7/9/2023 0 Comments Silo effectWhen you go out of your way to recruit the most intelligent, innovative, talented people on Earth, telling them to do what they’re told, obliterates 99 percent of their value. It simplifies planning and makes it easier to control a large group of people from the top down, like the military. They write: ‘Hierarchy is great for maintaining predictability and repeatability. It is not the kind of company, one would think, could offer genuine insight for education, but when you read their Handbook for new employees, it is very explicit about their preferred structure to enhance creativity. Valve is a video game developer and digital distribution company in the United States. I see education as more of a natural, ongoing creative process, so maybe there is a benefit exploring industries with a totally different mindset.Ī critical friend of Organic Learning, Tom Barrett, introduced us to the Valve Corporation a few years ago whilst we were exploring ‘flat leadership’ structures. Personally, I have had enough of ‘top-down’, vertical structures. Many education systems are becoming more aligned to a corporate mindset, which brings its own set of hierarchical complexities. If we were to move away from our current structure, there are a growing number of alternatives we could consider. It is quite clear that our current structure of education is based on a factory or industrial paradigm, but as a collective, education is about growing learners, not manufacturing them. So we have the unfortunate situation where silos exist side by side, within a larger silo. For the most part, each of these sub-groups would operate within their own area, with minimal communication between groups, and nowhere near enough opportunities for collaboration. There would also be particular experts in specialist areas that go across K-12, such as Special Needs, Curriculum Subjects, EAL/D (English as Another Language or Dialect), Student Welfare, Innovation, eLearning, Gifted Education, and so on. All education systems would have in operation a Curriculum Directorate or Teaching & Learning Directorate, with multiple sub-groups made up of experts, such as primary and secondary teachers and/or leaders. This is compounded in education systems as nearly everyone is a teacher. One of the tensions I see in silos generally is that a department or directorate consists of experts in the same field. ![]() I have no definitive answer, only a possible consideration (for those in a position of influence) to explore. This is why in an Organic Learning Community, we always look to employ people who are more talented than us, with the capacity to become far more capable than anyone in our leadership team, and hence continue to improve on what we have created.įor a long time now, the idea of removing silos in education has become a personal provocation. A hierarchical structure is reinforced by its leaders employing people to fill roles below them, thus fortifying a ‘top-down’ mindset. ![]() One of the many structures that ought to be defunct by now, is the self-perpetuating silo self-perpetuating because a silo usually exists for its own benefit or to benefit those who control it. Educators continue to refine the creative art of teaching, but at the end of the day are constrained by the same claustrophobic structures borne out of a manufacturing mindset. It is bewildering that education systems still exist within a structure created for a paradigm that has long outlived its ‘due by date’.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |