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I would like to propose a possible model for college governance, one based in Goddard's roots in progressive education, the Danish Folk Highschools, and Unitarian Universalism. The basic idea behind the model, as you explain in your essay, is simple - but it's never been implemented in higher education. To understand this model of governance, one needs to set aside most of the basic assumptions about the nature of higher education and learn to see through the lens of a new paradigm. While offering the level of shared community responsibility and work envisioned by you and many, this new paradigm will never alleviate conflict. Rather, it embraces conflict as a necessary part of a complex social world. In order to begin understanding this new paradigm, I have thought about eight clusters of ideas or assumptions about Goddard. These include: (1) the college's Unitarian Universalism history; (2) progressive education; (3) the college's presidents as models for administration; (4) sensitivity to issues of oppression feminist, gay affirmative/Paulo Friere; (5) the concept of voice, as shown in the work of Jill Tarule and Mary Belenky in Women's Ways of Knowing; (6) the nature of faculty roles and the professionalization of higher ed; (7) the AGB model for college boards; and (8) the nature of conflict in democracy. (1) the college's Unitarian Universalist history Goddard's history as the Green Mountain Central Institute (1863), Goddard Seminary (1870), Goddard School for Girls (1929), Goddard Seminary and Junior College (1935), and Goddard College (1938), along with the bequest of Thomas Goddard (related to Tufts University), are rooted in the Unitarian Universalist Church. The U.U. respect for different ideas about religion and the social world is a fundamental assumption of Goddard. Yet in looking at the U.U. churches of today, there is a flaw or contradiction having to do with Governance. Like the Vermont Town Meetings, which were also a model for Goddard, the U.U. offers a model of democracy which involves committee work, open hearings, Robert's Rules of Order, and voting. Many churches, though, do not embrace the greatest test of democracy - consensus. There is still a hidden hierarchy of power invested in committees. There are still hidden assumptions about what should or shouldn't be said in a meeting, about the nature of knowledge, and what it means to be sensitive. As I will show later on, the U.U. often avoids conflict, yet rejoices in differences. Consensus involves conflict. While Goddard has since its conception by Tim Pitkin and others been committed to the principles of Unitarian Universalism and the Vermont Town meeting, it has never embodied that most basic and difficult of processes consensus. Consensus must be implemented at all levels of college administration if Goddard is to succeed without duplicating the errors of Greene and his predecessors. This will be difficult and time consuming effort, but worth every minute of discussion.
John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, Boyd Bode, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and others who were at the heart of the progressive education era wrote much about democracy and much about social responsibilities. Most of the real work in progressive education was at the K-12 level, and there was never any intention that children should be involved in democracy. Paulo Friere would differ, with his image of children teaching literacy and transforming a nation. The point is that progressive education does not offer very much in its core writings about consensus or the specific workings of school or college democracy. The only major research study related to progressive higher education, the P.E.A.'s Eight Year Study, was responsible for ushering the disciplines of evaluation, assessment, and adult and student development. But in all the scholarship and research studies, the concept of democracy in college administration was never really addressed. In the history of Goddard which I found that there were several basic themes of progressive education related to democracy. These are: "the ideal of democracy; education for democracy and an enlightened citizenry;" "Progressive reform to improve the lives of the people; advocating popular control; liberal ideas;" and "culture democratized, Everyone to share in the arts and sciences." Comparable themes from Goddard documents and publications include the idea to: "Operate a college as democratically as possible, cooperative learning, not authoritarian teaching" (1958); "Imperative that diversity be encouraged, that new ideas and criticism of old ideas shall find expression" (1950); and "the integration of the college with the community and the breakdown of barriers from life" (1963). Goddard successfully embodies the philosophy and actions of progressive education. But as the PEA split apart with the majority watering down basic ideas into simplistic prescriptions, Goddard was one of the only institutional reflections of its truer self. Unfortunately, the PEA and progressive education movement (and therefore Goddard) never evolved its conception of democracy. In looking to progressive education for models of democracy, one encounters only a language half-developed and never implemented. As in the influence of the PEA, the Danish Folk Highschools were just as much a model for Goddard, especially its adult education programs and language about democracy. Yet while the folkschools successfully transformed the people of Denmark with the lost knowledge of the country's language and myths, the schools were still hierarchical. The literature and knowledge of Denmark were challenged and reclaimed, but the nature of how the folk highschools were run was within standard organizational theory models of bureaucracy of the time.
