The axis of evil.

Evil has a strange effect on us--the more we think about it, the more it pulls us in and covers us with the ashes of its darkness. The more we see it in others, the more likely it is to manifest in us. Since 9/11, the discussion of evil has become a national pastime. Sadly, the more we evil we see in others, the greater chance it will appear in us.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush referred to an "axis of evil." He also has frequently talked about the "evildoers" who oppose us. While we have already defeated one of the axis members, we are finding how adhesive evil can be: When you hit, it pulls you in. This has led me to think about the axis of evil that I see in our own country and what dangers it represents to leaders.

The first leg of the evil axis is fear. In an effort to rally our country to overcoming another axis of evil, a former president said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The danger of fear is that it enslaves you. By simply talking about fear, we feed it. Now we are told that we are in a permanent war against terrorism and that it is not a question of whether but merely when and where the evildoers will strike.

Yet even in 2001 we lost many more citizens to cars and guns than we did to terrorism. Many more kill themselves than are killed by terrorists. We even have an elaborate color code to tell us if our fears should be merely elevated or heightened. We have more intimate encounters with airline security personnel than we have with our significant others. We started a war over supposed weapons of mass destruction when we have more of these weapons ourselves than the rest of the world put together. The question is, "whom should we fear?"

A Thin Distinction

Good leadership never should rest itself on fear. In education we have seen the fear of violence lead us to make our schools less welcoming places and there fore less safe places for students. We have seen our fear of failure cause us to jump on the accountability bandwagon. We know that multiple-choice tests are the lowest possible denominator of learning and that an over-reliance on that to the exclusion of other measures narrows learning. We shouldn't fear accountability, but we also shouldn't use it to create fear in others.

Cognitive scientists tell us that fear limits our cognitive abilities. We must guard against our country and our profession standing on fear as our motivator. Leadership is about opening the possibilities to people and learning is about setting people free from the darkness of their fears and ignorance.

The second leg of the axis of evil is arrogance. This is tough because there is a thin line between confidence and arrogance. My simple distinction is that a confident person thinks he is as good as anyone else; an arrogant person thinks he is better. When you act without regard for what others think or without care about the consequences of your actions on others, then you are arrogant. When you act unilaterally without including others in what affects them, you are being arrogant. And arrogance begets an interesting reaction--resistance, dislike and rebellion.

School leaders must particularly guard against arrogance. When you are the leader of an organization, you have a great deal of real or perceived power. You must be very guarded on how you use it. If you carry forth your power without including others in the process or without caring what your actions might do to others, you are behaving arrogantly.

How do I know this? Because I have done it. We all have from time to time. We have all used shortcuts to get things done or taken actions that made us look good but may not have enriched the lives around us. Acting without regard to others is the first step on the road to becoming evil ourselves.

A Consuming Culture

The third leg is greed. When I travel outside the country, I am always struck by how greedy we are as a nation. We soak up a hugely disproportionate share of the world's resources. We live in a culture that is built around consuming, and most of that consumption is for things we don't need.

Too often our attitude is to reward the rich and let the rest take care of themselves. While there is a vast gulf in our country between those who have and those who don't, there is even a greater gulf between our Third World neighbors and ourselves. And we wonder why a lot of the rest of the world doesn't like us. Maybe it is because when we want something, we take it. And we don't always share well or play well with others.

As taxes have been reduced we have seen a decline in social services that support those who are the least among us. This has been reflected directly on to education where most states have cut their budgets for schools. Fortunately, while we are affected by greed, I don't see greed being at the heart of the work of most school folks. If you were aspiring to greed, you would have chosen an occupation that would have allowed more wealth accrual. But we can be greedy in other ways. We can pursue our own careers, while not helping others up. We can take care of our district, while the one next door goes begging. We can look out for No. 1 without caring for the other 99.

If we want to dismantle the axis of evil, we have to start at home. Our country needs to re-examine its priorities and behaviors to make sure we are not behaving in ways that create fear, arrogance and greed. We have to catch ourselves in mid strut and tone it down. And as leaders, we have to look in the mirror each morning to make sure we aren't becoming that which we most despise.

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