The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow

by Michael MacCoby

  Many interactive children seem to have responded to parental indecision with a loss of respect for adults. According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll in the fall of 2005, “nearly 70 percent of Americans said they believed that people are ruder now than they were 20 or 30 years ago and that children are among the worst offenders.” In 2002, according to surveys by Public Agenda, only 9 percent of adults saw children as “respectful toward adults.”9

  In a New York Times interview by Judith Warner, Dan Kindlon, a Harvard University child psychologist, said that while most parents today would like their children to be polite, considerate, and well-behaved, they’re too tired, worn down by work, and personally needy to demand proper behavior. “ ‘We use kids like Prozac,’ he said. ‘People don’t necessarily feel great about their spouse or their job but the kids are the bright spot in their day . . . They don’t want to feel bad. They want to get satisfaction from their kids. They’re so precious to us. What gets thrown out the window is limits. It’s a lot easier to pick their towel up off the floor than to get them away from the PlayStation to do it.’ ”10

  So, as on the TV show Nanny 911, unbridled nagging children run family dictatorships where mom and dad are there to serve them at all times. Parents have become so disempowered that they need help from experts like Brian Orr, a pediatrician and author, who runs workshops north of Boston on how to say “no” to children. Think of the future transference to bosses when these kids get to the workplace. They won’t idealize bosses and they may shy away from becoming a parental-type boss. Who wants to deal with a bunch of demanding kids?

  However, while parents of Interactives let their kids disempower them about everything else, they do teach children to compete for success, whatever it takes. When it’s about achievement, parents get serious and take charge. According to Kindlon, “ ‘We’re insane about achievement . . . Schoolwork is up 50 percent since 1981, and we’re so obsessed with our kids getting into the right school, getting the right grades, we let a lot of things slide.’ ”11

  And that brings us to the next two stages.

  INITIATIVE VERSUS GUILT AND ANXIETY

  This is the age where kids take the initiative and start to play together. Traditionally, preschool boys and girls play separately, boys being more aggressive and girls focused more on creating group harmony.12 This is the age at which kids also start comparing themselves, forming an identity based on being smarter, cuter, a better athlete, and so on.

  In the traditional family, children up to ages five or six are still essentially egocentric and see things only from their own point of view. Although they may rebel against adult commands, the grown-ups rule and other kids are rivals for the authority’s love and approval.13

  When this pattern is reproduced in bureaucracies, it causes childlike emotions in employees who compete for the boss’s favor. In the traditional family, rebellion against authority is resolved by boys identifying with father and his outlook on life (what Freud called the resolution of the Oedipus complex) while girls identify with mother and take on her values. Going against these internalized parents (the superego) causes guilty feelings. In bureaucracies, when subordinates identify with the CEO, even copying his dress and mannerisms, they no longer feel childlike with the boss; rather, they feel just like the boss, especially when dealing with their own subordinates.

  Children of interactive families, less emotionally dependent on adults, are quicker to forge ties with other kids. While the psychological pitfall for the bureaucratic character was fear of parents’ disapproval, which becomes internalized as crippling guilt, for the interactive character it’s anxiety about not being in with the group.14

  This anxiety can drive kids into overconformity in their urgency to be accepted. Alternatively, children may totally reject the group and form alliances with other “outcasts” whose resentment curdles into fantasies of revenge. These feelings may return with a vengeance in adolescence as was the case in Littleton, Colorado, in the spring of 1999, when kids like these went on a murderous and suicidal rampage. Part of the guilt belongs to teachers, administrators, and parents who didn’t step in when these kids were being ostracized and bullied.

  Of course, most kids do learn to fit in. But while normal bureaucratic conformity results from identification with older role models, the interactive child becomes increasingly alert and responsive to changing fads and fashions among peers. In his 1950 book, The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman was the first sociologist to see that the traditional obsessive and inner-directed American whose internal gyroscope determined right and wrong was being challenged by a new type who was other-directed and whose interpersonal radar signaled the appropriate way to act. 15 By the 1990s, other-direction combined with peer transferences was becoming the dominant form of social control for the interactive social character.

  By the end of this stage, bureaucratic children were cooperating at play to work out conflicts with authority in central person games like hideand-seek and Red Rover, where the group bands together to escape “It,” the oppressive authority. In contrast, the interactive child is much further along in forming relationships at play and on the Internet, more concerned with getting grown-ups to serve him or her than to escape from authority.

  INDUSTRY VERSUS INFERIORITY

  When children reach the age of six or seven, they are ready to become workers. But their first work depends on the mode of production in their culture. In peasant villages, boys follow their fathers to the fields and girls help their mothers with cows, pigs, and chickens; caring for younger siblings ; cooking; washing; and cleaning.

  In the bureaucratic world, the main work is schoolwork, and the tools kids must master are tools for reading and understanding, writing clearly, and solving abstract problems. The peasant child sharpens physical skills, and develops a keen observation of nature and people, common sense; the bureaucratic child learns internal discipline, to sit still for long periods and concentrate, and to memorize concepts and formulas, construct arguments, and take tests.

