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Educational
Leadership for
a More
Sustainable
World
i
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY
Successful School Leadership, edited by Petros Pashiardis and Olof Johansson

Education in the Balance, by Raphael Wilkins
Leading Schools in Challenging Circumstances, by Philip Smith and Les Bell
Sustainable School Transformation, edited by David Crossley
An Intellectual History of School Leadership, by Helen Gunter
ii
Educational
Leadership for
a More
Sustainable
World
MIKE BOTTERY
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY
iii
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

London New York
WC 1B 3DP NY 10018
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2016
© Mike Bottery, 2016
Mike Bottery has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on

or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN : HB : 978-1-4725-6826-7
PB : 978-1-4725-6825-0
ePDF : 978-1-4725-6827-4
ePub: 978-1-4725-6828-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bottery, Mike.
Educational leadership for a more sustainable world / Mike Bottery.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4725-6826-7 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-4725-6825-0 (pb)
1. Educational leadership. 2. School management and organization.
3. Education—Environmental aspects. 4. Climatic changes. 5. Sustainability. I. Title.
LB 2806.B5995 2016
371.2—dc23
2015021229
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
iv
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Preface vii
PART ONE Describing and Identifying the

Problems 1
1 Leading sustainability, sustaining leadership 3
2 The meanings of sustainability and the dynamics of its

decline 15
3 Tame, wicked and humble leadership 37
4 Efficiency, sufficiency and educational leadership 53
PART TWO Global Drivers of Unsustainability 69
5 Cultures of economic growth and consumption 71
6 Global energy challenges 93
7 Climate change and the assessment of evidence 113
8 Emerging population patterns: impacts and responses 135
PART THREE Towards a Leadership for

Sustainability 155
9 Securing educational sustainability in a wicked world 157
10 The leadership of well-being 175
11 The futures of educational leadership 189
References 205
Index 219
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are many people to thank for helping me plan, write and revise this
book. I would like to begin by thanking Julian Stern, Nigel Wright, David
Dixon, Paul Adams and Gary Wilkinson for reading drafts of chapters.
Particular thanks go to Peter Gilroy, David Oldroyd, Julian Stern (again)
and Nigel Wright (again) for reading the whole thing, and being such critical
friends. The writing would also have been virtually impossible had not Clare
McKinlay organized my academic life so well, and to her I also owe a huge
debt of thanks and gratitude. Nor do I want to forget Camilla Erskine, and
then Alison Baker and Kasia Figiel at Bloomsbury for making the publishing
of the book such a supportive process. Last but not least, I want to thank
Christopher and Sarah for being such wonderful and now very-grown-up
children, and Oliver for being such an off-the-wall two-year-old grandson.
vi
PREFACE
I have felt for some time that much talk and writing about leadership is
actually talk and writing about management. Despite much vaunted policy
moves globally suggesting that in constantly changing and challenging times
we need leaders rather than managers, what many nation states are actually
attempting to produce are individuals who may be better trained in leading
others in predetermined sets of tasks, but who are given little encouragement
to look beyond this essentially implementational role to reflect upon the
global problems that societies are facing, and to ensure that their institutions
can respond to them in a sustainable manner. Certainly, the roles assigned to
them, and the training provided (and it is normally training, not education),
seldom ask them to contribute to or lead on such agendas. Starr (2015,
p. 81) describes their current role as a form of ‘perfunctory middle
management’, which largely fails to appreciate the new range of challenges –
within and beyond education – which now confront societies and their
educational workforces. And if such challenges are not properly recognized
or reflected upon, then those who are expected to equip the next generation
to deal with these challenges will not be properly prepared, and therefore
cannot properly lead on them.
But aren’t educators, some will say, essentially civil servants paid to carry
out the wishes of the government of the day, and shouldn’t governments be
providing these visions, and making these kinds of choices? The problem is,
though, that governments, like markets, can be as much producers of these
problems as providers of their solutions; which suggests that educators need
to see their role as something more than a mixture of compliant state servant
and market entrepreneur. These state and market perspectives need to be
supplemented by more communal and global viewpoints, not only because
the sustainability of their own role is threatened, but because so is the
sustainability of local, national and global systems as well – and they all
share similar causes.
This last statement may seem a surprising claim to some, but a major
reason for the similarity between the sustainability of educational leaders
and much larger macro-systems is based upon the sheer complexity of many
of the challenges currently faced, and most will not be amenable to simple
solutions: H. L. Mencken was exactly right when he said, ‘To every complex
problem, there exists a solution which is neat, simple and wrong.’ To my
mind, this is the best short critique of ideas and policies which fail to enquire
vii
viii PREFACE
deeply enough into the nature of problems they seek to resolve. When a
simplistic frame is chosen, all too often an apparently universal policy
solution is created and then passed down to others as not requiring adaptive
implementation. Yet applying such policies unthinkingly to highly complex
situations, nearly all of which, of necessity, are singular and context-based
in nature, leads to all kinds of damaging consequences one might expect
from such an inappropriate approach. As Leithwood et al. (1999, p. 4) said,
if educational leadership is going to be outstanding, it will need to be
‘exquisitely sensitive to context’. All too often, leadership practice isn’t, or it
isn’t encouraged to be.
This book therefore argues that if the sustainability of both educational
leaders and of larger areas of concern is to be better realized, the role of
educational leaders will need to be re-framed. To explain the need for such
re-framing, the book will examine not only the challenges to the sustainability
of an educational leader’s role, but also four current major global challenges,
all of which will increasingly impact on the contexts within which educational
leaders work. Such examinations also help to better understand the notion
of ‘sustainability’, for the current threats to ‘sustainability’ in many situations
arise from complex interactions between at least three different areas: the
social, the economic and the environmental. This book argues that events in
these areas combine to create many of the challenges to sustainability seen
not only in educational leadership, but also in the challenges to global
sustainability discussed in this book.
Whilst many of the book’s arguments apply to the sustainability of a
number of different forms of leadership, the focus of this book is on the role
of the educational leader, because it is the form of leadership best positioned
to promote different forms of personal, institutional, societal and global
sustainability as core objectives. At the same time, the actual definition of
such leadership is left deliberately open. It is seen here not just as a form of
leadership defined by formal hierarchies or by individual personalities. It is
a force that can be exhibited at many levels, and between individuals as
much as by just one: leadership for a more sustainable world is then
performed when people influence others into accepting that a core part of
their role must now include reflection on the nature of current and possible
future threats to different levels of sustainability, and their engagement in
equipping the next adult generation with the knowledge, skills, attitudes
and values to respond to such challenges. To do this effectively, they will
need to reframe their role and, by embracing new values and policies, will
also make their own role more sustainable.
This is an optimistic book, and it needs to be, for if genuine, long-lasting
sustainability is to be created within educational institutions and the world
beyond, it will take some time for the approaches suggested to be realized,
and a world needs to exist into which such approaches can be applied. As
will be seen, some commentators believe that the world is currently on the
brink of a catastrophe, and that humanity has only a very few years in
PREFACE ix
which to turn things around. Others believe that it is simply too late to do
anything. This book subscribes to neither position. It agrees that there exist
deeply worrying and world-threatening challenges, and that their effects are
already being seen and felt. It also agrees that if nothing is done, humanity
is likely to face a very unpleasant future. The book’s optimism lies in the
belief that there is still time to turn things around, and that educational
institutions and their leaders can make a major contribution to this
endeavour. In this scenario, then, educational leaders cease to be assigned
some form of perfunctory middle-management role in the delivery of short-
term policies. Instead they become major contributors to societal and global
long-term sustainability. Educational leadership thus exemplifies not only a
significant case study in the generation of greater sustainability; it also
represents a challenging but hugely rewarding role in contributing to global
sustainability, which cannot afford to be passed up.
x
PART ONE
Describing and
Identifying the
Problems
1
2
CHAPTER ONE
Leading Sustainability,
Sustaining Leadership
Introduction: A leadership of pressure

and paradox?
It is no coincidence that challenges to leadership sustainability are occurring
in a world facing sustainability challenges to much larger social, economic
and environmental systems. These may seem a long way from the problems
that educational leaders face, but there are in fact considerable similarities
between problems of leadership sustainability and other larger national and
global issues. As this book will show, they not only share similar kinds of
stressors, but also some surprisingly similar pathways to unsustainability.
So, by understanding the nature of sustainability and un-sustainability in
both leadership contexts and in larger systems, it is possible to throw light
on the remedies that both need to use, which therefore suggests a new kind
of focus for educational leaders to develop, not only in how they should
respond to larger system threats, but to the threats to their own role as well.
There are also parallels between the use of the term sustainability in
educational leadership terms and in wider contexts, as they are both
concerned with the preservation of something that is valued – whether that
something is the vast expanse of the Amazon jungle, the existence of a
just, caring and inclusive society, an economic system that contributes to
this kind of society, or to an educational leadership that encourages the
development of caring, inquiring and critical students. Of course, there may
be some readers who will disagree with the advocacy of some of the kinds
of values and positions implicit in these statements. There will be those, for
instance, who believe that the primary function of an economic system is
that of creating wealth, and that the other roles should be relatively minor.
The sustainability of economic systems would then likely be focused upon
the maintenance or increase in wealth production. ‘Sustainable’, then, is not
3
4 EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP FOR A MORE SUSTAINABLE WORLD
a descriptive word, for advocates can smuggle into it all kinds of meanings
and values. It is in fact an example of what Gallie (1956) called an ‘essentially
contested concept’, which he described (p. 169) as ‘concepts the proper use
of which inevitably involve endless disputes about their proper uses on the
part of their users’. Take for example the best-known definition of the term
‘sustainability’, the World Commission on Environment and Development
(1987) (the so-called Brundtland Report), which defined sustainability (p. 8)
as that which ‘meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their needs’. Some who haven’t
actually read the report might think that its primary focus was on the
sustainability of the natural environment. However, any reading of it makes
it clear that it did not believe that this was possible without also addressing
issues of sustainability in the human world. In so doing, it made two radical
and contentious value calls for greater global fairness. One was for greater
intra-generational equity, and thus a plea for a greater equality within and
between present societies. The other call was for a greater inter-generational
equality – the need for a longer-term vision in considering the needs of
future generations. Such arguments for greater global sustainability were
ground-breaking at the time as, in arguing for the rights of those still to be
born, it ran strongly against – and still does – those societal trends concerned
with the satisfaction of short-term interests. Whilst still regarded as a seminal
moment in the appreciation of sustainability, it was also, however, a
document of compromise, due to an international reluctance to accept a
reduction in economic growth in achieving such sustainability. National
interests were then accommodated by the recommendation that sustainability
could be achieved by and through economic growth – an increasingly
disputed assertion, as the desire for growth and consumption are seen by
many critics as principal causes of unsustainability (see Daly, 1996;
Hamilton, 2004; Jackson, 2009).
This brief discussion, continued in later chapters, then makes the value-
laden nature of ‘sustainability’ very clear – an awareness that must necessarily
be applied to any discussions about leadership sustainability as well. One
therefore needs to ask: if someone is writing about problems of leadership
sustainability, what threats are selected to explain these problems, and what
then is this sustainability seen as being needed for? Now it should be
said that there has been literature over some time (e.g. Day et al., 2000;
Gold et al., 2003; Asquith, 2014) suggesting that problems of leadership
sustainability may not be universal. However, there is now a considerable
body of literature suggesting that threats to sustainability are sufficiently
widespread and urgent to require real attention. There is a fairly long
international history suggesting that the threats to leadership sustainability
derive not only from individuals failing to apply for the role (leading to a
shortfall in recruitment), from many retiring early, and also from those not
holding principals’ positions for any length of time. And the evidence on this
suggests that the problems aren’t diminishing. One can go back to authors
LEADING SUSTAINABILITY, SUSTAINING LEADERSHIP 5
such as Fullan (1997) in Canada and the US , Williams (2001) in Canada,

