A Systems Approach to the School

1. The system is greater than the sum of its parts. Think of a car that is shiny and new and ready to drive off the dealer's lot. Then picture a pile of car parts -- all the same ones that are in the new car. Given the choice, which would you like to have? Most people would choose the fully assembled car because it is more than just a pile of parts. It is a fully operational system.

2. In a system, all people and all parts of the system are connected. Everyone in the system has a role in how it functions. In other words, it is not likely that there are simply "bad" kids in the school without all the other components of the system (including the parents) making a contribution to their failure or their acting-out, even if that contribution is inadvertent.

[couldn't the same could be said for "good" kids and prosocial behaviors?]

3. The system will always work towards maintaining itself, for better or worse. This state is called homeostasis, meaning that the system, in this case, the school, will strive for some kind of balance. Systems may sacrifice individuals, even whole groups, to achieve that homeostasis.

4. The system will discourage change. In an attempt to keep the balance of the system, the system will discourage change; it will discourage differences or unusual and atypical behaviors. Difference is punished; conformity is rewarded.

5. Interactions between people are circular, not simply a series of causes and effects. To make positive and lasting improvements, we must look at the whole network of interactions between and among people in the organization. For example, expelling a student who acts out will rarely bring an end to the problem; usually someone else will fill that problem role. That is the same as saying A (the acting out) leads to B (getting expelled) leads to C (resolution of the problem), and that is the end of the process. From a systems perspective, that is only a small fraction of what is happening in the system. The interactions that happened before the child acts out at school and the programs and planning that must be put into place after the child is expelled are equally important, and essential to figuring out how the system is functioning.

[in this situation the problem is the behavior and how it is negatively affecting the classroom environment. as such, the point stands that a new student will inevitably rise to step into the abandoned role of "attention-seeker". what is not considered, however, is the additional lack of problem-solving for the initial student whose needs are certainly not met through expulsion.]

6. Some systems have scapegoats. Systems that are not working well, or are unhealthy in some meaningful way, tend to produce scapegoats.

Taken from: Garbarino, J., & Delara, E. (2003). An educator's guide to school-based interventions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.