I鈥檓 working on my new book (tentatively titled The Great School Rethink). It鈥檒l be out next spring from Harvard Education Press and aims to help educational leaders meet the challenges of the post-pandemic landscape. To the surprise of none of my regular readers, I suggest that doing this well is less about 鈥渋nnovation鈥� than helping parents, teachers, and policymakers get comfortable thinking about schooling differently.
That鈥檚 a tall order in a world where education reforms routinely crash in the face of reservations, routine, and resistance. Yet, it鈥檚 a challenge that educational leaders should be well-equipped to tackle. After all, educators are experienced at helping others see new things, master new ideas, and wrestle with uncomfortable questions.
Unfortunately, the track record when it comes to school change is heavy on haranguing or preaching to the choir and light on persuasion. And it鈥檚 no great surprise (especially in a polarized era) that neither haranguing opponents nor talking to the like-minded is likely to change minds or locate common ground.
There are better paths. They start with taking a deep breath and mustering all our patience. After all, research shows that changing minds is always a slog. If parents or teachers have deep-seated notions about how schools should work or what classrooms should look like, it鈥檚 always going to be tough to get them comfortable with another tack.
As my old boss, Harvard鈥檚 Arthur Brooks has , 鈥淚f you want a chance at changing minds, you need a new strategy: Stop using your values as a weapon and start offering them as a gift.鈥� In fact, researchers have long known that insulting someone in the course of an argument them to dig in their heels and oppose you more firmly. This phenomenon even has a name: the 鈥�.鈥�
Fight the temptation to shout 鈥測ou鈥檙e wrong!鈥� at doubters and then just repeat your talking points, slower and louder. Instead, try to listen, appreciate the concerns, and invite them in. Rather than approaching school improvement as a morality play, approach the act of persuasion as a chance to more fully think through and explain what you鈥檙e doing.
Brooks has known a number of religious missionaries and notes that they routinely have their core beliefs rejected at doorstep after doorstep and yet manage to remain remarkably cheerful. (He tells of the missionary who wryly observed, 鈥淣o one ever said, 鈥楪reat news: There are missionaries on the porch.鈥欌��). Brooks asks, 鈥淲hat explains this apparent dissonance? The answer is that effective missionaries present their beliefs as a gift.鈥�
There are at least three tips that can help with this.
Avoid 鈥渙thering鈥� others. Ensure that those who disagree or have doubts don鈥檛 feel like they鈥檙e off the team. If you鈥檙e rethinking teacher roles or the use of school time, don鈥檛 force those comfortable with the status quo to see themselves as outcasts under siege. Watch your language, keep lines of communication open, and take every opportunity to extend a hand to those who aren鈥檛 on board. One benefit of this approach is that it gives you a chance to build trust with your opponents, which can make things easier with time.
Don鈥檛 take rejection personally (or as final). Hesitance and reluctance are normal. They鈥檙e healthy. If anything, they鈥檙e useful warning signs as to where the community really is. Take them that way. A big mistake education reformers have habitually made鈥攊n so many efforts like No Child Left Behind or the Common Core鈥攊s they ride roughshod over doubts and concerns. Too often, this yields a 鈥渨ith me or against me鈥� mindset, which turns fence-sitting doubters into sworn enemies.
And listen more, much more. One of the things I realized when Pedro Noguera and I wrote our book a few years back is how easy it is to approach conversation mostly as a chance to convince the listener that 鈥淚鈥檓 right.鈥� It struck me that we too rarely appreciate that the opportunity to listen, by illuminating shared values and perspectives, is what ultimately helps us persuade. In fact, researchers at Yale and UC Berkeley have that deep listening is more powerful than talking when it comes to changing minds.
One of the great disappointments of my professional life is how frequently champions of educational change seem to imagine that the way to win hearts and minds is to vilify their opponents. Yet, all those efforts鈥攐n both left and right鈥攈ave one thing in common. They haven鈥檛 led to much actual change, in public sentiment or in schools. Perhaps it鈥檚 a good time to try a different tack.