Troman and Woods (2000) in the UK , Hodgen and Wylie (2005) in New
Zealand, as well as Gronn (2003) and Chapman (2005) for international
reviews of these phenomena, and then find that the same issues are occurring
today in much the same countries (e.g. Berliner, 2011; Fuller, 2012; Times
Educational Supplement, 2013; Doyle and Locke, 2014; Reames, Kochan,
and Zhu, 2014). It is also important to note as Fuller (2012) does, that
principal sustainability problems also generate institutional and systemic
sustainability issues, as, for example, high principal turnover leads to greater
teacher turnover, which is correlated with lower student attainment, and of
teachers not embracing proposed changes as they simply wait for the next
principal to come, but then to leave a little later.
The reasons given for such problems, which governments tend to accept,
are that prospective leaders are unprepared for the role, and that too much
may be asked of them in the role. If these kinds of problems are identified
as the principal causes, then much stress and worry might be overcome,
and greater sustainability might be created, not only in the leadership role,
but in institutions and systems as well, by providing better training for
individuals before appointment to the principalship, and greater devolution
of responsibility given to senior and middle-management teams (and hence
some governments’ moves from championing ‘charismatic’ models of
leadership to more ‘distributed’ ones).
Whilst this particular framing of the problem does suggest the need for
some change, it is an essentially business-as-usual approach, because the
objectives of leadership remain the same. This also helps to explain the
explosion of state-run leadership centres across the world in the early years
of this century (Bush and Jackson, 2002). And indeed, there seems much
truth in this explanation of unpreparedness and subsequent overwork. Starr
(2015, p. 130) argues that these kinds of pressures are a global phenomenon,
and suggests that the increased number and size of leadership tasks has
resulted in ‘the intensification and 24/7 nature of educational work, and
continual “function creep” in education roles, in order to ensure that a rising
number of tasks are met’.
Function creep is a highly important phenomenon, because it is usually
hidden in the extra hours of work at home, at weekends and on holidays
that leaders have to spend in order to attempt to ensure that they run the
job, rather than the job running them. All of this can then lead to extra
stress, and less sustainability. The British newspaper The Independent (2010)
noted that New Labour, during its tenure from 1997 to 2006, imposed
58 new responsibilities on headteachers, and there has been no let-up by
the next government. The work of Bottery et al. (2008) in England and
Hong Kong also found that whilst the principals in Hong Kong felt less
threatened by demands and inspection than those in England, they
nevertheless felt the same pressure from the increase in incoming ‘guidance’,
legislation and mandates. The imposition of so many mandates was also a
central concern of Young and Szachowicz (2014, p. 1), in the United States,
who suggested:
Principals have always had mandates—federal, state, and district. But

never have there been so many mandates being implemented
simultaneously . . . Effectively taking on any single mandate is tough. But
implementing [many] simultaneously can prove a mighty challenge for
even the most seasoned principals. And doing all of this while managing
previously existing mandates, from grants to accreditation, can seem
overwhelming.
The sheer volume of work can then be a real concern. As one principal said
to me (Bottery et al., 2008, p. 67), ‘I don’t even have the time to think about
the fact that I don’t have the time.’ In such circumstances, it is unsurprising
if in many countries the challenge of recruiting and retaining educational
leaders has become a serious problem.
Yet the causes may stem not only from unpreparedness and overwork,
but also from a perceived lack of trust. In a substantial survey of teacher
attitudes in the UK , Berliner (2011) reports how 63 per cent of 2,000
teachers responding said they had considered leaving the profession because
of ‘excessive government interference’, a feeling strongly underpinned by the
fact that they felt neither respected nor trusted. As Cary Cooper, a researcher
on workplace stress, reported in the same article:
Global evidence is clear – lack of control and autonomy in your job

makes you ill. It is stressful to be in an occupation where you feel you
have people looking over your shoulder and where you can be named
and shamed. All those characteristics were there in teaching 10 years ago,
but it is worse now because jobs in the public sector are no longer secure.
These are strong reasons for a lack of sustainability, but what if the causes
of such unsustainability are even more deeply rooted? What if unsustainability
is not just about too little preparation, too much work, or a feeling of not
being trusted, but also about too much of the wrong kind of work? What if
individuals perceive a particular course of action to be intrinsically desirable,
but do not feel capable of pursuing it because of external pressures? This
incommensurability of demands and values explains why Hoyle and Wallace
(2005) argue that as incompatibilities between different desired ends have
increased in educational systems, the life and work of many educational
leaders is increasingly suffused by paradox and irony. Starr (2015) also
describes a number of such paradoxes which she suggests leaders face on an
almost daily basis. She points out what Levin (2001) also noted a decade
earlier: that whilst many governments engage in cost-cutting exercises, they
also demand improved educational outputs; yet demand for more efficiency
is likely to negatively impact not only on productivity but on morale as well
if individuals are constantly asked to do more with less. Again, whilst

governments worldwide claim to be cutting bureaucracy and boosting
institutional and leadership autonomy, as Bottery et al. (2013), Glatter
(2012) and Doyle and Locke (2014) point out, in reality many leaders seem
to be experiencing an increase in government intervention and control.
Bottery et al. (2013), for example, provide the example of James, a new
English headteacher, who felt heavily constrained by his school being located
in a poor city area with a declining pupil population, which largely explained
the school’s poor financial situation. For him, financial autonomy was an
illusion; because his budget was so tight, he theoretically had room for
policy manoeuvre, but the reality was very different: ‘You’ve got the freedom
of your budget on the one hand, but on the other hand, you haven’t.’ He felt
the same lack of autonomy with much current legislation as well: ‘To be
honest you just nod and say “well we’re going to have to make the best of
it”.’ Doyle and Locke (2014, p. 11) utter similar feelings for the reality of
many US principals as being one where ‘principals must meet every more
exacting accountability standards . . . and most must often do this with
scant autonomy over key decisions’.
If this is the case, then threats to sustainability may be based as much on
conflicting and differently held value positions as on issues of preparation
and overwork; and these may be very difficult to deal with because they
begin to fundamentally question the nature of the policies that are producing
these pressures. This is a central point made by writers such as Ball (2007),
Bangs et al. (2011) and Hammersley-Fletcher (2015). Hammersley-Fletcher,
for example, explored the different ethical challenges that English
headteachers faced, consequent, she argued (p. 199), upon ‘the tension
between meeting external inspections together with those related to the
provision of a “good” education’ and concluded (p. 212) that ‘the personal
is at risk of becoming subservient to the functional’.
Some writers have gone further and suggested that the ultimate causes of
the pressures on leadership sustainability are external to the educational
system. Levin (2001, 2010), for example, argued over a decade ago that
much of the educational legislation causing such tensions has been driven by
external economic rationales based on markets and competition, which
have increasingly resulted in a general climate of criticism and low trust in
professionals in the public sector, the publication of quantitative measures
of student achievement as market information for ‘consumers’ of educational
services, and the use of punitive inspection regimes to ensure compliance to
such market values as policy drivers. Yet in a further review (2010, p. 739),
he argued that such policies ‘have often been motivated more by beliefs than
by evidence of impact’, and goes on to say: ‘If there is one thing we have
learned about educational policy, it is that ordering people to do better
without engaging their hearts and minds cannot succeed’ (p. 742). And,
in reviewing previous educational policies over a number of countries over
the last 50 years, he came to the conclusion that ‘[g]overnments that belittled
teachers may have reaped short-term political benefits but failed to create
the conditions that could produce better outcomes for students’.
Whilst there are educators who find the challenges posed by such
legislation manageable and even exhilarating, it is perhaps not surprising to
find that there are many who don’t. If challenges to the sustainability of
educational leaders then come not just from demands on the quantity of the
role itself, but also from a lack of respect of professional value conflicts
between different stakeholders, and from the importation of practices and
values beyond the sector, then the role of the educator, and the educational
leader in particular, is going to be a very complex one, even if, as Bore and
Wright (2009) argue, there may be many who are strongly tempted to define
its concerns as ‘tame’ – as consisting of tasks that can be tightly defined and
of solutions that can be easily applied. The desire for such ‘tameness’ is
perhaps understandable in many policy makers given the pressures to
produce short-term results that fit electoral timetables – a demand that
politicians then pass down to practitioners through policy and inspection
regimes. In this respect, policy makers can be as much victims of unhelpful
pressures as can educational leaders.
Furthermore, a distinction needs to be made between two different kinds
of complexity. One is an external kind where causation is not linear but
complex and systemic in nature, much of which is likely to be difficult
to understand, control, or predict. However, there is another kind of
complexity, described by Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 155) as an area of
‘wicked problems’, which cannot be understood in terms of some kind
of depersonalized logic, but where problems are defined as ‘problems’ in
part because of personal dispositions, values and prior beliefs. The lack of
studies in yoga or literary critiques of Buffy the Vampire Killer in school or
university curricula is not seen as a ‘problem’ unless they are viewed as
valuable educational experiences. So personal viewpoints affect not only
how a ‘problem’ is viewed, but also whether it is viewed as a problem at all
(see, for example, Hulme, 2009; Haidt, 2013; Storr, 2014). Such ‘wicked’
problems are then highly likely to be unique, probably have more than one
way of being described, and may ultimately only be surface descriptions of
deeper problems.
Issues of sustainability then need to be underpinned by both systemic and
wicked understandings of complexity. As these are better understood, and as
the increasing interconnections between human society and the natural
environment are recognized, many issues are thrown up that are regarded as
problems (climate change, depletion of fossil fuel energy reserves, the
reduction in biodiversity), but are problems the solutions to which may not
be amenable to simple, linear or tame solutions. Thus, for example, whilst
‘climate change’ is viewed by many as a problem, there is considerable
uncertainty about how much temperatures will rise over the next 50 years,
what the rate of ice melt in different areas of the world will be, and therefore
the rate and amount of sea-level rise. Again, whilst the prognosis for many
species of animals in the near future is increasingly seen as gloomy and

urgent (see Wilson, 2003; Kolbert, 2014), the effects in the middle future (a
hundred years from now) and in the long future (a hundred thousand years
from now) are even less clear (Stager, 2011). Most recognize that these are
real problems; few would claim to know exactly just how serious they will
be in the future.
These global problems have much in common with many of the problems
that educational leaders have to deal with, as many of their problems also
involve complex causations, are unique to contexts, are described in different
ways by different parties, and may never be ultimately resolvable in any
final sense. Raising standards, enhancing student motivation, furthering
greater creativity and developing future citizens are but four examples.
Many educational problems also need to be recognized as having systemic
rather than linear causations, and as being of a wicked rather than a tame
nature. Moreover, if problems are not accurately described, a number of
other problems may follow. One is that if wicked problems are incorrectly
identified as tame, they are likely to be incorrectly treated, and may result in
even more damaging problems, which may lead to the need for rapid ‘crisis’
or ‘fire-fighting’ interventions as situations spiral out of control. Another is
that wicked problems are not likely to be amenable to one-shot ‘silver-bullet’
resolutions, but may instead require a variety of ‘silver-buckshot’ or ‘clumsy’
solutions (Rayner, 2006; Grint, 2008), which will never be perfect, even if
they are the best that can be done.
These kinds of problems may then never be completely resolvable, yet
choices and decisions will still need to be made. Simon’s (1956) advice here
makes much sense, as he suggested that whilst many alternative solutions
may need to be considered, a ‘satisficing’ approach (a combination of ‘satisfy’
and ‘suffice’) may need to be adopted, where incomplete solutions may be
the best achievable. If this is the case, then policy makers, educational
leaders, and anyone faced with these kinds of situations need to reflect upon
the degree of certainty they can and should place in their decisions, and also
the degree to which they should place blame upon those given responsibility
for problem resolutions. This would then call for a radical reappraisal of
what can be expected of educational leaders. These kinds of issues will be
concerns that run right through this book.
Sustainability through the greater

