By Adrian Pyle
Imagine arriving for work at five in the afternoon and being paid exactly the same as somebody who started at nine in the morning.
Most of us would probably think that was unfair – and there can be some sense in that because the level of a contribution can matter. Yet what happens if we allow another question to sit alongside this provocative situation – namely – Is what somebody contributes the same as what somebody is worth?
Schools have plenty of ways of recognising contribution, achievement and capability and boards get to see many of those measures. An interesting question for governance though is whether those measures ever become, perhaps without us noticing, “measures of the person”.
The Story of the Month
This month Uniting Church communities will hear a story from the Gospel according to the community of Matthew about workers hired throughout the day to work in a vineyard.
At the end of the day, everybody receives the same amount, including those hired very late. Understandably, those who have worked all day complain.
There are various interesting details in this story, but one I particularly want to emphasise here: When the landowner asks the last workers why they have been standing there all day, they reply, “Because no one has hired us.”
We don’t know why nobody hired them, and perhaps we shouldn’t try to create a reason too confidently. What we do know is that the landowner sees people whom everybody else has passed over and brings them in. The story doesn’t pretend that everybody has contributed equally, but it does seem to resist making contribution the final measure of what somebody should receive.
This Idea in Some Other Places
The Sikh practice of langar offers a striking parallel. In the communal meal of the gurdwara, people sit and eat together regardless of wealth, status, caste, faith or background. Nobody receives a better meal because they have achieved more or hold greater status. There is simply a place at the table for all.
Aboriginal understandings of personhood and community may offer another way of thinking about this, with identity understood relationally through kin, community, Country and responsibilities to others. This can sit quite differently from a culture in which individual achievement and productivity easily become measures of success and, sometimes, of worth.
These perspectives don’t rule out contribution as important but they do invite us to imagine belonging as something deeper than a reward for performance.
Back to School Governance
Schools inevitably measure things, but boards can play an important role in asking what those measurements allow them to see and what they might obscure.
A student achievement report might, for example, prompt the additional question, “Which students does the report’s definition of success make easiest to see?” A scholarship discussion might distinguish between rewarding achievement and removing barriers to participation. A staff wellbeing report might raise the question of whether people experience their value as being too closely connected with how much they can continue to produce.
The Uniting Church characteristic of “Celebrating the equality and value of all people” is not about pretending everybody contributes in the same way. It’s actually asking a more difficult question: can people in this place experience their worth as preceding what they achieve.
As we begin today’s meeting……it may be worth letting three questions influence us as we meet:
- Who does our school find easiest to value?
- Where might we be confusing equality with treating everybody in exactly the same way?
- Where in our school can somebody experience that they belong before they have proved what they can contribute?