Tim Pitkin embraced every aspect of the U.U., Progressive Education movement, and Danish Folk Highschools. He was the primary disciple of Kilpatrick, who was Dewey's principal student. Pitkin studied the writings and efforts of and got to know personally Boyd Bode, John Norton, Alexander Meiklejohn, John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher. He watched and observed the reorganized Antioch (1921), Claremont cluster colleges (1925), Experimental Program at the University of Wisconsin (1927), Chicago college program (1928), Sarah Lawrence (1930), Bennington (1932), the General College of the University of Minnesota (1932), and Black Mountain (1933). Through Pitkin's vision, Goddard more than any other effort in higher education before or since - became the philosophy of U.U., progressive ed, and the folk highschools. Yet in none of these scholars' work and in none of the experimental and alternative colleges was there any vision of democracy in college administration. I have written about how higher education was in part responsible for killing the sixties movement in American by failing to address student concerns, including shared governance. Goddard did not grow during the sixties in its educational philosophy, only in its size and complexity. The sixties never transformed Goddard as much as it helped create and transform the sixties. Pitkin's strength was in articulating the vision of educational philosophy, not in implementing it in college administration. A strong, dynamic, and charismatic leader, Pitkin became so invested in the growth of Goddard that he never let go of the reins of leadership until long after his retirement. While his family was much involved, and Goddard held meetings similar in appearance to a town meeting or family council, the decisions were his. As successive presidents came and went through the late 1970's, there were disjointed and unsuccessful presidencies - including Witherspoon, Graham, Hall, and Loefloth-Ehly (sp?). The Board of Trustees, which for years centered around Pitkin and his extended family, took on only the traditional roles of fund-raising and presidential appointment. At the time of the Goddard crisis of 1980, when Hall resigned, Victor came from the faculty to serve as interim president. Lindquist moved from consultant to president and there-was a resulting transformation of the presidency and of the board. The board became much more involved in the crises of college administration, trying to understand the financial exigencies which supposedly required the firings of many faculty and staff in 1981. The board and Goddard allowed Lindquist to serve as financial and educational savior. While Lindquist was able to stabilize the college, his decisions and recommendations to the board to sever much of Goddard with the rental and then sale of Northwood and of sale at bargain prices of the graduate and ADP programs to Vermont College were certainly not examples of college democracy. Lindquist's area of research and scholarship was in planned change and he used every one of his "Strategies for Change to transform the remaining Goddard, from working in the dish room of the cafeteria to experimenting with different faculty structures. At the time of his death, after leaving Goddard, Jack was working on a theory of college democracy. He knew that his community meetings and efforts to include students, faculty and staff were a necessary step- but he was never able to fully conceive and implement a true vision of college democracy. None of the Goddard presidents before or after Jack have done any better. It is as if Goddard has ousted or forced out every president since Pitkin. This is not so much because of their personal failures as administrators or to embrace the vision of Goddard as because the model of governance is inadequate for such an institution.