recognition of complexity
What the above discussion also points to is that a major threat to educational
sustainability may lie in a limited awareness of the potential for such
complexity in the processes involved in educational leadership, which can
lead to unrecognized – and unrecognizable – outcomes, which then can
generate unexpected problems and threats. And if the role of the educational
leader is so suffused by complexity, how much more so will be the complexity
of larger national and global systems? Whilst there may still be some who
believe that most environmental, political, economic and social interactions
and challenges are relatively simple to understand, and only require simple
solutions, there is a growing recognition of their genuine complexity. The
middle chapters of this book examine such complexity – and the threats to
sustainability largely derived from such complexity – at such large systemic
levels. Indeed, as one becomes better acquainted with the literature and the
arguments here, the more one realizes just how complex reality can be. The
Newtonian model of the universe suggested to many (even if it didn’t to
Newton) that actions and reactions occur in linear, controllable and
ultimately predictable ways. It is then understandable how the popular pre-
20th-century view of science was one where humanity through scientific
investigations gathered an increasingly large collection of indisputable
‘facts’, which it was believed would in some distant future permit the human
race to attain a perfect understanding of the universe, and hence to predict
its actions and thus control it. It is undoubtedly comforting to assume that
the world largely functions such that a causes b, that b causes c, and that c
causes d. The problem with this kind of assumption in the real world is that
attempts to extract individual factors from larger systemic contexts may be
inadequate, as many variables rather than just a presenting few may need
to be taken into account to understand what is happening and what is likely
to happen. Yet even this is to be overconfident, for the more complex the
situation, the more unlikely it is that any sort of certainty is possible. There
are, as Rumsfeld (2002) said, ‘known knowns’, ‘known unknowns’, and
also ‘unknown unknowns’: we may think we know what we know, we
may know that we don’t know many things, but many of the ‘unknown
unknowns’ may always remain unknown if there is a continued lack of
knowledge about their existence; yet they may still be at the heart of many
complex events. Since Rumsfeld, Rayner (2012, p. 108) has added a fourth
category – what we don’t know we know, where ‘societies or institutions
actively exclude [some aspects of knowledge] because they threaten to
undermine key organizational arrangements’. And the result is, as the Jewish
joke goes, that if you want to make God laugh, you tell him (or her) your
plans.
This discussion suggests that much everyday thought and much policy
rhetoric about things such as educational leadership, policy and practice
may fail to see such complexity, and in consequence, many problems may be
seen as resting upon linear assumptions of causality. Yet if such challenges
are located within systems neither simple nor linear, but complex and non-
linear, then the framing and definition of both problems and solutions need
developing that mirrors such complexity. Even then, it may simply be
impossible to prescribe solutions that completely resolve a problem. In a
complex, non-linear world, best solutions may only be partial at best, and
some problems may simply be insoluble. This isn’t what many policy makers,
and indeed what many educational leaders, may want to hear. The former
may have policy agendas to ‘deliver’ before a forthcoming election; the latter
know that in low-trust cultures, a failure to ‘succeed’ may well be seen as
their personal failure, rather than as an example of an approach that
attempts to take into account context and circumstances, and that may be a
job for the long haul rather than the quick fix. Indeed, many people probably
prefer tamer versions of reality: rather like a Disney film, the quiet desire for
the difficult areas to be rubbed out of life’s encounters can be very tempting,
as is a need for assurance that everything will work out happily in the end.
Yet many events occurring in complex political, social, economic and
environmental contexts are very un-Disneyesque in character.
Many challenges that have occurred in leadership policy and practice
over the last 20 or 30 years, then, like devolving leadership, developing
trust, and leading across institutions, constitute complex endeavours,
suffused with differing aims, claims and values, which may need to deal with
many difficult and sometimes ultimately insoluble problems. A belief in
control, linearity, and the assignation of blame to individuals and
organizations when policies do not work may then lead to yet more vigorous
simplistic interventions from outside, which can then lead to initiative
overload, much professional stress and guilt, early retirements, and a
disinclination to apply for the role. So, as subsequent chapters discuss, a
major connection between the sustainability of educational leadership and
larger environmental, political, social and economic issues of sustainability
lies in their sharing of similarly complex groundings. By examining such
similarities, light can then be thrown on the nature and reasons for problems
in leadership sustainability. Indeed, another link between them can be made,
for not only do such comparisons make clearer the nature of leadership
sustainability problems, but, despite differences in scale, they also share
some surprisingly similar remedies. The arrow of causation is then in part
reversed: understanding how to resolve problems of leadership sustainability
can also point towards possible resolutions of larger sustainability issues. By
educational leaders better understanding their own sustainability situation,
they are then enabled to provide a more informed leadership in addressing
issues of global sustainability.
Educational leadership and the evaluation of

contrasting claims
Understanding and educating future generations not only about the
challenges to different areas of sustainability, but about the different kinds
of complexity exhibited by different challenges, needs then to be seen as an
increasingly important new role for educational leaders. Yet another
important role lies in exploring the methods that need to be used in

evaluating contrasting claims over disputed ‘wicked’ issues such as climate
change, the use of natural resources, and the effects of population increase.
Discussion of the means by which the validity of divergent claims is evaluated
cannot be avoided, even if an increasing recognition of the complexity of
these areas may be daunting. Whilst there is good evidence suggesting that
there are many attempts to muddy the waters and undermine reputable
research and argument in these areas (see Monbiot, 2007; Washington and
Cook, 2011; Oreskes and Conway, 2012), it is important to realize that such
action does not encompass the range or quality of argument and dispute
about such issues. As Hulme (2009) argues, not only are there disagreements
about the measurement and relevance of particular data, but the construction
of positions on such issues may derive as much from deeply felt values as
from any purely rational evaluative exercise (assuming that these are
possible) or from any malicious self-serving attempt to derail discussions. In
terms of climate change, for example, at one end of the spectrum there are
those who fear that past and present human activity threatens not only the
future of humanity, but all life on the planet as well (Rees, 2005; Lovelock
2006). Nearer the middle in such disputes are those who believe that global
environmental recovery is still possible, but only if urgent action is quickly
taken (IPCC , 2014; Stern, 2006). At the other end of this spectrum are a
mixture of views: those who fear that belief in the need for urgency on many
environmental issues is reducing the time required for proper scientific
rigour and objectivity in investigating such issues; those who feel that greater
confidence should be placed in human ingenuity in meeting such challenges;
and those who believe that a now-dominant paradigm of environmental
crisis is exerting undue influence over the allocation of research funding.
Such disputes are not new. Sabin (2013) recounts the dispute in the 1970s
between two internationally renowned scientists, Paul Ehrlich and Julian
Simon, about the limits of global resources and rising populations. Ehrlich
argued that rising populations would consume much of what was left of the
world’s resources, whilst Simon championed the belief held by many with a
market perspective that reductions in natural resources would impel human
ingenuity to find substitutes for them. They agreed on a bet concerning the
future price of a number of natural commodities, with Ehrlich arguing that
the price would go up as these resources declined, and with Simon countering
that substitutes would be found, that the price would not rise, and might
even decline. To many conservationists’ discomfort, Simon was correct on
the precise details of the bet, and Ehrlich rather ungraciously sent a cheque
in the post with no letter of acknowledgement. However, the debate doesn’t
rest that easily: Sabin demonstrates that a selection of different materials
over a different period of time would have produced results leading to
Simon having to send the cheque to Ehrlich instead. It is also worth pointing
out that Simon declined a second bet by Ehrlich on 15 worsening
environmental indicators over the coming decade, which included higher
global temperatures, higher carbon dioxide concentrations, the declining

fertility of crops, less acreage of forests globally, and lowered human sperm
count. Ehrlich would also have won that bet. There is then much to dispute
in these areas.
Yet, just because there is much to debate, that doesn’t and shouldn’t mean
that all evidence is so disputable that no action should be taken. There is
evidence in areas such as climate change that is virtually indisputable. For
example, the scientific proof that carbon dioxide does act as a temperature
insulator in the atmosphere, and therefore raises global temperatures, goes
back two centuries (see Archer, 2009, and Chapter Seven); the current
concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any
time in the last 800,000 years (Kolbert, 2014); the amount of this gas
emitted into the atmosphere over the last few years is increasingly due to
human activity (IPCC , 2014); and there has been a constant rise in global
temperatures over the last century (IPCC , 2014). It would then be very
dangerous for life on this planet if human beings did nothing but engage in
protracted debates over issues when the evidence clearly indicates that such
changes will almost certainly cause severe global problems in the future,
that human action has very largely been the cause, and will need to be a
large part of the cure, and that such remedial action needs to be taken sooner
rather than later.
An educational leadership response

Leading sustainability and sustaining leadership are then intimately
connected, and discussion of the simple, the complex and the wicked of the
sustainable and the un-sustainable are discussed and developed throughout
this book, as these terms have major implications for understanding and
responding to many political, social, economic and environmental challenges.
Similarly, the argument for the re-framing of educational leadership purposes
in order to more directly respond to these challenges is also addressed
throughout. This reframing is based around a greater focus upon four values
not normally highlighted in much policy or educational leadership literature
– of humility, sufficiency, equity and well-being. If educational leaders can
help to enhance a greater humility through appreciating the complexity
underpinning many issues; can emphasize through their thought, policies
and action the need for sufficient rather than excessive consumption of
‘resources’; as also the need for a notion of well-being which transcends
personal wants; and finally can show how the realization of both sufficiency
and well-being requires a wider embrace of the notion of equity, then this
book argues that a form of sustainability could be achieved which worked
not only for them, but for their society, and for the world in general.
Whilst the world in a hundred years’ time will be a very different place
from today, it is perhaps not quite so obvious how significant some
differences will be. Temperatures in some areas will be much higher, and sea
levels will rise. Some areas will be much drier, some much wetter. Some
species of animal and plant will decline in their traditional habitats, whilst
others will prosper and expand, not all of which will be welcomed by human
beings. Weather conditions will probably fluctuate much more than in the
present. Most societies are likely to have many more of their population
living well into their 80s and 90s than they do currently, and will need to
find ways of supporting them and making better use of their talents. Some
of these changes will be in spite of humanity’s best efforts; but other changes
can be because of their actions. Working towards the better sustainability of
educational leadership has lessons for larger areas and challenges, as well as
lessons learned from them. Educational leaders can help towards a greater
sustainability at all levels.
CHAPTER TWO
The Meanings of Sustainability

and the Dynamics of its Decline
Creating greater sustainability: Maintenance

or change?
The previous chapter argued that living in a complex world requires a
proper recognition of the complexity involved in framing problems and
their solutions if greater sustainability is to be generated. But what is
‘sustainability’? It is sometimes used almost interchangeably with the phrase
‘sustainable development’ (SD ), and together they – along with ‘resilience’ –
constitute major buzzwords for the present century. Whilst, as Shallcross
and Robinson (2007, p. 138) argue, any discussion should avoid the
‘definition dementia’ of indulging in definition for definition’s sake, it is
important to understand how the terms are currently used, and how they
will be employed in this book, because they have not only become widely
used, but have also been used to mean very different things.
Now ‘sustainability’ can be used in two very different ways. A first view –
and the one probably most commonly associated with the term – is its use
to convey the notion that a state of affairs – of either a social, economic,
political or environmental nature – is desirable, and therefore needs
maintaining and preserving. An individual, an institution, a set of customs,
or a culture might then be sustained by ensuring that they cope with
particular challenges, without themselves being substantially changed. If, for
example, the continued existence of Sumatran tigers, or the preservation of
small school classes, were seen as desirable, ‘sustainable development’ would
then refer to the need for suitable processes and resources to be employed to
ensure that this happens. ‘Sustainable development’ is therefore being
viewed here as a process that maintains and preserves the values and
practices associated with this state of affairs. Such actions are also likely to
improve the resilience of what is being maintained, making it more likely
15
that they will survive if future challenges arise. In the case of Sumatran
tigers, this might be through the creation of game reserves, actions against
poachers, and the education of neighbouring human populations; in the
case of small schools, this might be through the recognition that they
normally require more teachers, more money and more buildings per pupil
than would be required for larger schools.
However, ‘sustainability’ can also be used, along with ‘sustainable
development’ and ‘resilience’, to refer to a very different need: to develop
different aims, structures and strategies which for a number of reasons don’t
currently exist. Change, not maintenance, is then the desired action state, as
what is currently in place is seen as failing to meet current values, needs and
challenges. Such a notion is bound up with similar notions of resilience, as
in such circumstances it is likely to be argued that to remain resilient,
individuals, organizations or cultures will need to adopt very different
values, practices and strategies. In education, then, rote learning might not
be viewed as an adequate or sustainable way of understanding mathematics,
or of its application to the wider world, and whilst it may be felt that the
study of mathematics should be sustained, some methods, like rote learning,
need to be discontinued and others adopted.
Business influences on the definition

