Leadership in education
Gerardo Blanco is an assistant professor of the Department of Leadership in Education, at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Mexican by origin, Blanco has toured several countries and worked with many universities to raise the standards of teaching and education. We had the opportunity to talk to him about leadership, education, and brain drain after his weeklong visit to Bangladesh.
Can you tell us a little about yourself and what you're doing in Dhaka?
I'm here conducting some workshops, mainly for the faculty and administration here at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), about facilitating and dealing with active learning, professional development in research, and incorporating technology into teaching. I've also had several meetings over the past week with faculty members to learn about the work they are doing here, so it has been a very productive week.
Your line of work focuses on leadership in education, and one of the intuitive problems that many people face when it comes to leadership is whether leadership skills are inherent or whether they can taught to someone who does not necessarily possess the qualities to lead. What are your views on that?
One of the common perceptions is that some people are born to lead while others are meant to follow, and I think that approach makes sense when you take a more hierarchical approach to leadership. That is the traditional approach that we often take: somebody in charge telling others what to do. I think there are other ways of understanding leadership that take a more collective approach and view it as organising others for the common good. That is a learned skill. It's counterintuitive and may go against what we have learned about leadership, but it's what has worked in my line of work. When you're looking at the education sector, there are a lot of highly talented people, so if you take a top-down approach, it doesn't work very well, whereas a shared leadership or "service" leadership, taking a more humble approach, makes more sense.
Considering the hierarchical nature of Bangladeshis, where the common practice has always been that people in positions of power have the last word and what they say are considered irrefutable, do you think your idea of "shared leadership" can hold?
I think so, yes, because when you think of the culture of giving and following instructions that is present here, if people apply that to each other, ideas and responsibilities can be shared well. My experience here, the first time in Bangladesh, has told me that people here are very open and respectful, and those are the qualities that are needed for the idea of shared leadership to work.
There are a huge number of students who are getting a BBA degree and they eventually get desk jobs where they aren't getting the full satisfaction of being a working professional. To what extent do you think university administrators and faculty members should try and divert these students to more fulfilling career choices?
This is a problem that exists everywhere, but the disproportionate number of business graduates trend makes sense in a growing economy like Bangladesh's. I found it very surprising to find a university dedicated to the liberal arts, and it will be universities like ULAB changing the norm, by getting students to think critically, question everything and engage in dialogue with people who don't necessarily hold the same opinion on things. If universities here invest more in the liberal arts, I think the change will be appreciated, and progress can be made.
What are your thoughts on the brain drain evidenced in a rapidly globalising world?
There is a shift now, concerning the "threat" of brain drain. Many of the skills I acquired over the years are a result of the mobility that a globalised world offers. The idea of "brain drain" is being replaced with the idea of "brain exchange", as more people are seeing more of the world, and sharing the new ideas and concepts with people back home. So I do not perceive the idea of "brain drain" to be overly threatening.
If we look at the present political situation in Bangladesh, with the opposition rejecting the last election and launching a violent movement to get the present ruling party to step down, do you think there is a specific point where it becomes necessary for a leader to step down?
In my field, an educator is successful if he or she becomes useless. Over time, the dependency on a leader needs to diminish, as those who are being led becomes self-sufficient. So I think that is a good model to follow regardless of the application, with the variables changed and adapted. I think that approach applies to politics as it does with education.
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