theteacher-studentrelation.docVIP

The Teacher-Student Relation Mary Parker Follett An address delivered at Boston University in late fall 1928. This speech was not published until it appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. 15, No. 1, 1970, pp.137-48. In his preface to this article, Charles G. Eberly noted that this paper was deemed lost along with many others burned upon Follett’s death. It was discovered in the small box of surviving manuscripts years later. I have been asked to speak of the teacher-student relation as an aspect of leadership. Any consideration of this subject must be colored by our definition of leadership, and there is a conception of leadership gaining ground today very different from our old notion. Yesterday I tried to present to you this conception of leadership. It is a conception very far removed from that of the leader-follower relation. With that conception you had to be either a leader or a leaner. Today our thinking is tending less and les to be confined within the boundaries of those alternatives. There is the idea of a reciprocal leadership. There is also the idea of a partnership in following, of following the invisible leader—the common purpose. The relation of the rest of the group to the leader is not a passive one, and I think teachers see this more clearly than most people, and therefore in their teachering are doing more than teaching; they are helping to develop one of the fundamental conceptions of human relations. I want to tell you at the outset why I have anticipated discussing this subject with you. As my books and articles have been on human relations in general, rather than on any one aspect of them, I have been asked to speak to different kinds of groups. Out of all these, I find that those I enjoy talking to most are businessmen and teachers. I should not have anticipated this juxtaposition, for one usually thinks of these two groups as rather far apart. But the reason is that both these groups are in a position to try out their ide