of sustainability
Sustainability as necessary change is particularly the case when referring
to current business contexts, but it should also be noted that introducing
the notion of sustainability into this area also changes its range of concerns.
McCann and Holt (2010, p. 209), after surveying a number of business
definitions, suggest that business leadership should be concerned ‘with
creating current and future profits for an organization while improving
the lives of all concerned’. This need to balance concerns of profit with
those of others’ well-being is expanded upon by Ferdig (2007, p. 29), who
suggests that ‘sustainable business and economic conversations focus on
“triple bottom line” outcomes, in which key business strategies are designed
to be socially and environmentally responsible as well as economically
viable’.
It is important to notice two things here. First, the use of ‘sustainability’
in different areas tends to highlight the role of values peculiar to those areas.
In the case of the business environment, unsurprisingly, these are values such
as competition and profit. But second, Ferdig’s definition formally recognizes
a now general acceptance that invoking sustainability normally involves a
balance between such economic concerns, and the needs of the human social
and natural environmental worlds. In their most developed forms (e.g.
Brown, 2001; Braungart and McDonough, 2009; Hawken, 2010), business
THE MEANINGS OF SUSTAINABILITY 17
books can then argue that whilst business may have caused many of the
issues of environmental sustainability, better business practices can help
resolve them as well.
In terms of the maintenance and change functions to which sustainability
can be put, different fields have different emphases. The business world
tends to strongly espouse a ‘change’ variation of sustainability. This has
influenced other fields in the process. For example, in an interdisciplinary
collection of writings, Holling and Gunderson (2002) adopt a change view
of sustainability and resilience, and claim (p. 34) that this approach needs to
be based on the notion of cycles of ‘creative destruction’ and renewal – a
term popularized by Schumpeter (1942) when talking about the essence of
capitalist economist practices. As later chapters will suggest, the intertwining
of economic and environmental notions of sustainability is furthered by a
likening of social Darwinist visions of environment and genetics, which
suggest that nature (and our very humanity) are based upon the same kind
of competitive, rationalist self-interest as that portrayed in neo-liberal
economics (and see Roscoe (2014) on this).
Such business influences upon sustainability have also been furthered by
a clear move in the business leadership literature over the last 30 to 40 years.
This has seen a movement away from viewing sustainability as being
achieved through maintenance activities like ‘management’ or ‘transactional
leadership’, and towards a much greater embrace of more dynamic terms
like ‘transformational’ leadership. This has been largely prompted by a
view of such leadership as needing to react to the decline of a comfortable
Western business dominance, because of challenges from the Far East,
and then the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). The
sustainability of Western business practice was therefore seen as needing
to up its game in responding, and Grint (2008) suggests that the difference
between such maintenance and change perspectives lies in the recognition
that organizations and individuals increasingly needed to be concerned
less about the maintenance of déjà vu (‘seen this before’) and more aware
of the need to respond to vu jadé (‘never seen this before’). Certainly,
‘transformational leadership’, first coined by Burns (1978), was at first seen
as the primary way of changing a Western business leadership focus away
from maintaining procedures within large bureaucratic organizations, and
more towards much greater emphasis upon a changeable, dynamic and
proactive notion of leadership. More sustainable organizations would
then be created, not by doing more of the same, but by leaders inspiring
commitment to change perceptions in their followers. They would do this
first through providing visions of the changes necessary for institutional
survival, and then by persuading them to follow such visions. Yet such
heroic leadership may only be suitable for some individuals, and might
also fail to reflect that leadership is likely to be as much, or indeed more,
about shared visions and actions. As Yukl (1999, p. 298) argued, ‘the vision
is usually the product of a collective effort, not the creation of a single
exceptional individual’. The danger of such an approach then lies not

only in that individuals are invited to adopt a leadership style which may
be inappropriate to them, but that it may also fail to capture the complexity
of a leadership process requiring the commitment of many. Paradoxically,
then, some attempts at developing greater sustainability in business practice
and its leadership (and then, through discourse creep, on into other areas
such as education) may create as much unsustainability as it does
sustainability.
Sustainability and educational leadership

This concern with moving from visions of maintenance to visions of change
initially translated relatively slowly into the educational leadership literature.
There was indeed very little of such literature before the 1970s, and much of
that tended to adopt in a fairly uncritical manner many assumptions from
the business world. Whilst there are now leadership colleges around the
world, the first National College for School Leadership (NCSL ) was founded
in the UK in 2000. It initially embraced similar business notions of
charismatic transformative leadership, but moved its preferred style to that
of a more ‘distributed leadership’ kind (NCSL , 2003), in part because of the
realization of the stress it was loading on the shoulders of single individual
leaders, and the implied lack of engagement needed by significant others in
the change process.
Moreover, whilst, as Bush and Glover (2014) point out, other styles –
contingent, moral, authentic, distributed, democratic and instructional –
have all been proposed and partially embraced, this influx of meanings has
probably added as much to the burden on leaders as it has to more accurately
define what they are – or should be – doing. Stress on leaders then is likely
to increase not only because of the expanded breadth of the role externally
demanded, but also because of its quantity and complexity. Twenty years
ago, Evans (1995) semi-jocularly described the role as
a miracle worker who can do more with less, pacify rival groups, endure
chronic second-guessing, tolerate low levels of support, process large
volumes of paper, and work double shifts . . . He or she will have carte
blanche to innovate, but cannot spend much money, replace any personnel,
or upset any constituency.
Twenty years on, in quite a number of countries, one might need to add:
and has the ability to endure constant changes in the conceptualization of

what he or she is being asked to do, and in how these should be
implemented, whilst knowing that any tardiness or mistakes will likely
bring a punitively oriented inspection process into the school.
It then seems significant that in a recent US study on the factors influencing

principals’ retirement decisions (Reames et al., 2014), it was reported that
the reasons for this had changed dramatically over the last decade. From
primarily being concerned with attaining a job elsewhere, the major reason
now was one of principals simply wishing to get out of the job whilst they
possessed the health to do so, the general perception of external mandates
and job expectations being that they placed too much pressure on principals.
Perhaps then it is not surprising that an initial re-conceptualization of
leadership from a maintenance to a transformative function, with a
subsequent explosion of different terms and accompanying responsibilities
and expectations, should be closely followed by the generation of a literature
concerned with threats to ‘sustainable’ leadership. As noted in Chapter One,
worldwide concerns with declining numbers of prospective headteachers or
principals willing to come forward to take on the role have been allied with
a similar concern at the number of those in posts wishing to take early
retirement (e.g. Fuller, 2012; Times Educational Supplement, 2013; Doyle
and Locke, 2014). Yet many strategies responding to such concerns have
been rather theory-light, amounting to little more than promises of support
and training (to increase individual preparedness and resilience), with much
less time and reflection given to the kinds of issues underlying such
unsustainability.
There have been, however, a few writers on the sustainability of
educational leadership who have argued that the adoption of simplistic
measures, which fail to give deeper thought to the causes of a lack of
sustainability, is a dangerous road to take. Hargreaves and Fink (2003,
p. 694), for instance, defined sustainable leadership as that which ‘preserves
and develops deep learning for all that spreads and lasts, in ways that do no
harm to, and indeed create positive benefits for others around us, now and
in the future’, and went on to argue in a later article (Hargreaves and Fink,
2007) that in many countries precisely the opposite had happened, because
‘educational reform in recent years . . . has sacrificed depth of learning to the
achievement of standardised testing’ and that this has prevented the ‘ability
to plan for a more sustainable future’. In similar vein, Davies (2007a, p. 1)
argued that many educational systems were characterized by ‘tightly focused
curriculum frameworks and testing regimes’, and that this raised the
question of whether the results from these actions were sustainable. For
Davies (2007b, p. 11), this could only happen when leadership was
‘embedded in a culture focused on moral purpose and the educational
success of all its students’.
These contributions are helpful because they indicate that sustainability
as maintenance or change is not a simple mechanical task of preserving
what currently exists, or of changing something in order for it to be more in
line with official policy or with the practice of most others. It needs instead
to be informed from the start by the stipulation of a desired state of affairs
which, if it exists needs to be maintained, and if this does not, the pressure
needs to be created for an educational culture to be changed to allow such

change to flourish.
The theorization of ‘sustainability’ in educational leadership literature,
then, is relatively recent, but it suggests that, like every other area of concern,
questions about sustainability cannot avoid asking fundamental questions
about the purposes of that activity. One should not, then, advocate greater
sustainability through the maintenance of an activity, or greater sustainability
through wide-ranging changes, without describing and arguing the grounds
for such maintenance or change. The term ‘sustainability’ is value-laden, and
thus essentially contestable, just as are the terms ‘sustainable development’
and ‘resilience’, for they all advocate (sometimes explicitly, sometimes
implicitly) a desired state of affairs, which needs to be understood and
critiqued.
Environmental influences on sustainability

This requirement to focus upon deep-lying issues draws inspiration from
earlier sources, which asked similar questions about what needs maintaining
and what needs changing, and why. The most influential literature in this
respect is sometimes described as ‘environmental’ or ‘ecological’ literature,
though this radically under-describes its origins and purpose. The best well-
known definition, quoted in the previous chapter, came out of the 1987
United Nations Commission on Environment and Development Report (the
so-called ‘Brundtland’ Report). It not only laid out many of the parameters
of concern, but also helped to ensure an enduring popularity for the concept,
defining sustainability (p. 8) as that which ‘meets the needs of the present
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.’
It is clear that this definition focuses as much on human social and economic
issues of sustainability as it does on those regarding the natural environment,
as it argued that concerns about the environment would not be resolved
until societal problems were addressed as well, and that this could not be
done until there was a larger focus upon both greater intra-generational and
inter-generational concerns, particularly those involving greater equity.
In so doing, sustainability and its development were claimed as needing
to be pursued not only through a healthier natural environment, but by also
addressing human social and economic issues. However, this claim is
politically contentious because it asserts that sustainability can and should
be developed through the pursuit of greater equality in human societies, not
only in this generation but in future ones as well. There are those – normally
of a neo-liberal economic persuasion – who see no need for such greater
equality, but for a general ‘lifting’ of the living standards of all by increased
economic growth. Indeed, Hove (2004, p. 50) argues that the Brundtland
discussions were compromised from the start by the attempt to write into its
proposals ‘the inherently contradictory aims of economic expansion,
environmental protection, poverty eradication, and the free market’.

