Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
Bureaucracy, by wry definition, cares about nothing but itself. It bludgeons those who don't 'fit' the "process" until they leave or conform. There are a lot of good teachers who are crushed under those millstones over time, in other words... becoming bitter, disillusioned, or deadened to the passion that led them into the profession to begin with. Most of the helping professions are susceptible to this kind of burnout when the individuals are stripped of autonomy in favor of bureaucratic, rigid procedural correctness, IME.

frown

Yes, this. In The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin wrote about group sociology and how people can see problems as individuals and yet act in a way that contributes to the problems when they're in groups. I'm sure we've all experienced it: you're in a group, you know that x is wrong, but you feel powerless to stop it. If you speak up, you may not be able to change anything AND you get into trouble. This is especially the case when the leaders don't want to change and a lot of people support them. It's one reason why leadership can cause or fix so many problems.