Weekly Reflections: Real Life Happens with Real People.

I have been trying to read more for personal development, and I have found that listening to audiobooks is a great way to accomplish that. I now try to listen to an audiobook when commuting from home to work every day. Hearing an audiobook allows for me to feel like I am getting my day started productively. The audiobook that I am currently listening to is Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek, and I have to say it is a must read/listen.

I am on chapter 13, and the focus of this particular section deals with Stanley Milgram's experiment on the conflict between obedience to authority and personal conscience; I've linked a great video that explains what the research entailed.

The Milgram Experiment revealed that the average person is likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the degree of killing an innocent individual. Obedience to authority is ingrained in all of us, and it has a lot to do with how we are brought up. We are furthermore likely to comply with the perceived authority when there is a buffer protecting us from seeing the consequences of our actions. Simon Sinek referrers to this as the world of abstraction; the more abstract people become, the more capable we are of doing them harm.

Final Thoughts:

This has been a good reminder for me concerning the work that I am currently doing within the department of education, and that I have to manage the abstraction. The reality is, the further away from working with kids the abstraction becomes all the more prevalent. I can make decisions with unintended consequences that can do more harm than good. It is so easy to look at the spreadsheets of data, and lose the faces of those students who are affected by what we do and decide. We must never forget that human-centered interaction is essential. Real life happens with real people, and that is how we build trust, empathy, and ultimately how we will innovate public education...these are my RAW thoughts.

#Education #TeachingMatters #LeadersEatLast #SimonSinek #Abstraction #MilgramExperiment