Moreover, as the discussions progressed, it became clear that few nations
were willing to accept the price of a reduction in economic growth to achieve
sustainability, and developing nations in particular were unwilling to sign
up to an agreement that seemed to prevent them from aspiring to the same
living standards as those seen in the developed world.
The result then was a highly disputed assertion that sustainability could
be developed by and through economic growth. Whilst critics of neo-
liberalism (e.g. Daly, 1996; Jackson, 2009; Heinberg, 2011) have argued
that it is precisely economic growth – and the demand for more resource
consumption – that is the root cause of environmental unsustainability, neo-
liberal governments have unsurprisingly rather strongly agreed with the
proposition. The 1995 New Zealand Ministry of the Environment, for
instance, argued that a vibrant enterprise economy was a key condition for
safeguarding the environment (Chapman et al., 2009, p. 130). By 1998 the
UK Government was arguing (DETR , p. 3) that ‘achieving all these
objectives at the same time is what sustainable development is about’; whilst
the US and Australian governments (and now the Canadian) have historically
shown a marked reluctance to engage with agreements like the Kyoto
Protocol, to reduce the emissions produced by their industries, though a
change in political leadership in these countries (e.g. Obama in the United
States) can result in a weakening of such resistance.
The result of the Brundtland report may then have been something of a
landmark declaration, but it was one carrying disagreements into the future.
Whilst Owens (2003, p. 6) remarks that ‘the credibility of politicians and
many other actors required them at least to genuflect towards sustainable
development’, and Adams (1995, p. 7) suggests that ‘ships of very varied
allegiance are sailing cautiously under the same flag’, the reality is as likely
to have been one of people increasingly using the term to suit their own
ultimate purposes. Some tempering (or fudging) of the Brundtland language
is seen in the 1997 UNESCO report, which suggested that sustainability is
‘not a fixed notion, but rather a process of change in the relationships
between social, economic and natural systems and processes’ and that ‘there
can be no solution to environmental problems unless the social and economic
ills besetting humankind are seriously addressed’ (UNESCO, 1997, p. 13).
Depending upon one’s point of view, this is either a positive move, enabling
a too-fixed and universal notion to have better applicability across contexts,
or it is a retreat from Brundtland’s strong ethical commitments, allowing
anyone and everyone to define it in the manner that suits their purposes,
once again pointing to the term’s essential contestability. It is probably a bit
of both – the term still carrying an important message, but one increasingly
open to ideological abuse.
This discussion then leads directly into considerations that should be of
considerable importance to educational leaders. One is the need to reflect on
what things should be most valued, and therefore what things need preserving
and sustaining. Whilst debating value issues is common in the economic and
social realms, it is perhaps rather neglected with respect to the environment.
Yet it would be dangerously wrong to assume that the environment is some
kind of unitary ‘good thing’ that needs preserving. In their books on building
environmental resilience, Walker and Salt (2006, 2012) give a series of
examples of how to build sustainability and resilience into existing systems,
but seldom argue why these systems should receive this positive preferential
treatment. Yet such choices are inevitably underpinned by (challengeable)
values. When talking of individual species, which of these species would you
wish to ‘sustain’: anopheles mosquitoes, penguins, slugs, hedgehogs, the
plague bacillus, Japanese knotweed, or human beings? One might wish to
sustain all of these, but any justification must be based upon something
deeper than ‘they’re part of the environment’. ‘Weeds’ may only be ‘weeds’
because they don’t fit with our aesthetic sensibilities or food needs; ‘pollution’
may only be ‘pollution’ if it harms species we favour, leaving other less-
preferred species (such as rats) relatively untouched. It may be that the
reason lies in the valuing of species bio-diversity (but again, why?), the
maintenance of existing eco-systems, or out of pure human self-interest. But
that probably still doesn’t answer why current ecosystems are seen as
inherently more valuable than ones previously existing, or that may evolve
in the future. Whilst global warming will likely threaten the existence of
many species, it will probably encourage the expansion of others. On what
basis do we judge between these scenarios? This is clearly a highly complex
area, which will be returned to throughout the book, but here at least the
problem can be posed: what are the grounds for maintaining or changing
the balance of current environmental systems? Debates on the sustainability
of different systems – including environmental systems – then point inevitably
towards deeper issues about what we value and why, which adds yet one
more layer of complexity to debates in this area.
However, even if questions of justification cannot be finally resolved, it
still needs to be asked whether sustainability is achieved through the
maintenance of present strategies, structures, or practices, or whether this
is more likely through change, and of what such change might consist.
Arising from these issues, Brundtland asked for an examination of how
environmental, social and economic issues interact with one another.
Reflection on these, I suggest, raises four critical questions about sustainability
and its development:
1 What issues need considering at this moment in time, and what are
likely to arise in the future?
2 What should we, individually, societally and globally, most value in
the areas under consideration?
3 What is the balance between maintenance and change in the
determination of sustainable strategies, structures and practices?
4 What is the nature of the interactions in the area under consideration?
Such questions have wide applicability, and indeed apply very well to
educational leadership. Yet, as a field of study, Ribbins and Gunter (2002,
p. 359) have argued that it has historically suffered from being ‘insulated by
its characteristically pragmatic and essentially a-theoretical tradition’,
concentrating on what is currently done and whether technically such
practices can be improved. However, Ribbins and Gunter also argue that a
proper research agenda should begin by identifying priorities within the
field. For them, ‘leadership [must be] an educational and educative
relationship . . . informed by a critical engagement with the social sciences
and philosophy’ (p. 388). This harmonizes well with Brundtland’s ideas, and
suggests that educational leaders need to go back to first base and ask
questions such as:
1 What issues should educational leaders be most concerned with?

2 What ideals should inform educational leaders’ thought and practice?
3 How do local, national and global contexts affect this activity?
Indeed, if one locates the purposes of educational leadership, and its own
sustainability, within the broader contexts with which Brundtland was
concerned, such leaders may be provided with a wider and deeper view of
their role, making it and them much more relevant and useful to the societies
within which their practices are located.
From sustainability to unsustainability:

The stressing of systems
The foregoing examination of the meanings of sustainability suggests a rich
and complex connection between environmental, economic and social/
educational understandings of these terms, as values underpinning different
areas interact and collide with ones from elsewhere. This makes serious
long-term sustainability a necessarily complex endeavour. Yet whilst such
interactions may conflict, there is also good evidence that processes of
sustainability – and its decline into unsustainability – have much in common
across different areas. All three major areas described by Brundtland – the
social, the economic and the environmental – display similar stressors, and
demonstrate similar kinds of unsustainability. However, before going further,
it is important to state that ‘unsustainability’ is here described as a decline
away from the kind of functioning ‘normally’ seen as healthy. This seems to
lead into all kinds of relativistic judgements, but it need not. It would be
strange if an ecosystem was not described as moving towards unsustainability
if most of the organisms within it were dying; if social systems were not
described as moving towards unsustainability if indices such as crime, drug-
addiction and corruption were all rising, when others such as mental and
physical health and communal feelings were declining; where educational
systems were not seen as becoming increasingly unsustainable when

inadequate ‘tame’ policies were adopted for ‘wicked problems’; and when
leadership was not seen as becoming increasingly unsustainable if fewer and
fewer individuals wanted to take up the job, or stay in it. Finally, whilst
there are some economists who would argue that ‘boom’ and ‘bust’ are
‘normal’ features of an economy, and ‘a bust’ period is therefore part of a
sustainable economic cycle, this assertion needs to be measured against
other indices. These would include social effects of such ‘bust’ periods, such
as unemployment and a decline in the mental health and levels of well-being
felt by people in that society. If these are in decline, and other forms of
economic system can avoid such cycles (and this book will suggest there are
such systems), then it can be argued that the boom-and-bust economic
system can as a whole be described as unsustainable, or at the very least as
less sustainable than other systems.
For educational leaders this can be a highly useful discussion, as
educational systems are one subset of an overarching social system, and
such leaders therefore may learn valuable lessons for themselves, their
institutions, and educational systems through comparisons with other
systems.
Now the two principal stressors that all three areas have in common are:
(i) an excessive exploitation of their resources; and (ii) the introduction of
polluting substances, practices or ideas. Examples will be provided from a
subset of each of the major systems. For the environment, the ecological will
be chosen, for the economic, the financial sector, and for the social, the
educational. Stressors in each of these, it will be contended, lead to similar
crisis points, as actors find it increasingly difficult to adapt to rapid changes.
Educational leaders can then learn much from the existence of similar causes
in other systems – and from the likelihood of similar remedies.

(i) An excessive exploitation of resources
A first stressor then is when a system’s resources are over-extracted or
damaged to such an extent that there are indications of system collapse.
There are many indicators of this on ecological systems in the exploitation
of environmental resources. Diamond (2005) and Fagan (2004) both detail
how deforestation in wealthier parts of the world during its industrialization
phase is now being replicated in less-wealthy areas. Wilson (2003) documents
how fisheries in various areas around the world have collapsed over the last
few decades, whilst both Klare (2008) and Smith (2011) describe how
increasing demands for fresh water by industry, agriculture and expanding
populations have led to the over-exploitation of fossil-water. Whilst, because
of the expansion of fracking, the evidence underpinning reports of declining
oil exploitation (e.g. Strahan, 2007; Holmgren, 2009) is currently less robust
than previously, it still remains the case, as Smith (2011) argues, that filling
the energy gap until renewable energy resources are sufficiently developed
will mean the continued and extensive utilization of ‘dirty’ fossil energy
sources, and the consequent damage to ecological systems, due in some
countries to this increased use of fracking, as well as the expansion of
nuclear power, with the long-term problems of waste safeguarding. The
results of such over-exploitation are seen in effects on a variety of species.
Wilson (2003), Benton (2005) and Kolbert (2014) all argue that a sixth
great planetary species extinction is currently occurring, and for the first
time through the activities of just one species, with the possibility that over
one-fifth of plant and animal species may be extinct or on the verge of
extinction by 2030, and half of all species by the end of the century.
The stressor of excessive exploitation is also to be seen in the financial
sector, when money is over-borrowed and over-loaned. The basic principles
of banking rest on the relatively simple idea that banks borrow money from
savers at a rate below that at which they loan it back to borrowers. Crucial
to this process is their ability to assess the borrower’s ability to pay back the
loan – otherwise, of course, they place themselves in the unsustainable
financial position of having insufficient reserves. The global financial crisis
of 2007–8 was in large part caused by the breaking of this fundamental rule
(Cable, 2010; Harvey 2011; Heinberg, 2011). The liberalization of banking
regulations internationally, but particularly in countries such as the United
States and the UK , led a substantial number of banks to move from a
conservative approach to lending to one in which money was lent to ‘sub-
prime’ borrowers – those who had little or no equity, and therefore were
highly unlikely to be able to repay the debt. This error was compounded by
the abrogation of what are called the Basel rules (Brummer, 2009), the
internationally accepted banking code requiring banks to retain 8 per cent
of capital in reserve against the risk of defaulting loans. They avoided this
obligation through inventing extremely risky ways of holding less capital,
called ‘credit default swaps’. Such risky lending was compounded by the
banking practice of bundling all of these loans into packages, called
‘collateralized debt obligations’ (or CDO s), the risk content of which
became impossible to judge. These behaviours led to extremely heavy
financial resource exploitation, and also to many banks’ being unable to
judge the quality not only of their own loans, but those of other banks as
well. The result was that much of their own and others’ financial resources
were damaged, resulting not only in huge financial losses, but also in a (now
understandable) unwillingness to lend to others. The system consequently
had to be bailed out by national governments, and therefore by the taxpayer,
to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. This is then a very good
example of how the excessive exploitation of a resource – in this case, money
– can lead to severe damage and system malfunction.
The excessive exploitations of a resource – and consequent damage – are
seen not only in environmental and financial areas but can also be applied
to financial, physical and intellectual resources in educational systems. The

one most pertinent to a book on leadership sustainability is the human
resource employed in leading the ‘production’ of satisfactory results. The
international literature, reviewed in Chapter One, documents how over the
last three decades such human resource has come under increasing pressure
from forms of policy and management predicated upon low trust/high
accountability/high stakes testing regimes, with the intention of extracting
more work from them (e.g. Levin, 2003; Bottery et al., 2008; Wright, 2011;
Hammersley-Fletcher, 2015). The demands for increased worker flexibility
described by Brown and Lauder (2001) – numerical, temporal, functional
and locational – have intensified since they wrote, all have been seen in
education, resulting in what they call ‘the democratization of insecurity’.
The development of ‘bastard’ forms of educational leadership (Wright,
2002) has also been combined with the growth of ‘greedy organizations’
(Gronn, 2003), which have attempted to extract more time, more personal
commitment and more loyalty from their ‘human resources’ – all leading to
what Starr (2015) called ‘function creep’. The initiatives, the rush of policies
and the kinds of management delivering these can then combine to produce
what Galton and MacBeath (2008) call ‘initiative overload’, leading to
increased stress, earlier retirement and fewer individuals wishing to embrace
leadership positions (Rhodes and Brundrett, 2009; Reames et al., 2014).

