The Empty Suits: School Administrators Who Fail Children and Teachers

The Despicable Art of Plausible Deniability Among School Administrators

• The Ostrich Approach: How School Administrators Stick Their Heads in the Sand 
• Plausible Deniability: The Coward's Excuse for Failed Leadership
• See No Evil, Hear No Evil: The Art of Not Knowing Among School Bureaucrats 
• The Sgt. Schultz Syndrome: Willful Ignorance in Our School Systems
• Out to Lunch: Principals Who Are Missing In Action
• The Empty Suits: School Administrators Who Fail Children and Teachers
• Turning a Blind Eye: How Leaders Enable Dysfunction Through Tacit Acceptance
• Malignant Obliviousness: The Scourge of Passive Leaders in Education 
• The Abdication of Responsibility: Refusing to Listen, See, or Know
• Bureaucratic Malpractice: When Careerism Trumps Doing What's Right

It has become abundantly clear that many of our nation's school principals and administrators have mastered the art of plausible deniability - that delicate exercise in tactical ignorance that allows the powerful to evade responsibility for their negligence or malfeasance. Like Sergeant Schultz in the American sitcom Hogan's Heroes, they have perfected the refrain of "I know nothing! I see nothing!" when confronted with the endemic problems plaguing our education system.

By intentionally staying out of the loop and maintaining a calculated obliviousness to the widespread issues of bullying, failing schools, incompetent teachers, and more, these so-called leaders are able to shrug their shoulders and deny any accountability when problems inevitably arise. "How could I be blamed for what I do not know?" they protest, echoing the feigned ignorance of every authoritarian stooge who came before them.

This policy of intentional deafness and blindness does profound harm to the students and teachers suffering under a broken status quo. Can you imagine the psychological toll on educators who pour their souls into helping troubled students, only to find uncaring bureaucrats utterly disinterested in their trauma? What of the bullied and marginalized pupils who long for authority figures to protect them, but find only empty suits obsessed with covering their own behinds?

By refusing to listen to the voices crying out for help, and by turning a blind eye to dysfunction they'd rather not see, these administrators fail in their most basic duties. And they should be held culpable for this abdication of responsibility. As Upton Sinclair famously wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." So too for these cowards who enable injustice through calculated obliviousness.

True leaders confront problems directly. They listen to criticism, accept accountability, and work passionately to improve their organizations. In contrast, the administrators I describe are not leaders at all - merely soulless bureaucrats devoted to protecting their own careers at the expense of those they ostensibly serve. We must stop accepting such spineless lack of leadership and demand accountability from top to bottom. For the sake of our children and teachers, the Sgt. Schultzes of our school systems must go. Only then can we build an education system worthy of this great nation.