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PREPARATION OF SCHOOL LEADERS

LEARNING TO LEAD DEMOCRATICALLY: A DEMOCRATIC

IMPERATIVE FOR LEADERSHIP PREPARATION

Patrick M. Jenlink

We are at a crossroads in education, where, as Dewey (1916a) argued, we must create an
extension in space for educators that “is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of
class, race, and national territory, which kept them from perceiving the full import of their
activity” (p. 87). At the same crossroads, leadership education, as a cultural-transformative
agency of society, must decide how to best realize its potential efficacy in relation to prepar-
ing educational leaders “with a moral and political vision of what it means to educate students
to govern, lead a humane life, and address the social welfare of those less fortunate than
themselves” (Giroux, 1994, p. 45).
Leading the educational enterprise, on all levels, has become an increasingly and unavoid-
ably political activity, made more problematic and political by the growing complexity of cul-
tural and linguistic diversity that is redefining the very essence of our society and educational
systems. Dewey (1916a, 1927) understood the importance of education in a democracy and
the problems often confronted by the public, particularly in consideration of the “good soci-
ety.” Dewey (1916a) also understood how far we were from creating democratic education:

[W]e are doubtless far from realizing the potential efficacy of education as a con-

structive agency of improving society, from realizing that it represents not only a de-

velopment of children and youth but also of the future society of which they will be

the constituents. (p. 85)

Realizing the potential efficacy of education as a transformative agency requires us to un-
derstand the function of education in a democracy, and more specifically to understand the
transformative function of leadership education in a democratic society. This understanding of
transformative function is political by nature. If we are to realize the efficacy of education, we
must accept the political nature of education, and in so doing, we must, as Freire (1998) ar-
gued, understand that the “real roots of the political nature of education are to be found in the
educability of the human person” (p. 100). When we situate education/leadership education in
relation to its function in a democratic society, we must also understand as Dewey (1939) ar-
gued, that the “task of democracy is forever that of creation of a freer and more humane ex-
perience in which all share and which all contribute” (p. 245).
Education leadership in today’s schools reflects the uncertainties of contemporary society.
In retrospect, there are similarities today that mirror the uncertainties of Dewey’s day. Such
uncertainties, as Dewey (1927) was given to discuss, are born out of social problems and po-
litical trappings of a changing and diverse society. Uncertainty for children fostered by educa-
tion inequities (failure to close the achievement gap in schools for non-White and poor White
children) and uncertainty for all by social inequities (failure to close the income and resource

Patrick M. Jenlink, Stephen F. Austin State University