(ii) The introduction of polluting substances
However, excessive resource exploitation does not only threaten the
sustainability of a system: its viability is also threatened when substances or
practices are introduced that undermine or pollute normal functioning. This
then is the second stressor: the introduction of inappropriate ideas, practices
or substances. However, once again, we need to recognize that ‘inappropriate’
is a value judgment which needs justifying. Such disruption is seen in all
three systems. Thus, in ecological systems, if species diversity is valued, the
introduction of both invasive non-native species and polluting substances
can have very damaging effects. The introduction of non-native species can
devastate native species simply because they have no natural protection. The
introduction of rats, for example, largely an accidental consequence of
human global expansion, was nevertheless a major contributory factor to
the extinction of the New Zealand moa and the Mauritian dodo. Moreover,
the introduction of species is hardly ever simple or linear – the introduction
of species a does not stop with the extinction of species b, as this extinction
usually has consequences for other species because of the complex inter-
linkages within an ecosystem. Wilson (2003, p. 38), for example, describes
how the introduction of the African big-headed ant into the Hawaiian
islands not only exterminated the majority of native insects in the lowlands,
but in so doing, prevented the pollination of plants by native species, leading

to the extinction of other dependent animal and plant species. Human
polluting activity, however, has been at least as stressful on existing
environmental systems. The increase of global industrial activity has led to
widespread and intensified forms of pollution, from the burning of fossil
fuels, and chemical and oil spillages, to nuclear and synthetic chemical leaks,
leading to increases in still births and cancers (Carson, 1962).
In the light of this discussion, the use in financial systems of the terms
‘toxic assets’ and ‘toxic debts’, to describe the effects of excessive and
inappropriate lending in the banking sector, is highly significant (Lanchester,
2010). Generated in large part by the uncritical adoption of neo-liberal
economic practices, such lending was described as toxic because the
individuals who took on such loans were in no position to pay them back,
and when the housing market ceased to be one of rising prices, banks could
no longer secure such loans against the value of the homes. Then, when large
numbers of banks defaulted and a sudden glut of housing came on the
market, house prices dropped rapidly, and these ‘assets’ suddenly became
toxic ‘debts’.
The problem, however, did not end there. As noted earlier, whilst
defaulting led to serious weaknesses in the banks’ finances, further ‘pollution’
to the system occurred as these loans had been packaged together into
collateralized debt obligations, the different elements of which could not be
separated, and which were then sold on to other institutions. The result was
that the creation of these polluting practices – the imprudent lending of
mortgages, and the creation of inter-organizational toxic loans – damaged
an essential element of the system, which was the trust between financial
institutions, and which led to the near collapse of entire financial systems.
In educational systems, whilst the consideration of ideas and practices
from other systems can be a valuable stimulus to new thinking, real damage
can occur when ideas are introduced that run against basic system principles.
The importation of non-educational values, particularly those of efficiency,
effectiveness and private interest, when they become the focus of practice,
can sideline central educational values such as communal and public good,
care, equity and trust. Barber (1984) and Grace (1994), for example, have
both argued that education empowering core citizenship values such as the
pursuit of community and public good have increasingly been replaced by
ones of individual self-interest and consumerism, with the result that
education has been transformed into something more resembling a
commodity to be used purely for individual and personal competitive
advantage. In like manner, the concept of trust, rather than viewed as a
foundational social and educational value forming a key component of
social capital, has been viewed by Fukuyama (1996) primarily as a predictor
of economic success. The problem here lies, as we shall see, in that market
values can undermine the very social and ethical foundations such as trusting
relationships upon which these same markets are based. And as evidence
continues to amass on rising wealth disparities over the last 20 years in

those countries most wedded to neo-liberal notions (Forbes, 2014; Facer,
2011; Dietz and O’Neil, 2013), the priority of need has increasingly been
supplanted by the priority of choice. Thus, in 2011 the OECD reported
(p. 1) that
[i]ncome inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past
half century. The average income of the richest 10% of the population is
about nine times that of the poorest 10% across the OECD, up from
seven times 25 years ago.
Similarly, Forbes (2014, p. 1) noted that ‘almost half the world’s wealth is
now owned by just 1 per cent of the population’, and that ‘the 85 richest
people in the world have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest’.
When this happens, education as a means of developing stronger notions
of public good, which are essential to the creation of more cooperative
attitudes to the reduction of current threats to sustainability, become
increasingly unlikely. Not only then is there real danger that key educational
values are subverted, but so are wider social ones, in particular an emphasis
on equity, a subversion that can and probably will threaten a wider social
sustainability, particularly if, as Wilkinson (1996) and Wilkinson and Pickett
(2009) demonstrate, the life expectancies of both poor and rich are lowest
in those countries with the greatest variation in incomes. Ideas and social
differences can then be just as threatening to the sustainability of social
systems as can physically polluting substances.
Reaching crisis point

Complex systems are capable of absorbing and adapting to many kinds of
stressful events. However, when changes within a system occur very rapidly
and/or very widely, actors within a system may not be capable of adapting
quickly enough, leading to widespread system collapse. A recent example of
a growing ecological systemic threat is the concern that global temperatures
may be changing too quickly for species’ adaptive capacity. Whilst there
is considerable debate here, there is increasing evidence of the likelihood
of more unpredictable, extreme and rapid climate change. Such rapidity is
supported by archaeological evidence from the collapse of previous
civilizations (Fagan, 2004; Diamond, 2005); from pollen samples from
ice-core extractions (Kunzig and Broeckner, 2008), and from fossil and
geological evidence that swift climate change has been a principal or
contributory cause of all five previous great species extinctions (Benton,
2003; Ward, 2008; Kolbert, 2014). The possibility that this threat may
reoccur, and do so in the near future, is now widely discussed (IPCC , 2014;
Lynas, 2008; Stern Report, 2006). Moreover, given the complex and
interdependent nature of environmental systems, the extinction of even

single species could have enormous ramifications for entire ecosystems.
Crisis points may also occur in financial systems when individuals cannot
react quickly enough to rapid change. Thus, when a bank gets into financial
difficulties, and if individuals are not quick enough in withdrawing their
money, they may suffer heavy losses. Whilst this kind of event has clear
parallels with those in natural systems, it is made more complex, as Wallace
and Fertig (2007) point out, by the fact that human beings can anticipate
and frame scenarios and then adopt behaviour to deal with these in ways
that other species cannot. Whilst this ability to frame scenarios may
sometimes be an advantage, it can also have the unfortunate effect of
producing the situation feared. Unfounded fears about a bank’s financial
health, for example, may lead to a run on its reserves, and produce the kind
of self-fulfilling prophecy seen in the Northern Rock bank crisis of 2007,
when customers withdrew £1 billion in a single day on the basis of false
reports about the Bank’s inability to borrow money to repay other loans.
Such financial panics generated by suspicions, hearsay and unfounded gossip
are historically well documented in investment markets as well: speculation
about the ill-health of a stock has also provoked the selling of stocks,
irrespective of the truth of rumours, making mere suspicion a damaging
reality.
Similar parallel situations can occur in educational systems, leading to a
lack of adaptive behaviour, and from there to crisis points. This is particularly
the case with what Bangs et al. (2011, p. 17) describe as ‘quick wins for
political purposes’ – the production of results in sufficient time for the next
election. Not only do these tend to take the form of top-down, low trust,
high-stakes testing, and punitive forms of accountability, but in addition the
time frames employed often leave little time for proper conceptualization,
and for modification to local contexts, which Fullan (1992), in a now classic
work, argued was essential for their sustainability. Moreover, their speed
also makes it extremely difficult for those who work at the front line of
practice, the ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky, 1980), to synchronize reforms
with personal survival systems. Just as much fast food is normally made
from poor quality materials, insufficient care is taken in its preparation, and
it has damaging long-term consequences, so do fast policies have similar
effects: they are likely to be insufficiently wicked in their preparatory
thinking and framing through insufficient time for attention to detail, are
likely to generate damaging consequences from a more than usual amount
of policy failure, and produce increased stress and lowered morale among
implementers. Crises in systemic sustainability due to such policies are then
likely, and it is significant in this context that Gillian Shepherd, former
English Secretary of State for Education, should say that had the
Conservatives known they would be in power for 18 years ‘the whole of the
reforms would have been completely different’ (quoted in Bangs et al., 2011,
p. 48). Here then is a senior minister forced like the rest to march to an
Another random document with
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Maître André le perruquier, l’auteur de cette réjouissante tragédie
du Tremblement de terre de Lisbonne (1756), qui le fit monter en un
clin d’œil au faîte de la gloire, et qu’il dédia sans façon à son cher
confrère, « l’illustre et célèbre poëte Voltaire », avait débuté par se
poser en rival de Boileau, et il lui en avait cuit ; c’est à lui qu’on doit
cette intéressante révélation dans la préface de sa pièce : « Je
m’appliquais dans ma jeunesse, dit-il, à faire de petites rimes
satiriques et des chansons, qui n’ont pas laissé de m’attirer quelques
bons coups de bâton. » Je soupçonne que maître André se vante,
pour mieux se poser en poëte.
La Morlière, le plus redoutable chef de cabale dont les
banquettes de la Comédie-Française aient gardé la mémoire, eut
souvent maille à partir avec maint auteur mécontent de ses
procédés, et, si l’on en croit Diderot, malgré ses airs de matamore il
ne payait pas de bravoure en pareille occurrence : « Ce chevalier de
la Morlière, lit-on dans le Neveu de Rameau…, que fait-il ? Tout ce
qu’il peut pour se persuader qu’il est un homme de cœur ; mais il est
lâche. Offrez-lui une croquignole sur le bout du nez, et il la recevra
en douceur. Voulez-vous lui faire baisser le ton ? Élevez-le ; montrez-
lui votre canne, ou appliquez votre pied entre ses fesses. »
Laus de Boissy fut, une nuit, très-cruellement bâtonné au Palais-
Royal, pour s’y être livré à des railleries inconvenantes contre
quelques personnes qui s’y promenaient, comme c’était alors la
grande mode pendant les soirs d’été (juillet 1776). Il tourna
l’aventure en plaisanterie, et ne trouva rien de mieux à faire, pour se
consoler, que d’adresser à l’Académie des Arcades de Rome, dont il
était membre, un petit poëme, dans le goût de l’Arioste, où il badinait
agréablement sur les coups qu’il avait reçus.
Je ne sais quelles étaient ces personnes qui s’offensèrent des
propos de Laus de Boissy, mais je gagerais que c’étaient des
femmes, et qu’on ne le châtia que pour avoir par trop dépassé la
limite honnête de la galanterie, péché mignon de tous les
étourneaux du dix-huitième siècle. Plus d’un auteur râpé dut payer
alors ses bonnes fortunes sur son dos et ses épaules, comme cet
amant clandestin de mademoiselle Allard la danseuse, — peut-être
un poëte, lui aussi, — que l’amant en titre de la dame, monseigneur
le duc de Mazarin, fit bâtonner de si belle façon, en attendant qu’il
eût lui-même la tête cassée par un rival ; ou comme M. de la
Popelinière, dont la renommée de financier a effacé celle d’auteur, et
qui, dit-on, fut traité de la même sorte, et pour la même cause, par le
prince de Carignan [69] .
[69] Gazette noire, p. 159.
En 1783, il se passa une scène étrange au théâtre d’Orléans. Au

