May 1998 No. 10Leaders and Learning: Learning Through Public Work1By Gerry Campbell
The previous two issues looked at leading in learning organizations and leading to help learning to create adaptive solutions. In this issue, we look at the ideas of Professor Harry Boyte about the role of citizens in democracy. Boyte leads the Center for Democracy and Citizenship at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, and has written widely on issues of citizenship, democracy, and community organizing. He advances the idea that we need to rediscover the idea of the citizen as "builder of the commonwealth" through public work. He argues that in the 19th century and much of the 20th, citizenship in America was "the down-to-earth labors of ordinary people who created goods and undertook projects of public benefit. Citizenship was public work."2 In our history there have been three main conceptions of citizens: 1) Rights bearing members of a political system who choose their leaders, ideally those of virtue and talent, through elections. This is the view of citizenship found in "civics;" 2) Caring members of a moral community who share common values and feel common responsibilities towards each other. This is rendered as "communitarianism" in our time; 3) Agents of public work who address common civic tasks and create common things. This perspective was closely associated historically with "the commonwealth." Most of us today understand citizenship as the first two definitions. The first centers on formal government institutions, processes, rights, benefits, and duties. The second stresses the importance of a balance between responsibilities and rights. This is centered in our "civil society" separate from government and the market economy. Civic activity, such as volunteerism and the commitment to the common good, are important elements of civil society. Boyte recognizes that both of these definitions of citizenship provide important objectives for a democratic society. However, they neglect the possibilities from public work for the commonwealth. Boyte says: "Public work consists of visible effort by a mix of people that produces things of lasting importance to our communities and society; public work adds to and helps to sustain the commonwealth. When we help to build something, we experience it as ours. We gain authority and confidence to act, and a deep stake in governance. We have motivation to learn." (p.7) At one time in our history we could identify the public-built things around us, libraries, schools, and other public institutions. In some cases, we built those public buildings with our own hands. Today, the idea of public institutions that we create is under threat of disappearing as we turn more and more toward the private sector to meet our public needs. Boyte argues that education for democracy found its most robust expression in the idea that learning should integrate citizenship, including public work with a student's career and professional preparation. This led us to create our state and land grant universities which were seen as special creations of our democracy. These institutions helped prepare their graduates for public work and through their university extension divisions, aided citizens in creating both private and common wealth. If we are to recapture the benefits of the "public work - builder of commonwealth" tradition, an important role of leaders is providing the call to public work. While Boyte's description calls forth the images of bricks and mortar, it is also clear that the adaptive work identified by Heifetz in our last issue could also be public work. Energizing citizenship as public work calls on leaders to become conveners of public work, providers of tools and resources, including learning to work together, and often the technical learning necessary to get the work done. For example, leading people to citizenship in support of public schools will include calling them together to work on understanding the issues; helping them learn how to get the technical information on finance, buildings, how children learn, etc.; helping them learn how to argue, debate, and converse about educational issues; and finally, helping them create actions out of their deliberation. It seems that without direct reference to each other and coming from three different disciplines, Senge, Heifetz, and Boyte all have discovered that leaders have important work in promoting learning. We have touched on three different sources, which all make a link between leaders and learning. Learning allows continually facing new issues, it allows identifying problems and inventing solutions, and it can energize a democracy of public work to create commonwealth. Each source provides a persuasive call to rethink how we work as both leaders and as followers. For those of us who have spent our professional lives engaged in helping people learn, the conceptions of leaders as designers and promoters of learning are a special opportunity to bring our skills into service. These ideas also challenge us to think about how and who we choose to lead. Finally, they challenge us to think about whether we as a society are embracing the learning, adaptive work, and public work necessary to create the future that we want.
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