Breaking away.

When my youngest daughter, Caroline, was a baby, she would sometimes accidentally link her fingers together so that one hand was holding the other. She would begin to pull and shake her hands, trying to free herself. The more she struggled, the more frustrated she became.

Finally, being the good father, I would help her untangle herself. Of course, she really didn't require my help. All she had to do was open her fingers and let go.

Thinking about that now, years later, I can see how adults aren't very different from the children we observe. We constantly tangle ourselves up in knots of our own creation, and we pull and push trying to free ourselves when all we have to do is release ourselves from our own entanglements. Poet William Blake described this condition as "mind-forged manacles," being held captive by the handcuffs we create for ourselves.

Ellen Langer, in her wonderful little book Mindfulness, describes the process of this creation as a part of our learning experience. We learn as children what is right, what is wrong, what is proper and what is not. We learn to sort and categorize. While this is an important part of our maturation, it also begins to shut us down to other possible ways of seeing the world.

The ultimate shutdown is found in the education system itself. As it focuses on specified outcomes, it narrows the choices the learner has of looking at the world. Langer describes this process as the creation of "mindlessness."

Destructive Symbols

As I look at our culture today, I detect the ravages of mindlessness on every front. Some comes from allowing symbols and slogans to cut us off from being open to broader possibilities.

Take the flag and the cross as examples. In the interest of full disclosure, I must tell you I wear a cross and proudly own a number of flags. The problem comes when we mistake the displaying of these symbols as a way of claiming all they stand for. It is not enough to show the flag and then use your own professed patriotism as a means of shutting off others' views of what it means to be patriotic.

Some would see it as patriotic to support our troops by not raising questions about the war they are fighting. Others would see our troops best supported by bringing them home. Without weighing in on which is right, both of these positions and others between them should be discussed and considered. That would allow for mindfulness.

Likewise, the wearing of a cross suggests an allegiance to one religion held dear by millions around the world. Yet simply displaying that object without giving ongoing thought of what the man who first had to wear a cross stood for is a mindless action. It is hard to wear a cross with sincerity without worrying about how loving, compassionate and forgiving you have to be on a daily basis. The bar is set pretty high and those who would cast stones are in danger of casting judgment on themselves.

In education, we carry on in ways that endanger us to behave mindlessly. I recently heard a highly intelligent educator suggest we should take unemployed engineers and retool them to teach math and science so our children could grow up to become engineers.

Think about this for a second. Does it make sense? If there aren't jobs for engineers today, will there be jobs tomorrow? Or are we suggesting that we need to ramp up the training of children for high-tech jobs when the competition in Asia is working for one-fifth of the going salaries here. What are we training them for and won't economics come into play? What will be the ultimate outcome here? And it goes on and on.

We teach children foreign languages in high school, long after their neural wiring for acquiring languages has peaked. We want our children to be globally competitive, but we cut back on bilingual programs and make the children who already have another language stop using it so they can learn English. Because a lot of the globe doesn't speak English and our children need other perspectives, aren't we hurting ourselves if we are to remain competitive ?

Inflated Egos

Within our own profession we wear the symbols of our office as if that makes us leaders. I have heard some of our peers refer to themselves in third person as if that makes them more important. Our titles and our egos aren't important--how we work with others and how mindful we remain are.

Langer suggests mindfulness is the key aspect of leadership. She describes it as the ability to connect to the environment and to others. Above all, it is to remain open and aware. Her research indicated that people who demonstrate these qualities are magnets for others. They are good leaders.

Jim Collins, in Good to Great, described Level 5 leaders (the ones who were most effective in creating greatness) as being transparent so those in the organization get the credit for the greatness. In the Eastern teaching of Taoism, there is a thought that leaders should behave in ways so that when the work is done the people will say, "We did it ourselves." This calls for a different kind of ego and a different kind of vision and a different frame of mind.

Educational leaders must get past the simple symbols and the "either/or" mentality that permeates our culture and lead others to discover the greatness that already lies within them. The fact is our children are most limited by the narrow definitions we put on learning--the "mental handcuffs" to paraphrase Blake. I'm pretty sure that if we open our minds, our brains won't fall out--all that will happen is that we will break away from the chains that hold us back.

Paul Houston is AASA executive director. E-mail [e-mail]