Accountability - Who Do You Trust?
On the philosophy of accountability in our schools, government, banks, and life in general…
I love this quote from George Bush, speaking yesterday at an elementary school in Chicago. “Look, I recognize some people don’t like accountability, [...] accountability says if you’re failing, we’re going to expose that and expect you to change. Accountability also says that when you’re succeeding you’ll get plenty of praise.” Ah, and they said he’d never learn.
Bush was talking about the grandly ill-conceived free-market assault on education — the “No Child Left Behind” act. Again in Bush’s words: “The philosophy behind No Child Left Behind was in return for money there ought to be results.”
Bush seems to have a very personal feeling for this philosophy. It speaks to him. After all, he came to power under the same diktat from big business and wealthy donors. ‘We’ll fund your campaign and support you in your bid for the presidency, but we expect results.’ And he delivered by cutting taxes, protecting and facilitating industry and big business interests, and handing down spectacularly rewarding contracts in the defense and reconstruction industries.
Unfortunately, the presidency shouldn’t be founded on that kind of accountability. Bush should have felt accountable to the people of the country before big business, because they invested their trust in him, not because they invested money in him. When we conceive of Bush’s presidency in this way it is no surprise that he has seemed to feel no real accountability for his most grievous failures as president — taking us into a war under false pretenses, endorsing illegal and cruel detention and torture, carrying out secret surveillance programs, reacting with lamentable indifference to the flooding after Katrina, and denying, deriding and tampering with the scientific evidence for global warming.
Likewise, the most important thing we invest in our schools is our trust in them to educate our children as well as they can and as well as we wish. When they fail, we should hold them accountable by finding ways to improve their performance. In some schools this will demand smaller classrooms, in others, new teachers, or a different school leader, in others perhaps a different teaching method or catchment approach. But when does it ever make sense to hold them accountable by removing funds? How does that help the children?
Which brings me to think that accountability and trust may be inextricably related from a philosophical perspective. We might test this theory with an example from the world of finance. Bear Stearns CEO, James Cayne stepped down today, the latest in a string of departures from the top spots of financial institutions embattled by the sub-prime loan crisis. My question is this: Have these corporate leaders felt compelled to step down because they squandered investors’ money or because they betrayed their trust?
The answer seems to be that whether Cayne and others felt a sense of personal and direct responsibility for the losses (some didn’t), they all felt a responsibility for the lost trust as evidenced by that financial mismanagement.
Similarly, we want our teaching establishments to feel responsible for educating our children, not for investing education funds. And we want our government to feel responsible for serving our common interests, not repaying campaign contributions.
Tags: accountability, banks, bush, education, financial, george-bush, government, no-child-left-behind, president, schools, trust