An interesting article that as a parent, has me considering the conventions of leadership. The urgency for impact, is it a problem?
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/01/why-are-american-colleges-obsessed-with-leadership/283253/?utm_source=atlfb
Personally, I feel the emphasis on leadership is overdone. People who provide social glue are critical. Cheerful “do-ers” are essential. It takes all kinds. Even among leaders, traditionally defined, some lead better in visioning while others are better at executing. Both are important. Most schools want diversity of all kinds. Why not in how people contribute to the social fabric?
There’s a thread about this over on the “other side”:
I think this is a very relevant topic for our prep school kids who still have some years of high school and college applications ahead of them.
I think a lot depends on the school and/or the program. Personally, I find leadership an important quality. It may not be the only quality but it is a good one. For example, on a lot of sports team, the Captain is not just the top athlete on the team but the person that works the hardest and sets the example. They are also raised up by their peers. My wife is a Director in a software company. She never wanted that role but due to her EQ, her peers continue to push her up.
I think a lot of times people confuse a leader with a boss.
For some colleges, leadership is a desirable quality. Parents and children are perfectly free not to apply to those colleges. There are many, many good colleges in this country.
@Periwinkle I am sure that leadership is a desirable quality at ALL colleges, though it is certainly not the only one. As our children have less and less actual human interaction and conflict, the ability to lead and manage people is becoming an ever more rare and valuable commodity, which is why you are seeing increased emphasis on it.
There are colleges that state they are looking for leadership. It’s not a mystery, but it’s also not some sort of nebbishy statement on their part. I recommend The Chosen by Jerome Karabel for the history of admissions practices at certain colleges.
The Atlantic writer is an Oxford scholar, but according to her Linkedin profile, she’s a graduate of Exeter & Chapin. So the American setting isn’t foreign to her.
To be very direct about it, if you select for a group of people who’ve been leaders in high school, with other desirable characteristics, you have better than chance odds of ending up with alumni who are leaders in public life. So looking for natural leaders in admissions is not a method to avoid enrolling scholars.
Then again, there are many, many colleges in the United States. Many do not state as clearly as the Ivy League that they are looking for future leaders.
Another article questioning schools’ hyper-focus on leadership:
“Our elite schools overemphasize leadership partly because they’re preparing students for the corporate world, and they assume that this is what businesses need. But a discipline in organizational psychology, called “followership,” is gaining in popularity… We also rely as a society, much more deeply than we realize, on the soloists who forge their own paths.”
Nice article… citizens vs self interest