Failure and blame

Americans are not very good with failure. We take it personally; we draw lines in the sand and cast blame. And the Chicago Public Schools are, for the most part, failing—failing to provide an environment that fosters teacher excellence, failing to provide a physical environment in which kids can learn, failing to graduate kids with the basic skills to succeed, failing to graduate kids at all.

Three days into the Chicago Teachers Union strike, it’s interesting to imagine analogies between CPS and other complex systems. I think of debates in my denomination and others, as we contemplate the number of churches that are apparently failing to produce leaders or disciples or financially viable futures. Author and 826 Valencia founder Dave Eggers wonders what would happen if we blamed soldiers, not higher-ups, when a war effort fails. (For additional thoughtful reporting and commentary see Chicago Magazine, Mother Jones and Chicago Tonight.)

My teacher husband blames Rahm Emanuel for this particular strike: the mayor threw down the gauntlet by reneging on a contract for a pay increase to accompany his insistence on a much longer school day. But Josh knows this strike is about more than compensation. It’s about the teachers’ refusal to be scapegoated for CPS’s failures. Sure, CTU president Karen Lewis has a bombastic personality—as does Emanuel—and this no doubt exacerbates the impasse. But most CPS teachers work in extraordinarily difficult situations because they love to teach and they love kids—just as Josh loves his middle schoolers and feels called to his work.