Principal Investigator

When looking for grant money, the lead researcher is normally known as the principal investigator. It's his team, his overall concept and plan. What's amusing is the frequency with which people misspell the term 'principle investigator' — that would actually be someone who investigates principles, the basic ideas behind something.

But just as 'principle investigator' might mean 'investigator of principles', so too can 'principal investigator' mean 'investigator of principals' — that is, someone who looks into school leaders to see if they're kosher or not. This is the point that tickled me when someone recently called me 'principal investigator'.

I've never set out to be such a one. I've always been happy to contribute bits of research to a research group. And yet, these days, I am getting a lot of phone calls asking me to use my professional training and insight to analyse the performance of school principals.

About the only qualification I have for such a demanding task is the 'A' I got for a module I took a long time ago on principalship. Even then, the module was more on the mechanism of the office and how the accompanying powers might be used to effect school change through a range of human resource manoeuvres.

It was at around this point of self-denial that one of my interlocutors gave me a funny look. "Man," he said, "how much time have you spent reading and researching school management and school leaders anyway?"

Then it dawned on me. I am indeed somewhat qualified to do this because I've spent a fair amount of time on it already. I'm a lot more qualified than a layman even though I'm a lot less qualified than someone who's spent her or his whole life doing academic research on it. Maybe it helps that I've spent almost two decades working with a range of principals both as fellow-professional and slave.

And so, here I am, a principal researcher. I'm still pretty amused.

Second Guessing

C Northcote Parkinson was a scholar, an officer and a gentleman. A naval officer and instructor, and then after World War II, the Raffles Professor of History at the (then) University of Malaya, he was most renowned for a slim little book of sociological observations called Parkinson's Law. I have made it a point to collect every one of his books that I can find. They are models of clarity, good humour, and acutely intelligent perception.

I recently came into possession (thank you, Herr Hierophant) of one of his older books, In-Laws & Outlaws, first published in 1962. While reading it late in the night, I came across this section and laughed out loud, whereupon the local environment gave me a dirty look with elements of slight puzzlement. Here is the offending (well, amusing and entertaining) paragraph:

[Extracted from 'Secundity', p.142]
But does every organisation have an acknowledged Number Two? No, there is a significant exception. In a political despotism or dictatorship there is no real deputy and no named successor. For the whole strength of the régime rests on the assumption that the current ruler is impossible to replace. After all, an effective deputy makes the ruler less indispensable. A known successor makes him less secure. It is part of the techniques, therefore, of dictatorship to leave the second throne unfilled. Instead of Number Two there are several people in competition, the position of each weakened by the jealousy of the rest.

I think one of the most amusing things about local education is that vice-principals are never vice in the sense that a viceroy was. The Latin vice is best translated in such contexts as 'in place of'; it denotes a secondary power with the ability and/or capacity to replace the primary authority on any and every occasion. Quite often, however, there are professional secondaries with no hope of attaining apotheosis. This is a sad fact that Parkinson also addresses later in his book.

The Plan: Part I – Criterion 1 Situational Appraisal (Reprise)

When I wore a younger man's shoes, as the song goes, I had an odd ambition. I wanted to one day become somebody like my school principal; someone with a sense of rightness, a systematic and deliberate approach to planning, a keen feel for the true priorities in life, the ability to deliver morning devotions every day without repeats or loss in quality, the ability to speak his mind in flawless and considered prose. He was an inspiration, and in his usual deliberate way, he set out to share that with us.

I remember how he would always support the head prefect in public, and speak with him man-to-man in private. I remember that he dealt with all men as equals, with secular regard for their positional status and with respect only for their character. Yet, he assumed that there was always good to be gained from people, to be drawn out from them – and that was the essence of education, that drawing out of virtue to a place and state of being where it would become character.

He used to summon individuals with problems and difficulties for quiet chats in his office, where face to face across a covered desk, he would interrogate them as to their well-being and prospects. He was never one to flinch from debate, but always one to be generous and kind. You could sit and watch him spin a problem slowly in his hands as he looked up at the ceiling. You knew he was trying his best to do the right thing in the right way. He was that kind of man.

I remember him saying to a teacher, "You're a graduate! You should be able to learn things for yourself!" Yet he held us all to a code of learning from others, no matter who or what they seemed to be. And he would always ask us to test what we had learnt, and to be a man about it, fearless, exact, courteous. It did not rule out 'intimidating' or 'sharp' or 'sarcastic' – but he was at pains to stress that this was not the aim, but a side-effect which we should try to ameliorate.

The other day he spoke, and someone near me who had never known him said, "That's how a principal should sound." Indeed. I have often gone back to visit him in his office, for he has never retired despite being into his eighth decade. And every time I speak with him, I know that he is my principal, and with a leader like that, anyone would do better than they otherwise would.