Derek J. Keenan
ACSI Vice President, Academic Affairs
It has been said that there is no greater disappointment than unmet expectations. I grew up in Northern Ireland, where my father was a pastor and an evangelist. Life was simple and happy, but my family lived with very meager resources. We did not own an automobile, a radio, a television, or a refrigerator until we immigrated to the United States.
When I was growing up, our Christmas celebration was more a time of church and family activity than a time for gifts. I loved books and always anticipated a new book as a gift. Periodically my relatives in New York would send a Christmas gift package to us, and I became hooked on Zane Grey western novels and the Hardy Boys mysteries that came in the package. But one Christmas there was no package from America with books, and on Christmas my gift—we received only one gift—was a pair of new school shoes that I had to wear with my uniform. What palpable disappointment! All the joy of opening a gift was destroyed as the reality of unmet expectations hit me. I have never forgotten how disappointed I felt that day and in the days to follow. Walking to school, I would look at those shoes step-by-step, and the negative emotions of the past Christmas morning would come to the surface.
In the book Dying for Change, Leith Anderson notes that we are living in an era of high expectations and low loyalty (1990, 83). What does that reality mean for Christian schools and the issue of complacency? Many parents come with expectations that no school or classroom teacher can fully meet. These parents expect that their children will be perpetually happy at school, find assignments and learning easily manageable, garner straight As, and have a teacher who will accede to every accommodation that the student desires.
D. Bruce Lockerbie often states that people do not come into a restaurant and require it to change the menu. But a school must be careful to deliberately alter its menu in a measured and proactive manner that makes necessary adjustments to the culture and the constituency without compromising the school’s vision, mission, philosophy, and values. A dangerous complacency occurs when a school proclaims every rule, policy, procedure, tradition, and practice to be inviolable and unalterable.
One of the expectations that schools must adjust to is a broader spirit of openness and disclosure. In the Christian community, too often there seems to be a thoughtless, unreflective resistance to change. At the school where I served for many years, we had begun the practice (thanks to ACSI accreditation) of having an annual audit. We had also begun seeking foundation grants. It had become our practice, although resisted and protested by some on the board, to make available a copy of the audit in the waiting room of the school. One day a gentleman we did not know came to the counter and asked to see a copy of our annual audit. The secretary gave him a copy. He looked through it and soon left without saying anything to the secretary. The next week we had an interview with the representatives ofa foundation from which we were seeking a grant to purchase a piece of adjacent property. I am sure you have guessed it: the person who had asked for the audit was from the foundation, and he told us that if we had not made the audit readily available, the foundation would not have considered us for the grant we eventually received.
In this world of fickle and conflicting expectations, schools need to be careful to guard their absolutes and yet be open to what needs adaptation and adjustment to have a more effective ministry to students and their parents. We trust that the articles in this issue of CSE will provoke such a conversation in your school.
Reference
Anderson, Leith. 1990. Dying for change. Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers.
EditorsNote—A Dangerous Complacency: Expectations 11.2