Our questions aren’t rhetorical. We genuinely struggle with the question of what kinds of knowledge, skill, disposition, habit, and – yes – tool, educational leaders need in order to succeed. And we’re curious to hear from others what they think they need.
In my efforts to explain what people can and can’t expect to acquire in our programs, I designed the following visual metaphor.
The hammer and sickle in the Soviet flag are tools of the hand, symbolizing physical labor. The question mark and exclamation mark in my invented flag are tools of discourse, symbolizing intellectual, interpersonal and intrapersonal labor.
The tools fellows can expect to acquire at Mandel programs are primarily tools of the mind – new knowledge, new ways of thinking, new questions, new ways of learning from and with others. If we can help educational leaders to ask thoughtful, tough and fruitful questions, and to discover, formulate or rethink their exclamation marks – dayenu – we will have done plenty.
For more on tools of the mind, see Vygotsky & Luria (1930) Tool and Symbol in Child Development.