The Principal’s New Clothes
“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
Photo by Nickolas Nikolic on Unsplash
"Why, he hasn't got anything on!" the whole crowd was shouting at last; and the Emperor's flesh crept, for it seemed to him they were right. "But all the same," he thought to himself, "I must go through with the procession." So he held himself more proudly than before, and the lords in waiting walked on bearing the train—the train that wasn't there at all. The Emperor’s New Clothes, by Hans Christian Andersen
I’ve always thought of this story concluding with the little boy innocently speaking the truth, and thus breaking the spell of delusion which had enchanted lords and commoners alike. However, that is not how the story ends. The story ends with everyone continuing to act out the delusion, despite the spell being broken.
Obviously hubris-induced psychosis is not just a school leadership problem. The story has broad appeal for a reason. However, I can’t think of a better framework to capture education leadership than Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of obsession.
The story is as much about fruitless egotism as it is about competing interests. It’s tempting to think of the emperor and everyone except the little boy is irrational. In reality, from the perspective of self-interest, the characters are quite rational. Speaking the truth is only one variable in our self-preservation decision-making matrix, and if you think about it, given a serious enough problem, speaking the truth usually gets factored in as a liability. Probably the emperor, certainly the lords, and without a doubt the commoners, all benefit more, at least in the short term, from leaning into the lie.
The problem, of course, is that the emperor is, in real life, naked. He has spent valuable treasure on the false labor of hucksters, he has trusted lords who couldn’t or wouldn’t offer wise counsel, and he has made a fool out of himself and his entire kingdom. In addition, the emperor has set a precedent: sounding good is preferable to being right.
In schools, what are the competing interests to speaking or accepting the truth, particularly with school leaders? In my experience, ideological capture, political and regulatory pressure, and a lack of understanding (and not understanding that they don’t understand), makes up the lion’s share of competing interests, but we also have poor training; group-think; nonsensical selection process (principals are just teachers who decided to become principals); popular culture; woke culture (being good > being right); unearned confidence bordering on full blown narcissism; a minority of parents who exercise disproportionate influence; it’s just easier to keep things how they are than to change them, etc.
I like the parallel between Andersen and Administration insofar as both succumb to the temptation to prioritize easy, trendy, vain delusions, over difficult truths. Where I believe the analogy starts to fray is in the complexity of the problem. The emperor is either naked, or he’s not. Everybody can see that he is, but they pretend that he’s not, and they continue to pretend that he’s not after everybody knows that he is (even after everybody knows that everybody knows that he is).
Creating an evaluation tool that measures the portion of students’ learning that their teacher(s) added is a notoriously difficult, virtually impossible, imprecise project. This is what so many people miss. We can’t build a good model that isolates individual teacher effects (or even whole-school effects) on learning because of the amount of noise in the models. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on calibrating these models, and all have basically failed. If we can’t validly and reliably measure teacher effect on learning, then we can’t always say for certain whether or not the emperor is wearing their pedagogical clothes.
So, to be fair to administrators, the problem is complex, although the fact of complexity does not imply that there are no naked-emperor edu-traps. Also to be fair to administrators: teachers, parents, and students also fall into some of these same traps. One of my favorite lines from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is: So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do. In the absence of a truly quantifiable model of best practices, the scene is set for fishermen to buy lures designed to catch consumers, not fish. That said, I’m focusing on principals because they are the ones typically driving school-and-district programs and policy, and although principals may not be more susceptible to wacky claims and fads, it’s certainly more conspicuous when they are (nobody is throwing a parade for a naked, delusional commoner).
What are some specific naked-emperor examples of programs, policy, and ideas in schools? I personally believe replacing canonized texts with “high interest” or YA books is usually a really bad idea. The ELA department where I teach replaced Romeo and Juliet with The Poet X a few years ago, and while I’ve heard some compelling arguments for X, I’d encourage you to do a side-by-side reading, and ask yourself, “If my child were to study four books and four books only in all of 9th grade English class, which is the book that would better maximize their formal educational experience?” I’ll give a text-based example; first, Romeo, after first seeing Juliet at Capulet’s party:
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear —
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand
And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight,
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night. (1.5.42-51)
Now, Xiomara, who is also “in love”, is dreaming about her crush Aman (get it? A. Man. A man. Ah, poetry.):
The boy moves his body closer to mine
and I can feel his hands
drop down from my waist to my hips
then brushing up toward these boobs I hate
that I now push at him like an offering,
his hands move so close, our faces move closer-
and then my phone alarm rings,
waking me up for school. (“Dreaming of Him Tonight”, 85)
Look…it’s possible I’m being a crusty old grump. But for the life of me I can’t understand how we could consider Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight,/For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night to be the literary equivalent of I offered him my boobs. What we are all offering is an inferior education to children, and I’d claim that we all know that, and we all know that we all know that, but we are pretending it isn’t true because of “high interest” or “connecting with the youth” or “inclusion” or some other silly self-preservation non-truth-loving nonsense.
Is this example too subjective? Are there compelling counter-arguments that I’m too self-absorbed and self-righteous to be willing to acknowledge? I’ll leave that for you to answer, dear reader. Maybe I smile over my shoulder at my bubble butt in the mirror (“Feeling Myself”, 92) really is the literary equivalent of But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun (2.2.2-3). Maybe trading off literary quality for Disrupt Texts!™ is totally worth it.
Even if that were the case, there are other examples of naked-emperor ideas and policies that are widely accepted by districts - I’d argue that every one of these are very close definitively naked-emperor problems:
The person doing the talking is the person doing the learning.
The person doing the smiling is the person doing the learning.
Unconscious bias (or here…or here…or here)
“Productive struggle”, i.e., Student does-Class does-Teacher does model
The near total absence of g (intelligence) as a consideration in an industry whose goal is to increase intelligence.
I didn’t understand The Emperor's New Clothes when I was a kid. I just assumed that people know the difference between a naked man and a clothed man, and if someone was naked, I didn’t understand the compulsion to say that they were clothed. To be honest, I still don’t fully understand. It’s tempting to look out at all the commoners and call them stupid or blind, and some of them probably are one or the other…but not all of them, and not most of them. Personally, I’d prefer to live in a world where leaders are able to look down, see that they’re naked, power walk home, and get some real clothes on. I’m not holding my breath.