(4) sensitivity to issues of oppression - feminist, gay affirmative/Paulo Friere Goddard's educational philosophy embraced diverse views and peoples from the beginning. Not until the 1960's, though, was feminism considered an active part of Goddard. Jill Tarule and Mary Belenky, began what would be their important work on Women's Ways of Knowing. Rita Weathersby worked on adult development theory. Art Chickering, Will Hamlin, and Ernie Boyer began the classic work on student development theory,. All of these impacted Goddard in its educational psychology and philosophy, including evolving feminist, gay affirmative, values of diversity. The ADP and GEPFE programs which began in the 1960's were likewise transformed by the issues of the time and changed the nature of Goddard along with them. The graduate programs which began in Boston/Cambridge and with satellites across the country allowed Goddard faculty and students to make significant contributions to the feminist and gay affirmative movements. By the 1980's women's and gay studies had become an integral part of what people see when they look at Goddard and this is exactly what Pitkin would have intended. However, there was always controversy between the adult student groups and the traditional college age undergraduate population. The white male students ages 18 to 22 always felt threatened. Many were forced to confront their sexism through personal relationships. Most, if they stayed at Goddard long enough, changed their perspectives. This development of sensitivity to oppression is something which I have studied in my own research. Goddard is the best kind of environment for challenging assumptions about sexism, homophobia, racism, and negative stereotypes about people. Many Goddard classes have reclaimed Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed as a main text, looking for new ways to interact which do not inherently promote hierarchical, power relationships. This kind of confrontation of negative stereotypes is difficult to sustain, and it is not the work of women and minorities to educate white men about these issues. The leadership of Goddard failed to understand and continue this work. Lindquist had a sophisticated understanding of this. But it takes so much continued effort, most people want to walk away from this kind of dissonance and constant conflict over the contradictions in the social world. Personalities can tear a community apart, if they fail to respect the fundamental nature of just how oppressive the higher education setting is. While progressive education and folk highschools do everything possible to alleviate this oppression, the nature of knowledge, the nature of faculty roles, and the nature of governance send other messages in their assumptions. At the same time, it must be realized that, for many reasons, Goddard is not diverse enough or Afrocentric enough. Goddard has much to learn from the Afrocentric model, though this too has its own flaws of being at times both anti-feminist and homophobic. We can learn from these contradictions and from the powerful Afrocentric critique about the nature of Eurocentric knowledge. Any efforts at true democratic governance must be founded in the continued awareness of just how oppressive the higher education setting is and of the discrimination and deprivation which have resulted from the dominance of the traditional structure.
As in the work of Gilligan, Women's Ways of Knowing offers a compelling critique of how devastating higher education is to women and people of color. The classic works on student and adult development which has now become institutionalized in student affairs programs and assessment are all based, ironically, on Goddard students. Many of Belenky et al's students who were interviewed came to Goddard at one time or another. The students used for Chickering's stages of student development were enrolled at Goddard and took pre/post GRE tests to measure Goddard's impact on their development. Even Perry's classic work on stages of moral and ethical development has been critiqued and modified with studies that come out of Goddard's faculty and students. Out of this rich scholarship must come the assumption that governance and college democracy need to be sensitive to the voice of students and to different conceptions of adult and student development. (6) the nature of faculty roles and the professionalization of higher ed In many ways, Pitkin's training at Columbia provided both the root of Goddard's educational philosophy and its major flaw - for the socialization and professionalization process which goes on in undergraduate and graduate education inherently legitimizes the faculty roles which are in place. As Pitkin created new faculty roles, he had nothing to guide him except the best of his teachers and contemporaries. At this time at Columbia in the 1930's, scholars did not understand that the very nature of knowledge, including the accreditation, legitimization, and credentialing of faculty is an oppressive system. Friere's work documents how teachers embody the basic power struggle. While admitting that students are best able to design their own study plans and that they are not impassive receptacles to be filled with knowledge, Goddard has never transformed its use of faculty in such as way as to challenge the basic assumptions of knowledge and power roles. Yet as the work by Schwartz and Ogilvy (1979) on emerging paradigms of knowledge points out and as is seen best through the metaphors of physics, we live with false assumptions about knowledge. The social world and social science are much too complicated for us to say that our best scholars have any more than a tiny grasp on the nature of knowledge. While Goddard's core competencies break apart the false assumption that knowledge is something that can be transmitted in the essentialist philosophy and that there is a teachable content base, most people fail too often to realize how assumptions about knowledge guide faculty roles. Students are sucked into the vacuum of power, struggling for identity and unable to overcome the traditional model. Faculty arriving fresh from graduate school legitimize the process in order to justify their existence. While many women and gay faculty are sensitive to the power struggles which defined their graduate experience, they are ill equipped to reinvent the nature of graduate education in a non-threatening and nonhierarchical model. The credentialing of the graduate process is too oppressive. Michael Apple's classic book on the oppression of K-12 needs to be redone for higher education in order to help us see the power of hegemony at work.. If Goddard is to succeed in moving toward a true model of college democracy, it must transform the faculty role beyond the generalist/disciplinary representative split to one of educational facilitator/administrator/student. The contradictions of power dynamics and control must be confronted again and again.