  In the bureaucratic world, boys begin to play team sports where they develop a capacity for reciprocity—the ability not only to understand and follow fair rules, but also design them.16 In games like baseball, kids learn not only to play by the rules but also to put themselves in another person’s role, not only to play but also to execute plays that require cooperation (like the double play). Reciprocity expressed as fairness tempers both egocentric competition and authoritarian hierarchy.

  But bureaucratic managers don’t make use of reciprocity. They divide to conquer and provoke egocentric rivalry. Even in the most cooperative organizations, there will still be conflict about being a team player versus individual achievement. In professional sports, this tension is resolved by evaluating individuals on both individual statistics and contribution to the team.

  To succeed in the interactive world, a child’s industry is essential, but so are her talents. As factory jobs and, increasingly, knowledge work moves offshore, and transactional jobs—operators, bank clerks, salespeople—are automated, the jobs that remain are either low-paying service jobs—cleaning, fast-food counters—or high-salaried knowledge work. Unlike jobs that require formulaic intelligence, manual dexterity, or muscle power, the jobs that have increased during the past ten years call for analytic reasoning, imagination and creativity, people skills, and emotional intelligence.17 Of course, construction workers, truck drivers, garbage collectors, and baggage handlers will remain on these shores, as well as well-paying work for skilled electricians, carpenters, and plumbers, but the difference in wages and wealth between knowledge work and other types of jobs has been increasing.18

  A troubling finding from social psychologists is that while upper-middle-class parents have become career directors for children this age and younger, working-class parents are much less involved in their children’s lives—and their success. These richer parents know what’s coming for their children, and their anxiety about their kids’ future abili
ty to maintain their status drives the kids on—from supervised learning experiences to little league games. Sociologist Annette Lareau, who has been observing parents and children for over twenty years, finds that the upper-middle-class kids are prepared to succeed in the world of knowledge work by parents who are more facilitators and coaches than authorities, who allow kids to talk back, express their negative feelings (as long as they do the homework), shine on the stage, and show they can make a good impression at an interview to get accepted into a program.19

  While working-class parents are more likely to give orders and demand respect, they also let their kids play freely. There is less anxiety, less manipulation, more autonomy. But Lareau shows the anxious, driven kids become successful professionals, while the working-class kids don’t.20

  The knowledge mode of production demands continual learning and collaboration, and traditional forms of schooling that may have served for the bureaucratic era have now been found wanting. There’s been a lot of debate about the best way to prepare children to succeed in the knowledge economy, much too much for me to try and summarize here. However, I believe the debate between proponents of rigorous teaching to tests versus “learning to learn” falsely opposes the need for kids to memorize and practice basic arithmetic, languages, scientific facts, historical events, and so on, to the need to develop critical thinking, communication skills, and the motivation to learn. Some of the progressive educators seem like piano teachers who ask pupils to express emotion in their playing before they’ve mastered the keys and learned the scales, while the conservative educators seem like piano teachers who never inspire their pupils to put their heart into their art.

  Kids today benefit from teachers who combine discipline with challenge, rigor with fun, respect for precision with love of life, and this is especially true for disadvantaged children in the inner cities whose future opportunities depend on good schooling. I describe in chapter 8 how the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) is providing this kind of education to mostly African American and Hispanic kids in about fifty charter schools in the inner cities.

  For the affluent, some schools are taking the lead in preparing children for what they believe will gain them success in the interactive economy. One such school is St John’s School and Community College in Marlborough, Wiltshire, England. Patrick Hazlewood, the headmaster, says, “The national curriculum kills learning stone dead by compartmentalizing subjects as if they have no relation to each other.”21 The school bases teaching around five competences for business proposed by the Royal Society for Encouragement of Arts and Manufactures—learning, citizenship (ethics and society), relating to other people, managing situations, and managing information (critical thinking and finding things out).

  Industrious future bureaucrats risked becoming narrowly focused and unimaginative. Industrious interactive children risk becoming glib and shallow, and under the illusion of knowing more than they do because knowledge seems the click of a mouse away. In the bureaucratic classroom, the unsuccessful child would lose self-confidence and self-esteem, triggering a vicious cycle of poor performance. While this might also happen to the interactive child, denial of failure is supported by the antibureaucratic popular culture and pop psychology, which inflates the self and puts down authorities. Defending against the loss of self-esteem, these children overestimate their capabilities and become impervious to coaching. Caring teachers who help these children understand that the discipline required for learning and self-expression makes a huge difference in their future ability to learn and play a productive role in the interactive society.

  Of course, a profound influence in shaping the interactive social character is the Internet, facilitating interaction (combined with cell phones) as well as finding things out. The first thing the typical eleven- or twelve-year-old does after school is connect with correspondents all over the world and play video games. For these kids, global networking comes naturally. We’re also learning how video game playing shapes attitudes to leaders.

