When I last posted about curriculum, it was a culmination of posts about knowledge, skills, and “creativity,” all important aspects of a good school’s learning objectives. Since then, I’ve realized how many elements I left out. One is an idea that I find problematic: “leadership.”
Schools frequently boast of cultivating leaders, as though leadership is something that all children are destined for. But teams usually have more members than they do leaders, so, logically, not every adult will or should be a leader. That is, unless leadership means something other than that status and actions of a person who is “in charge” of others.
So, might a leader be someone who influences or inspires, regardless of whether they manage other people? Can only some of those who manage truly claim to lead?[1] Is a mentor a leader, regardless of whether they have authority over those they mentor, or whether the mentor-mentee relationship is formalized? Is someone who generates new ideas a leader, whether or not they are anyone’s boss?
Affirmative answers to these questions and questions like them lead to what we might call a “broad” understanding of leadership, as opposed to a “narrow” understanding in which a leader is someone who’s role involves directing the work of others. The problem with a broad understanding is that it is just too…well…broad. If an innovator, a mentor, and anyone who inspires or influences in any way is a leader, how many of us are not leaders? And if the answer is not very many, what exactly is the value of the term “leader” or “leadership”?
By a narrow understanding of the term, however, leadership in itself is something nobody should aspire to or encourage anyone else to aspire to. It is power for power’s sake. It is unhealthy.
A better approach is to teach students to become creators by the light of the Creation Paradigm. This might mean that they become makers of anything from pots to sonatas to theories, from public safety to medical services to new businesses. But, most importantly, it means that they will, by the way they treat others, be creative of people. Some acts of creation require only one person, but others involve teams, and, for this reason, it’s healthy and morally sound to want to lead a team towards a creative goal. In that sense, it’s OK to want to be a leader. But we should not want, or teach others to want, to be in charge in the abstract.
Rather than teaching kids to want to “lead,” then we should teach them to want to create, and we should teach them what that can mean, in all its variety.
[1] “Would you rather be a manager or a leader?” The Economist, 23 October 2023. https://www.economist.com/business/2023/10/23/is-being-a-leader-really-sexier-than-being-a-manager
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