GUEST EDITOTRIAL (SUMMARIZED FROM ORIGINAL)
Mark Jenkins joined the school board three years ago, determined to improve the behavior of a board clearly out of control.
He now presides over a board that remains woefully off-course. Jenkins presumes his noble intentions insulate him from error.
They don’t.
Click here for background when Jenkins was a hero, back in 2022. Click here for a recent article showing Mark Jenkins’ decline and obvious brainwashing by the system.
Being a good man isn’t the same as being good at one’s job. Being a good man isn’t the same as understanding one’s operating environment. Being a good man isn’t the same as knowing whom to trust and of whom to be wary. Being a good man is no guarantee against being and doing wrong.
As those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it, those who don’t understand the pressures and errors of the systems they operate within are doomed to become the agents of the systems abuses.
How an ally sided with the enemy
A weird turn of events happens in the 1957 World War II movie “Bridge on the River Kwai,” where British POWs are compelled by their Japanese captors to build a railroad bridge over the river, in support of Japanese operations in Burma. They deliberately do sloppy work to hamper their enemy’s operations. A new senior British officer, Colonel Nicholson, is captured and held at the camp. He views the shoddy work as an unbecoming of British soldiers. He sees the bridge construction project as an opportunity to improve discipline and morale. While his fellow POWs are wary at first, he eventually wins them over after defying the Japanese camp commandant and refusing to yield despite harsh treatment the Japanese inflict, trying to break his will. Once the Japanese permit him to exercise his authority as senior Allied officer, the troops begin, reluctantly at first, to obey him and construct a first-class railroad bridge (for the enemy!). As the bridge nears completion, British commandos covertly set charges to blow up the bridge. Colonel Nicholson discovers this and tries to stop their destroying his bridge! He even fights personally against the commandos in an effort to prevent their sabotage mission!
Systems shape our behavior
We all operate within numerous diverse systems. Systems shape our behavior. Systems shape our thinking. That is their intended purpose. We like to think if we were placed inside a bad system, we would recognize it. We would stand up to it. We would resist it.
And we are wrong.
Social science studies show how people cooperate with the systems they operate within. In Elijah Milgram’s famous “obedience to authority” experiment, participants tried to administer what they believed were lethal doses of electricity when told the experiment required them to do so. Philip Zimbardo cut short his famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” when he realized (with the help of outsiders) how twisted the thinking had become of not only the “prison guards” but also of even he himself! From within a system, what seems right and wrong is sometimes very different from how it appears outside. Thomas Kuhn discovered that paradigm shifts often come from outside the system. Those inside get too familiar with internal values of the system to realize they’re corrupted.
Good people do bad things
We think good people don’t do bad things. Unfortunately, good people do bad things all the time, especially when operating within systems that have self-interested objectives. (And what system doesn’t?!) If systems’ pressures were overt, we might periodically stand up to them. But they are seldom overt.
They seduce us by degrees. They seduce us by consensus. They seduce us with false values. They seduce us by distorting our objectives.
Noble causes
This is especially a problem when we feel we’re part of a “noble cause.” Our pursuit of that noble cause assures us we are good people doing good work. Our pursuit of a noble cause prevents our seeing our role in harm.
Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis noticed a lot of infant deaths at the hospital where he worked. He urged his colleagues to adopt handwashing before delivering babies. They laughed him to scorn! How could they, the medical professionals, possibly be guilty of introducing death to the patients they were committed to helping?! For another 20 years, they continued to transmit infectious particles from cadavers to their patients because they couldn’t imagine being the problem.
That’s how Mark Jenkins (and most current school board members) got brainwashed on the Ozark school board. Christina Tonsing is the only board member thinking for herself, and she, indeed, is ostracized for it.