  There has been concern about the effects of game playing on kids. Some games are extremely violent. Are they making kids aggressive? Do games detach kids from reality? Can they train kids to kill? So far, according to a report in the Economist, the evidence is inconclusive.22 Kids who tend toward violence may be pushed over the edge by violent games like Grand Theft Auto.23 However, these games do require players to learn a great deal. They must construct hypotheses about the intra-game world and test them. They learn the game rules through trial and error, solve problems and puzzles, develop strategies, and get help from other players via the Internet when they’re stuck. They also learn to share leadership roles.

  Of course, the bureaucratic child played at different roles and identities, being a grown-up or a policeman, fireman, model, nurse, or doctor. But the interactive gamester moves in alternative realities and takes on alternative personalities. That can be a strength, but only as long as game players know the difference between the game and a reality that doesn’t end when the game is over, where it’s not so easy to change identities. And that takes us to the next developmental stage.

  IDENTITY VERSUS ROLE DIFFUSION

  Youth begins. Individuals should have gained basic skills for work and relationships. But in puberty and adolescence, rapid body growth and genital maturity cause confusion about identity. Youths struggle with the physiological revolution inside them and the grown-up tasks ahead of them. Who are they becoming? How do others view them? How to connect the roles and skills they have practiced with the occupational prototypes that appeal to them? How to discover a vocation?

  Youth is a time of exuberance and experimentation, sometimes grandiose fantasies and ambitions, daredevil risk taking—what I’ve called a “narcissistic moment.”24 This is a time of freedom, when children feel the whole world is open to them and they can do anything they put their minds to. They are invulnerable. For the bureaucratic personality, it may mean rejecting their father’s or mother’s plans for them—their parents’ ideas of what they should do for a living—or rebelling against the tyranny of the peer group. When bureaucratic teenagers imagine adult life, they often think in narcissistic terms, turning jobs that require years of rote study and training, such as doctor or lawyer, into heroic, high-wire acts: They’ll become a world-famous surgeon, or a lawyer who overwhelms the Supreme Court with brilliant arguments.

  For interactive youth, fantasies often include getting rich, but they are also more likely to envision being part of a great team: a new Google or The Dust Brothers or Dreamworks.25 Ultimately, however, the inner discipline and real-world skills formed in earlier stages make the difference between fantasy and reality, success and failure. Few people ride the narcissistic moment into a lifetime adventure, creating a world-class career or a great company that does change the world.

  A challenge of youth is to integrate all the pieces of identity that make up a self. We all have attachments—to family, nation, religious groups, even teams—with which we identify. But for adolescents, the roles and identities of the child at home and the youth outside can clash. Erikson wrote that the main psychological danger of this stage was role confusion, not only between home and the peer group, but also possibly confusion about sexual identity. It could also be confusion about settling on an occupational identity. He saw falling in love at this stage as an attempt to gain a sense of identity by being defined and affirmed in a passionate relationship.

  He wrote that “young people can also be remarkably clannish, and cruel in their exclusion of all those who are ‘different,’ in skin color or cultural background, in tastes and gifts, and often in such petty aspects of dress and gesture as have been temporarily selected as the sign of an in-grouper or out-grouper.”26 He saw this intolerance as the dark side of defense against identity confusion and as a way of testing loyalty and trust.

  Erikson also described youth as a time of idealism, of committing oneself to an ideology or religion. Soon after he wrote this, in the 19
60s, the enlarged cohort of baby-boomer youth began to undermine the bureaucratic social character. They attacked “dehumanizing” bureaucratic rules, roles, and technology with an ideology of libertarianism. The youth that survived this self-indulgent orgy were somehow able to combine pleasure seeking with pragmatism. The losers were the ideological extremists, revolutionaries who became disillusioned cynics, tribalistic cultists, and drug addicts.

  In contrast to Europeans, whose identities are more tightly tied to social class and place of birth, Americans have had more freedom in shaping identities. I think of two American icons: Robert Frost, born in San Francisco and educated at Dartmouth and Harvard, failed as a farmer in New Hampshire and went to England, where he made himself into the craggy prototype of the rural New Hampshire farmer-poet. And Robert Allen Zimmerman, the middle-class Jewish boy from Duluth and Hibbing, Minnesota, became Bob Dylan, the folk-rock balladeer and figurehead of the 1960s.27

  The Interactives go even further than a single change of identity in their protean ability to take on and shed identities that serve their needs, just like the characters in video games. Madonna is a prototype, constantly reinventing herself to fit the fashions of the times. Furthermore, their idealism often gets mixed with self-interest as they join identity groups based on occupation, politics, business, race, religion, disabilities, or sexual orientation.

  While the challenge for bureaucratic social character was constructing an individual identity and not just putting on the identity laid out by parents and other authorities, the challenge for Interactives is to find meaning. In large part, this has to do with finding a vocation, work that engages talents and values. However, many Interactives feel a need for more than a vocation to provide a sense of meaning. The UCLA Higher Education Research Institute reports that three-quarters of the 112,000 students surveyed, from a sample of 236 colleges in 2004, indicate that they are “searching for meaning and purpose in life.”28 That’s why they seek help from therapists, Eastern spiritual disciplines like Yoga, or religions. That’s why Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? has sold millions of copies.29