sophisticated skills and, yes, performances, now being emphasized (Andrade and Ryley 1992, Dobyns 1991, Schmoker and Wilson 1993), with a concomitant rise in test scores (which we, like many educators, are eager to move beyond, rather than dismiss). We submit that the variety of measurable improvements achieved by children in the rural and urban schools we studied (Schmoker and Wilson 1993) do mater a “good goddam” (e.e. cummings, as quoted by Kohn). May we see more of them.
The importance of data and feedback recently received vital corroboration from the field of psychology. Csikszentmihalyi's studies, which have contributed to our understanding of human motivation and happiness, reveal what experience confirms: that frequent, precise feedback and assessment of meaningful activity are integral to improvement as well as enjoyment (1990). Does this equal a destructive “preoccupation” with performance? Ask an athlete, a writer, or the singers and dancers in the Harlem Boys' Choir if they are concerned with performance both during and after an activity or practice session. It is no coincidence that some of the most enlightened leaders in the performance assessment and critical thinking movements, like Grant Wiggins and Richard Paul, heartily endorse Deming's work.
In fact, Kohn acknowledges that we should be “pleased to see them [Deming's principles] corroborated by people from other fields.” But where else, on the current scene, can we find so coherent a set of principles, compellingly codified as a rallying point for educators? Where else can we find a system marked by both simplicity and sophistication, not to mention flexibility (a nice function of its not being an educational program?) Kohn would have us merel promise of Total Quality's enlightened mixture of teamwork, feedback, the selective use and analysis of data, collective intelligence, self-management, an arresting sense of shared purpose, the elimination of fear and ranking to promote intellectual achievement, and the importance of research and current information.
This is not to mention Total Quality's basis in sound psychology, its demonstrated benefits to both schools and industry, and its self-refining mechanisms. For schools to note so potent a combination only “in passing” would be worse than unfortunate.
Eventually, we may very well want to pull back if a harmful mania for charts and graphs develops. And it does seem kooky to use “precise numbers” to analyze Shakespearean characters. But such excesses are not apt to survive within the more public, self-corrective culture that Total Quality promotes.
This movement may even metamorphose into something even better than itself. But somewhere between Kohn's healthy skepticism and an uncritical adoption of Total Quality is a place called school improvement, as many real schools and children can now demonstrate. At this stage, with all we stand to learn from wisely adapting it, Total Quality provides an excellent—perhaps historic—opportunity to succeed where other efforts have failed.
