I hear over and over again that you can't change a person unless he wants to be changed. Well, how about a system? Does a system ever want to change? I think the bigger the system the less likely it is the it will want to get up and stretch its legs for a second, let alone attempt moving around and doing something different. Change is a system's biggest fear, right next to noncompliance.
When it comes to being a student leader, do you ever get the feeling that creating positive change feels a lot like moving grains of sand from one bucket to another with a pair of tweezers? Or digging a tunnel with a toothpick? That about describes my state of mind when I find myself face to face with the Education System Monster. I start having this sickening feeling that no matter how hard I try, the most I can ever hope for is improving the experience of a few people. But the system remains unchanged.
Maybe things have to be changed from the top down. Maybe you have to crawl into the thing and get it to do what you want instead of just pushing it around from the outside. But how do you do that? This reminds me of Mr. Incredible's fight with that spidery robot thing that learns all your moves. First he fights it for a while, but then he manages to jump inside of it and get it to bash its own brains out. But where are the system's brains?
(Check out the last 2 minutes of the video)
It is hard to really make lasting change happen at a two year institution for the reasons you just described. Now that I know enough to "get inside the monster," I am almost out of there, kind of seems like it was set up that way. If you find the brains let me know, we'll swap notes...
Posted by: Brandon Devlin | January 29, 2009 at 09:45 PM