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The Teacher-Student Relation

1970; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 15; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2391484

1930-3815

Mary Parker Follett,

Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

I have been asked to speak of the teacherstudent relation as an aspect of leadership. Any consideration of this subject must be colored by our definition of leadership, and there is a conception of leadership gaining ground today very different from our old notion. Yesterday I tried to present to you this conception of leadership. It is a conception very far removed from that of the leader-follower relation. With that conception you had to be either a leader or a leaner. Today our thinking is tending less and less to be confined within the boundaries of those alternatives. There is the idea of a reciprocal leadership. There is also the idea of a partnership in following, of following the invisible leader-the common purpose. The relation of the rest of the group to the leader is not a passive one, and I think teachers see this more clearly than most people, and therefore in their teaching are doing more than teaching; they are helping to develop one of the fundamental conceptions of human relations. I want to tell you at the outset why I have anticipated discussing this subject with you. As my books and articles have been on human relations in general, rather than on any one aspect of them, I have been asked to speak to different kinds of groups. Out of all these, I find that those I enjoy talking to most are businessmen and teachers. I should not have anticipated this juxtaposition, for one usually thinks of these two groups as rather far apart. But the reason is that both these groups are in a position to try out their ideas of human relations any day, and also both these groups are coming to have the experimental mind. When I speak to certain groups, as to academic people who are thinking of their subject and not of their teaching, they often seem to tend to think of what I have said in terms of whether it is a good paper or not. That was a good paper, some of them say. And I suppose some of them say, That was a poor paper, but I don't hear those. But whichever is said, the matter seems to end there. I notice, however, that when I speak to businessmen they don't think in those terms, whether it is a good paper or not, or often even whether they agree with They are apt to say, Well, I'll try that out and see if there is anything in it. They know they can find out for themselves whether it is true or not, they have the best laboratory in the world for the study of human relations. This experimental attitude on the part of so many businessmen today is one of the encouraging signs of the times. And I find the same attitude among many teachers. So these two groups of people who have hitherto been quite distinct in my mind, I am coming to associate because of this trait in common, or rather these two traits: (1) their wish to discover the most fruitful way of dealing with human relations, and (2) their willingness to experiment. To turn now more directly to our subject, what opportunities for leadership has the teacher, and what is the nature of his leadership? If leadership does not mean coercion in any form, if it does not mean controlling, protecting or exploiting, what does it mean? It means, I (think) freeing. The greatest service the teacher can render the student is to increase his freedom-his free range of activity and thought and his power of control. I don't, however, want this to be confused with the idea held by some people in regard to what is called the pupil expressing him-self. In some art schools the students are told to express themselves without, I think, due regard to the fundamentals of drawing. Some years ago a teacher told a class of little boys who were beginning clay modeling that they were to express themselves in clay. They of course began throwing the clay at each other, which was perfectly proper; that is the natural way for little boys to express themselves in clay. Professor Dewey [1927:168] said in his last book: No man and no mind was ever