milieu d’une représentation, plusieurs jeunes gens s’élancent du
parterre sur la scène, s’emparent des actrices et leur donnent le
fouet, sous prétexte qu’ils étaient mécontents de leur jeu, mais peut-
être pour d’autres raisons plus intimes qu’il ne nous appartient pas
d’approfondir [70] . Comment eût-on respecté les actrices quand elles
se respectaient si peu elles-mêmes ? Quelque temps auparavant, on
avait vu mademoiselle Allard donner, en plein théâtre, des coups de
pied à mademoiselle Peslin, qui répondait sans façon par un coup
de poing [71] . Tel était l’atticisme de ces dames.
[70] Mémoir. secr., t. XXII, p. 375.
[71] Morande, Philosop. cyniq., p. 20.
A la suite d’un concert où il avait déployé tous les charmes de sa

magnifique voix, Caffarielli fut régalé à Rome, dans l’antichambre du
cardinal Albani, de coups de nerfs de bœuf, par les estafiers de
l’Éminence, en retour du sans-façon dédaigneux avec lequel il avait
fait attendre les plus illustres personnages de la ville éternelle. Et
l’assemblée du salon applaudissait à ses cris aigus, comme elle
venait d’applaudir à son grand air, en répétant : « Bravo, Caffarielli !
Bravo, Caffarielli ! »
Combien d’autres bâtonnés nous aurions à citer encore, si l’on
avait eu le temps de noter au passage toutes les aventures du
même genre dont furent victimes les bohèmes de la littérature
d’alors, pauvres diables d’auteurs affamés et cyniques, insectes et
vermisseaux des sous-sols de la poésie, populace grouillante et
fourmillante de la plume, piliers du Caveau [72] , de Procope, de
Gradot, de la veuve Laurent, de la Régence, de tous les cafés et
tripots littéraires, où ils s’attablaient pour cabaler, discuter, lire ou
entendre des vers, siffler ou applaudir, en attendant que le chevalier
de la Morlière vînt les enrégimenter contre la pièce nouvelle de la
Comédie-Française, ou qu’un exempt les conduisît au Fort-
l’Évêque ! Combien de bâtonnés aussi, comme leur patron fameux,
parmi ces Arétins de mièvre encolure, ces enfants perdus de la
calomnie par la presse, ces pères nourriciers de l’ignoble chantage,
ces loups-cerviers du pamphlet, vivant d’une plume empoisonnée
qui faisait mourir leurs victimes, — les Chevrier, les Morande, les
Drigaud, les Dulaurens, les Groubentall, et tant d’autres éhontés
coquins, dont le Neveu de Rameau reste le prototype [73] , —
parfaitement résignés à un soufflet, voire à un coup de pied, et s’en
frottant les mains, pourvu que la chose leur fût payée en beaux écus
comptants !
[72] On peut voir une scène de coups de canne qui
eut lieu au Caveau entre le maître de l’établissement,
Dubuisson, et M. de Brignoles, dans la Corresp. secr.,
XIV, 232 ; 10 avril 1783.
[73] « J’étais leur petit Rameau, leur joli Rameau, leur
Rameau le fou, l’impertinent, l’ignorant, le paresseux, le
gourmand, le bouffon, la grosse bête. Il n’y avait pas une
de ces épithètes qui ne me valût un sourire, une caresse,
un petit coup sur l’épaule, un soufflet, un coup de pied, à
table un bon morceau qu’on me jetait sur mon assiette. »
(Diderot, le Neveu de Rameau.)
Honnête journaliste,
disait un vaudeville du temps, attribué à Collé,
Amusant nouvelliste,
Brochurier à pamphlets,
Changez toutes ces têtes,
Ces intrigantes têtes,
Changez toutes ces têtes,
Têtes à camouflets [74] .
[74] Ce vaudeville devint le type d’une foule d’autres

qui coururent alors. L’un d’eux s’attira en réponse un
pamphlet, daté par l’auteur de « chez Démocrite Bras de
Fer, au coin de la rue des Étrivières. » (Janvier 1784). Ce
genre de réplique était encore admis par l’usage.
Têtes à camouflets ! Le mot est juste et bien trouvé dans sa

trivialité énergique. Mais nous tombons ici dans la lie de l’histoire
littéraire. Ces hommes ne sont plus des écrivains qu’on outrage, ce
sont des drôles qu’on châtie, et nous n’avons rien à y voir. Est-il
besoin, d’ailleurs, de répéter ici que nous ne prétendons nullement
dresser une nomenclature complète ? La chose n’est certes pas
possible, et, le fût-elle, nous n’y prétendrions pas davantage.
XI
En dehors de ces quelques exemples, la toute-puissance du

bâton commence à être contestée. Les gens de lettres redressent la
tête sous l’insulte ; ils ne reconnaissent plus la brutale supériorité de
la force qui les tenait courbés autrefois. Il leur faut une réparation
d’honneur, et, pour l’avoir, ils en appellent les uns à leur épée, les
autres à la loi [75] . L’épée et la loi, récusées d’abord, ne tardent pas
à être reçues en leur faveur. La première, c’est peu de chose : elle
ne prouvait rien que le courage personnel de ceux qui s’en
servaient. La seconde, c’est beaucoup plus et beaucoup mieux : elle
prouvait les changements de l’opinion et le progrès de la condition
littéraire.
[75] Démosthène, frappé publiquement d’un coup de
poing à la joue, sur le théâtre, au milieu des fêtes de
Bacchus, pendant qu’il remplissait ses fonctions de
chorége, par Midias, citoyen riche et puissant, forma
d’abord une plainte devant le peuple, qui condamna
Midias, puis composa, pour être prononcé devant les
juges, le vigoureux discours que nous avons encore. Si
Molière, Voltaire, Beaumarchais, etc., avaient imité
Démosthène, la langue française aurait bien des pages
éloquentes de plus.
Il y a une aventure du chevalier de Boufflers qui rappelle en

beaucoup de points celle de cet auteur que nous avons vu plus haut
battu de verges par les actrices de la Comédie-Italienne. Le
chevalier avait fait, contre certaine marquise infidèle, une épigramme
qui avait couru. A quelque temps de là, la grande dame sollicite une
réconciliation, et lui demande de venir la sceller à sa table. Il y va,
mais des pistolets dans sa poche, en homme prudent et qui
connaissait la partie adverse. A peine arrivé, il est saisi par quatre
forts gaillards de laquais, qui, sous les yeux de la marquise, lui
meurtrissent les reins de cinquante coups de verges. Jusque-là,
c’est tout à fait l’histoire de notre auteur ; mais voici un dénoûment
auquel celui-ci n’avait pas songé. Boufflers se relève, se rajuste
avec sang-froid ; puis, tirant ses pistolets de sa poche, il ordonne
aux laquais, en les couchant en joue, de rendre à leur maîtresse ce
qu’ils venaient de lui donner à lui-même. Il fallut bien se résoudre
des deux parts, et le chevalier compta scrupuleusement les coups.
Après quoi, mais c’est un mince détail, il les força à se les repasser
l’un à l’autre. Puis il salua avec grâce et sortit [76] .
[76] Chronique scandal., t. III.
Le chevalier de Roncherolles, s’étant reconnu dans un vaudeville

de Champcenetz sur les jeunes gens du siècle (1783), déclara, en
présence de plusieurs officiers aux gardes, que l’auteur méritait des
coups de bâton. Mais Champcenetz était plutôt homme à en donner
qu’à en recevoir : cette année même, il l’avait bien prouvé à
Morande, en châtiant une de ses nouvelles insolences par les mains
des valets de la Comédie-Française. Le lendemain donc, il alla
demander raison au chevalier et se battit avec lui [77] . Il est vrai que,
comme Boufflers, quoiqu’à un moindre degré, Champcenetz était
gentilhomme et de bonne maison, et l’on dira peut-être que c’était le
sang du patricien, et non celui du poëte, qui se révoltait en lui à ce
propos d’un autre âge. Mais bien des écrivains et des artistes de
profession, qui n’avaient pas même toujours la particule, se
montrèrent tout aussi gentilshommes en pareille occurrence.
[77] Mémoir. secr., t. XXII, p. 30, 11 janv. 1783.
Longtemps auparavant, à une époque où les préjugés nobiliaires

ne s’étaient pas encore abaissés devant ces grands principes
d’égalité civile et sociale que la Révolution devait si définitivement
implanter parmi nous ; lorsque les traditions du règne de Louis XIV,
mort depuis dix ans à peine, régnaient encore dans toute leur
vigueur, Voltaire, un simple petit bourgeois, avait donné le même
exemple de révolte contre un impudent outrage, et il ne tint pas à lui
de le pousser aussi loin que le gentilhomme Champcenetz. Il dînait
chez le duc de Sully, en compagnie du chevalier de Rohan : celui-ci,
nourri dans les habitudes de l’ancienne cour et ne soupçonnant pas
qu’un poëte pût servir à autre chose qu’à amuser les grands
seigneurs qui daignaient l’admettre à leur table, laissa tomber
quelques persiflages de mauvais ton sur l’auteur de la Henriade, qui
lui répondit par une de ces épigrammes comme il en savait faire.
« Quel est donc, demande le chevalier, ce jeune homme qui parle si
haut ? — Un homme, répond fièrement Voltaire, qui honore le nom
qu’il porte, lorsque tant d’autres traînent le leur dans la boue. » Outré
de cette hardiesse, le chevalier donne des ordres à ses gens, et,
quelques jours après, comme Voltaire dînait de nouveau chez le
duc, il est attiré, sous je ne sais quel prétexte, à la porte de l’hôtel ;
des laquais déguisés s’emparent de lui, le frappent à grands coups
de bâton, jusqu’à ce que leur maître, qui assistait incognito à cette
exécution sauvage, leur fasse signe que cela suffit. Ils se sauvent
alors, laissant le poëte à moitié mort.
Le duc de Sully était premier ministre, c’était à sa porte et sur un
de ses invités qu’on venait de se livrer à cet acte barbare et lâche : il
ne s’en inquiéta point pourtant, et le parlement demeura muet. Les
temps n’étaient pas encore mûrs. Mais Voltaire voulut suppléer au
silence de la justice. D’abord malade de honte et de rage, il
s’enferme, et apprend à fond l’escrime et l’anglais, l’un pour sa
vengeance, l’autre pour l’exil qu’il prévoit. Puis, par l’intermédiaire
d’un garçon de Procope, qu’il avait décrassé afin de s’en servir
comme d’un second, il envoie un cartel au chevalier, qui accepte
pour le lendemain, et, dans la nuit, le fait enfermer à la Bastille [78] .
[78] Chronique scandaleuse, 3e vol.
Lorsqu’il en sortit, au bout de six mois, Voltaire, qui avait la
mémoire tenace, se remit en quête de son adversaire ; mais celui-ci
se cacha si bien, que le poëte dut partir pour son exil d’Angleterre,
avant de l’avoir revu [79] .
[79] Vie de Voltaire, par Condorcet. — Voltaire, par
Eug. Noël, p. 37.
Se venger ainsi des insolences d’un grand seigneur, voilà ce qui

