Once upon a time the main preoccupation of all workers was to learn how to curry favour with the boss. In those days being good at your job was not as important as flattery, fawning, and falling over yourself to be noticed. If one manager told the boss he was ‘like a father to him’ the next would need to up- the-ante. “To him you are like a father, to me you are like a God”. 

 

It’s hard to make “To me you are like the father of all the Gods”, sound like a heartfelt genuine refection of feelings. Better to express devotion and deference. “Oh great employer every morning all my family prays for your happiness for you are more than a god to me”. Accompanied by lots of bowing and scraping this was designed to ensure that loyalty and deference would always triumph over competence.

 

Deference and devotion based on position in a preordained hierarchy was intrinsic to our education system.  Younger children deferred to older children, older children deferred to the school “masters”, and the school “masters” deferred to the “Head” Master. The Headmaster deferred to the “Governors” and so on.   A private school education was an excellent training for a life of servitude and deference to the (colonial) powers that be. 

 

But that was in the days before TV, before the child as a consumer, before democracy and child and human rights; before child self expression, and critical thinking, and children having opinions and manufactured wants.   In the days before education became an industry and schooling a valuable saleable commodity.

 

Now schools profess that their aim is to produce leaders, innovators, critical thinkers, and children strive to be part of the unofficial sub-set, and not the swotting mainstream. And we are beginning to see the death of deference in our schools, and the attitudinal changes that long ago became part of an education system of the west.  The attitude has come “My father pays your wages so show me how you can make learning interesting?”   

 

This week in the UK writers drew attention to the dearth of head “teachers”, (In the UK they are no longer referred to as  “masters”). The reason - that once prestigious role is now perceived as a bed of nails. In the west, teachers are increasingly the stuff of parody, and the failure of the system to attract and retain teachers, means that these countries are turning to countries like India for the teaching jobs that the majority in their country are spurning.    

 

And it is beginning to happen here. In the senior classrooms attitudes are changing and already we have children leaving our schools not wanting to follow in their parent’s footsteps, and without their parents sense of loyalty, subservience, and deference.

 

The challenge for all of us is to continue to cheer the passing of subservience and deference, while working for the survival of respect and the right to free expression. Modern industry does not wanting fawning flattery, but it does require critical respectful employees. It needs free thinking, constructively critical, respectful yet assertive individuals with high self esteem, but these are much harder to produce than the subservient, deferential batches of yesteryear.

 

The death of deference is an excellent phenomena, but it makes education so much harder. The west has not got it right – we have to think of our own solutions.