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Why School Systems Resist Reform: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

University of Maryland, College Park, hb36{at}umail.umd.edu

School reformers have proposed various innovations to improve education, but school systems have adopted few proposals. Three perspectives offer different interpretations of this resistance. The rational perspective views educators as rejecting proposals because they are not based in solid knowledge. The social-political perspective holds that conflicting interests prevent consensus about directions for change and concerted action. A psychoanalytic perspective, introduced in this article, calls attention to the ways in which inadequacy of knowledge and conflicts of interest, compounded by the psychological structure of teaching, arouse anxiety for school system members and lead them to defend themselves by resisting outsiders, new ideas, and innovative practices. The article examines paranoid and obsessive-compulsive patterns in school systems’ thinking, culture, and structure. These patterns lead systems to avoid relations with other entities and to constrain their own members from acting. Reforming schools and improving education depend on connecting schools to other social institutions to develop a realistic division of responsibility for children’s education for adulthood.

Key Words: education • obsessive-compulsive • organizational paranoiagenesis • paranoia • school reform

Human Relations, Vol. 55, No. 2, 173-198 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0018726702055002182


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