The Abilene Paradox

If we are to ask teachers and parents about our (Singapore) education system, we will find almost unanimous agreement that the system is very stressful for all concerned. They will lament about the over-emphasis on examinations, the heavy workload on the students while the teachers will moan about being buried under the marking of the students’ work. Parents complain about the need for private tuition for their children, not to mention the streaming and labeling of of students. Yet, we find this strange agreement to somehow continue with this system of ours. This reminds me of the Abilene Paradox (see video excerpt here).

The Abilene Paradox was introduced by management guru, Jerry B. Harvey in his book, The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management (left). From an anecdote from this book he describes the paradox as the following:

“On a hot afternoon visiting in Coleman, Texas, the family is comfortably playing dominoes on a porch, until the father-in-law suggests that they take a trip to Abilene [53 miles north] for dinner. The wife says, “Sounds like a great idea.” The husband, despite having reservations because the drive is long and hot, thinks that his preferences must be out-of-step with the group and says, “Sounds good to me. I just hope your mother wants to go.” The mother-in-law then says, “Of course I want to go. I haven’t been to Abilene in a long time.”

The drive is hot, dusty, and long. When they arrive at the cafeteria, the food is as bad as the drive. They arrive back home four hours later, exhausted.

One of them dishonestly says, “It was a great trip, wasn’t it?” The mother-in-law says that, actually, she would rather have stayed home, but went along since the other three were so enthusiastic. The husband says, “I wasn’t delighted to be doing what we were doing. I only went to satisfy the rest of you.” The wife says, “I just went along to keep you happy. I would have had to be crazy to want to go out in the heat like that.” The father-in-law then says that he only suggested it because he thought the others might be bored.

The group sits back, perplexed that they together decided to take a trip which none of them wanted. They each would have preferred to sit comfortably, but did not admit to it when they still had time to enjoy the afternoon.”

Few dare to say no to our current system. Yet few think that many of the characteristic results of the system is desireable. But we still go along with it and just grin and bear with it. Either it is because we are so afraid of going against the official view or we somehow think that the others think it is great too. After all, we have teams from all over the world to study our educational system. So they must think it is good. So it must be good. Is it? Or are we on the road to Abilene where education is concerned?

By the way, I highly recommend the book. It is not only that the subject is interesting but the book is hilarious. It had me laughing all the way.

Can you imagine what it is like to be seating quietly in a class for hours on end? Oops I forgot. My sincere apologies, most of us went through that when we were in school. I did too,

All too often today, this classroom “management” approach of expecting students to be quiet is still being practised. Students are expected to seat still, facing their teacher who invariably would be at the front almost hugging the white board, be quiet and listen attentively.

Is this a classroom full of live human students or dog training school (I often wonder if dog training school is actually better)? Is a a quiet classroom good for the learners in the class? By learners I mean both the the students and the teachers.

In my view, a quiet classroom is a reflection of the teacher’s lack of ability to manage the class in a more dynamic way. Management of the class is by enforced stillness.  Have such teachers stopped to ask themselves if making students keep still in the classroom a natural thing for young children or even teenagers to do? Have they ever stopped to ask if they, the teachers themselves, have enjoyed it when they were students themselves? Even in passenger aircraft today, they want passengers to move around to ensure blood circulation. Ever wonder what happens to brains starved of oxygen due to lack of blood circulation that is due to keeping still in the classrooms?

Such classrooms only benefit the teachers whose main goal is the teaching of unquestioned obedience. Marshall McLuhan has pointed out that in such a classroom, where information flows in one direction only, what is learnt is not the information that is being “transmitted” by the teacher but what the students are allowed to do. Since they are allowed to only sit and listen they will then only learn unquestioned authority.

In a quiet classroom, students are likely to be passive learners if they learn at all. All that energy and curiosity that exist in the young bodies and minds is strangely channeled to learn to be still. The mind slows down to the barest level of activity as the teacher drones on. The stillness is only interrupted when the teacher has a question and the mind is expected suddenly to be at its best to answer the question. When are the students encouraged to reflect and think? When are the students encouraged to construct meaning for themselves about what they are supposed to be learning?

But unfortunately, for many, never mind all these because, to quote Mr. Gradgrind from Charles Dickens’ Hard Times:

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.

For many, the quiet classroom is usually not a place for noble educational goals. The classroom is quiet usually because the teachers want to cover the syllabus for the examinations. Any interruption is frowned upon because it slows down the teachers and the teacher will not be able to cover the syllabus in time. There is a lot to teach.

So in a  quiet classroom, learning is also not a social event. Students do not learn to work together. Students do not get the chance to sound off each other and learn from one another. Everyone is expected to be deep in his private thought. In the real world does learning take place in this manner? Yet, students expected to become team players at the workplace when they leave school. In the quiet classroom, it is everyone for himself.

According to some studies, the lack of independence and control in the curriculum among teachers, affects their self-image and therefore their level of job satisfaction (see Smithers, 1990, and Mercer and Evans, 1991). Rice and Schneider (1994), also found that the degree that school administration empowers teachers in areas like pedagogy and contribution to administrative decisions have a significant impact on job satisfaction.

In a recent study of preservice teachers in Singapore, it was found that there almost 50 per cent of them do not perceive a good career prospect in their profession and they also would prefer to move out of teaching if they have an opportunity to do so. This is in a country where the teachers are among the best paid civil servants experiencing regular pay revisions and other incentives. Since most schools in Singapore are government-owned and there are almost 30,000 teachers, the MOE has also been busy trying to create more career progression opportunities for teachers. Still it is well-known that there is a high attrition rate among teachers in Singapore. Not to mention that according to one Straits Times report a while ago, teachers form the largest group of people to visit the local institute of mental health for various ailments.

The salary of Singapore teachers ranked among the best yet there seemed to be great difficulty keeping teachers. How does this compare to international schools in the region where generally the teachers’ salary is even lower than that of Singapore teachers? In addition, in most of these schools, career prospects is perhaps worse than in Singapore because international schools in the region are privately-owned, which usually means that there is not a huge organization in the background behind these schools for good career paths for teachers to look forward to.

Perhaps international schools in Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Thailand should seriously look into the findings by Rice and Schneider. International schools in the region should empower teachers even more in terms of pedagogy and decision-making. These seem to give teachers greater job satisfaction because of they would experience a sense  of achievement which can more than offset the negative impact of the lack of career prospects or potential for better pay. More training in the areas of pedagogy, and even in management especially on teaching-related issues, can help teachers to feel even better in the areas that the teachers themselves perceive to be very important to them in terms of job satisfaction.