Even though I am aware of the conservative nature of the vast majority of independent schools, I continue to be amazed every time opportunity knocks, only to hear schools say, "Let's wait for someone else to do it first."
No one wants to make mistakes. "Measure twice, cut once" is the mentality. But what if you're measuring something new? How do you know precisely when to cut it?
The latest issue of Independent School magazine is chock-full of thoughts on innovation and design-thinking, and the 2012 NAIS Annual Conference is themed around the same. However, my guess is that the actual percentage of schools doing this kind of work is small. We love to talk about ideas, but, as for moving from talk toward action...we have far to go.
Cursory observation: looking through the Annual Conference catalog and through the current issue of IS magazine, the number of schools actually doing something is around 20. What's the NAIS membership? Around 1,500 schools (not counting organizations and related). A quick calculation suggests that the "doers" amount to some 1.3% of NAIS schools.
Some readers may clamor that my numbers are faulty. Fine. Let's augment the number to 100. One hundred schools that are actually doing 'innovative work.' That's 6.7% of NAIS schools.
We're still waiting for someone else to do it.
But...how do we kickstart ourselves?
ShareThis
Comments