Most boards are not involved in daily college administration except in times of financial exigency and this is a necessary safeguard. They appoint and fire presidents who embody a general charge and are hired usually because they reflect the makeup of the board and can articulate a compelling vision of the institutional mission. This model, promulgated for years by the Association of Governing Boards, serves to reinforce the traditional power structures. Goddard must move beyond this if college democracy is to be realized. For there is to be no representative body, no higher body, than the community meeting which votes by consensus. Just as everyone needs to be a faculty member, admissions officer, and administrator, everyone needs to be a board member. While a select few members of the community may serve on special committees to work on tasks, these must always be brought back to the community meeting. What is the real charge of the board? To ensure financial solvency, to be the corporate body responsible for legal and financial obligations. While some of this can be invested in the elected officers of the corporation, these powers cannot be invested in a board without creating a flaw in the assumptions of democracy. Do students know enough to raise money? Do they know enough to vote by consensus on the numerous, tedious minutiae of administrative decisions? I argue that they do, and that the educational process to get them to this point is just as important as anything else to be learned in the undergraduate career. College democracy will not succeed without dismantling the assumptions of a board. While names may exist on paper for purposes of accreditation, incorporation, and governmental relations, this can be done as part of a community meeting process. These names should be elected by consensus, as should the president. (8) the nature of conflict in democracy. Mona Harrington (1986), in her book The Dream of Deliverance in American Politics, presents the fundamental problem with American democracy. One of her basic themes is examining the American belief that good intentions and well-meaning efforts will result in a society which solves its conflicts and lives peacefully. However, most of us fail to realize that conflict is necessary to recognize the contradictions which emerge in struggles over power, deprivation, and domination. We function too much like a co-dependent family, denying that there is conflict and continuing in the same dance of conflicted roles, pretending that all we really want is peace. There will always be fundamental conflicts within the Goddard community. There are too many divergent interests. People are too complicated. Democracy cannot be reductionist and hegemonic. Therefore it must be realized that community meetings will be difficult and contentious places. There is nothing easy about consensus. The recognition of oppression requires confrontation. There will be oppression because we are not equal in class or biology and because the social world is filled with an oppressive culture and language that wears us down at every turn. We need confrontation. We need to recognize conflict. We need to rejoice that we see conflict among us. This kind of college democracy requires a willingness to be uncomfortable, to live in dissonance. I don't believe democracy can be anything less and not itself be an instrument of oppression. It is difficult to live this way, but mostly for white men. Women, gays, lesbians, the disabled, minorities, all live every day in an oppressive culture, in which they must fight constantly for a non-Eurocentric view of reality. This democratic model I have spelled out is most difficult for white men. Now is the time for white men to take responsibility for educating themselves, for understanding the oppressive nature of higher education and of the social world, and to embrace the dissonance, tension, and uncomfortability which come with understanding conflict and contradiction in the college world.
With these eight areas of thought, I present a possible model of college democracy for Goddard which is based on consensus, abandons the traditional power structures, creates new faculty/staff/student roles, works to fight oppression, and recognizes the importance of conflict in combating natural contradictions. This is a very difficult road, but not any more difficult than the terrible times which faculty and staff and students have lived through since the early 1980's when Goddard almost closed and went through its first retrenchment. I am open to new ideas, challenges to these assumptions. I want to foster this kind of dialogue. These ideas are written quickly and I can't defend the writing. But this is a sincere attempt to put forward some of the things which I have learned about Goddard and what I believe Goddard must evolve to - a new paradigm of college self-governance.
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