ne serait jamais venu en tête à un auteur du dix-septième siècle, fût-
ce à M. de Boissat, qui avait pourtant sur Voltaire trois grands
avantages, en pareil cas, puisqu’il était académicien, gentilhomme
lui-même, et bretteur de première force.
Il devait être donné au duc de Chaulnes de dépasser encore le
chevalier de Rohan, dans sa querelle avec Beaumarchais, en 1773.
Le noble pair soupçonnait l’écrivain d’être préféré par une actrice de
la Comédie-Italienne, mademoiselle Ménard, qu’il protégeait. Haut et
puissant personnage, d’une violence de caractère égale à sa force
corporelle, il entra en fureur quand il apprit que le fils d’un horloger,
un petit écrivain de drames bourgeois et larmoyants, était son rival
en amour, et forma le projet de le tuer, jurant, avec des serments
effroyables, qu’il voulait boire son sang et lui arracher le cœur à la
force des dents. Il faut lire dans le livre de M. de Loménie [80] les
détails ignobles de la bataille de porte-faix engagée par le grand
seigneur contre l’auteur d’Eugénie, les soufflets et les coups qu’il
commence par donner, dans un fiacre, au poëte Gudin de la
Brenellerie, l’ami de celui-ci, sa lutte à bras-le-corps contre
Beaumarchais dont il déchire le visage et arrache la peau du front,
enfin vingt autres particularités non moins monstrueuses que je n’ai
point le courage de rapporter ici, tant elles me soulèvent le cœur de
dégoût. Et, le dimanche suivant, il osait, dans le foyer de la
Comédie-Française, demander à haute voix le silence, pour raconter
sa conduite, et la justifier à sa façon [81] . Mais le rang et le nom du
duc de Chaulnes, les ménagements singuliers apportés par un
timide commissaire de police dans sa déposition sur cette affaire, ne
purent sauver le pair de France d’un emprisonnement au château de
Vincennes, en vertu d’une lettre de cachet.
[80] Beaumarchais et son Temps, t. I, ch. X.
[81] Nouvelles à la main, Mss., de Pidansat de
Mairobert, 18 février 1773.
Le 8 juin 1781, Mozart, que son patron, l’archevêque de

Saltzbourg, traitait habituellement comme le dernier des laquais, fut
jeté à la porte par le comte d’Arco, avec un coup de pied, et il
écrivait à son père que, partout où il rencontrerait celui-ci, il lui
rendrait la pareille [82] .
[82] Biographie nouvelle de Mozart, par Otto Jahn. 3e
volume.
Nous verrons mieux encore. Voici, par exemple, non plus un

grand poëte qui demande raison à un gentilhomme d’un indigne
outrage, non plus un artiste illustre dont le sang bouillonne aux
insultes d’un manant titré, mais un simple valet de comédie, devenu
auteur par la suite, qui bâtonne un maître des requêtes et soufflette
un marquis. Ce hardi bouffon toujours prompt à la riposte, de la
langue ou de la main, se nommait Dugazon.
M. Caze, fils d’un fermier général, et maître des requêtes,
comme nous venons de le dire, était amoureux de madame
Dugazon, avec laquelle il entretenait un commerce clandestin.
L’acteur finit par s’en douter, et, non content d’avoir forcé le jeune
homme, en lui mettant le pistolet sur la gorge, de lui rendre les
lettres et le portrait de sa femme, il se vengea par un procédé qui
semble un ressouvenir d’une scène de son répertoire, celle où
Scapin frappe à coups redoublés sur le sac où s’est caché Géronte.
Laissons parler encore ici les Mémoires secrets [83] :
[83] XII, p. 86, 18 août 1778.
« Il y a quelques jours qu’après la Comédie Italienne, M. Caze,

se trouvant sur le théâtre, Dugazon l’aperçoit, laisse s’écouler la
foule, et, dans un moment où personne ne le regardait, il applique
presto un ou deux coups de canne sur les épaules du maître des
requêtes, puis se remet en posture. M. Caze se retourne, voit son
rival, fait des menaces. On ne sait ce que cela veut dire, on
approche. Dugazon, sans se déconcerter, lui demande qu’il
s’explique. Le magistrat, perdant la tête de rage, lui répond qu’il est
un assassin qui vient de lui donner des coups de canne. L’acteur le
persifle, prétend que cela n’est pas possible, qu’un histrion comme
lui n’aurait jamais cette effronterie ; bref, n’y ayant pas de témoins,
cela n’a pas d’autres suites. Jusqu’à présent, il n’y a guère de quoi
rire ; mais ce qu’on ne pardonne pas au sieur Dugazon, c’est que,
s’enhardissant du succès de son rôle…, il s’est vanté des coups de
canne, dans différents soupers, et en présence de beaucoup de
spectateurs. »
La seconde aventure fut plus grave et dut encore son origine à la
conduite fort légère de madame Dugazon. En ce temps-là,
l’adorateur en titre de la dame était le marquis de Langeac, de triste
renommée. Irrité d’une expression injurieuse dont l’avait qualifié le
comédien dans une lettre de reproches à sa femme, le marquis
prétendit, en plein salon, devant une réunion nombreuse, qu’il le
rouerait de coups de bâton. Comme il disait ces mots, entre
Dugazon qui va droit à lui, et s’enquiert poliment du jour où il se
propose de le traiter ainsi, afin de se mettre en mesure de lui
répondre avec la même arme. M. de Langeac lance un soufflet à
l’acteur qui se jette sur lui, le lui rend à usure, et ne se fût pas arrêté
de sitôt, si on ne les eût séparés [84] .
[84] C’est sans doute la même aventure qui se trouve
racontée, avec quelques variantes, dans Bachaumont
(XIV, p. 58), et la Chronique scandaleuse, I, p. 3. Un fait
qui montre mieux que celui-là combien les acteurs
commençaient à se relever, dans leurs rapports avec les
grands personnages, c’est la réponse, pleine à la fois de
dignité et de présence d’esprit, adressée par Carlin au
prince de Monaco, qui l’avait interpellé en scène pour lui
reprocher de laisser trop longtemps à ses genoux, dans
une situation dramatique, l’actrice Caroline dont il était
épris. Au temps où le marquis de Sablé souffletait
Dancourt sur la scène, la chose eût paru toute simple ;
mais cette fois ce fut l’acteur qui humilia le prince, et le
public, par ses huées et ses applaudissements, donna
tort au prince et raison à l’acteur.
La chose en resta là. On prétendit que M. de Langeac ne pouvait

se mesurer avec un baladin. Il était habitué, d’ailleurs, à pareilles
aventures, et quelques années avant, en 1771, il avait reçu avec la
même résignation une grêle de coups de pied et de coups de poing
administrés par Guérin, chirurgien du prince de Conti, qu’il avait
traité de gredin et menacé de faire bâtonner par ses gens, parce que
celui-ci avait regardé sa maîtresse d’une façon qui ne lui plaisait pas.
Aussi, comme on demandait ce qu’il allait faire du soufflet de
Dugazon : « Parbleu ! dit un plaisant, il le mettra avec les autres. »
En 1780, on vit un maçon venir interpeller en plein tribunal un
conseiller au parlement, son débiteur, dont il ne pouvait se faire
payer, et, peu satisfait de ses paroles évasives, lui donner deux
soufflets dans le sanctuaire même de la justice.
Un conseiller au parlement souffleté par un maçon ; un marquis
ayant le brevet de colonel et chevalier de Saint-Louis, battu à plates
coutures par un chirurgien et un valet de comédie ! Il fallait que la
Révolution fût bien proche !
On ne me fera pas l’injure de croire que j’ai rapporté ces scènes
dégoûtantes pour les approuver. Je ne les raconte que comme
symptômes des temps. Ce sont des documents qu’il n’était guère
permis de passer sous silence dans ce travail. Duels ou bâtonnades,
nous n’aimons guère plus les uns que les autres : c’est encore et
toujours le triomphe de la force, et qu’importe qu’elle soit aujourd’hui
pour les écrivains, puisqu’elle peut demain, et avec le même droit,
se retourner contre eux ? Mais, du jour où la loi se prononce pour les
auteurs opprimés, de ce jour seulement ils peuvent lever la tête,
parce que ce n’est plus une vengeance individuelle, c’est la justice
qui leur vient ; ce n’est plus un fait sans conséquence, le fait du
hasard, de la brutalité, du courage d’un homme ; c’est la sanction
officielle et la consécration de leurs droits, de leur dignité morale. Ils
peuvent ne pas avoir pour eux la force périssable du corps, ils ont la
force impérissable de l’opinion et de la pensée publique.
Cette consécration fut lente à venir. Elle était inscrite depuis
longtemps sans doute dans la théorie ; mais, de la théorie à
l’application, il y a souvent plus loin que de la coupe aux lèvres. Je
ne sache pas que la loi, chargée de sauvegarder contre la violence
les intérêts des moindres citoyens, eût fait une exception pour les
poëtes ; mais l’usage se chargeait souvent de compléter les lois et
d’y introduire des amendements singuliers : c’était l’usage qui
semblait avoir définitivement concédé aux gentilshommes le droit de
bâtonner les écrivains à merci.
Une des premières fois que nous voyons la justice intervenir
ouvertement dans ces débats, pour faire son devoir, ce fut, vers
1770, à l’occasion de Fleury, c’est-à-dire d’un simple comédien,
encore peu connu. Un soir, en revenant de jouer Tancrède sur le
théâtre de Versailles, il se vit assailli par une nuée de jeunes gens
armés de bâtons. Il s’agissait encore d’une rivalité d’amour, la
grande source de la plupart des aventures de ce genre. On voulait le
punir d’avoir été préféré par une actrice, que convoitaient tous les
officiers du lieu. Fleury était brave : il se défendit comme il put,
tandis que son domestique criait au secours. La patrouille arriva et
prit cinq jeunes gens qu’elle conduisit en prison. Ils appartenaient à
de grandes familles, et faisaient partie de la maison du roi, mais
Louis XV lui-même, résistant à toutes les supplications dont on le
circonvint, voulut que la justice eût son cours. On peut voir dans les
Mémoires de Fleury [85] tout ce que tentèrent près de lui les parents
des accusés et le duc de Duras pour l’engager à abandonner sa
plainte, et comment l’histrion fit honte aux gentilshommes, en allant
leur dire dans la prison :
[85] T. I, ch. VIII, éd. in-12.
« Messieurs, vous avez voulu m’assassiner… Venez me

combattre l’un après l’autre, ou soyons amis. »
Que le rédacteur de ces piquants Mémoires ait, à son insu,
donné une couleur un peu trop épique à cette scène ; que, par une
réminiscence théâtrale, il ait drapé son héros à la façon d’Auguste
pardonnant à Cinna, c’est possible, et je le veux bien. Mais il n’en
est pas moins vrai que l’opinion publique et celle même de la cour
s’étaient prononcées en sa faveur, et qu’il n’eût tenu qu’à lui de faire
condamner par-devant tribunal les auteurs du guet-apens. C’est tout
ce qu’il nous faut.
Dix ans plus tard, un danseur de l’Opéra, Nivelon, obtenait la
même justice, pour avoir été battu par M. de Clugny, qui lui avait
cassé sa canne sur le corps. Et pourtant le délit semblait excusable,
car Nivelon s’était permis de mystifier M. de Clugny et de répondre
insolemment à ses représentations, sans doute peu civiles. De plus,
fils lui-même d’un homme qui avait rempli les plus hautes fonctions
dans l’État, c’était en compagnie des fils de deux ministres que ce
dernier s’était vengé de la sorte, ce qui n’empêcha pas que, sur la
déposition du danseur et de ses camarades, l’affaire prit une grave
tournure, et que le roi exila impitoyablement le coupable [86] .
[86] Mémoir. secr., t. XV, p. 298, 25 août 1780.
On sait la réponse de Piron à un grand seigneur, qui,

reconduisant une personne de qualité, le rencontra à la porte de son
appartement. Celle-ci s’arrêtait par politesse pour laisser entrer
l’écrivain : « Passez, passez, fit l’amphitryon, ce n’est qu’un poëte. »
Piron n’hésite pas : « Puisque les qualités sont connues, dit-il, je
prends mon rang. » Et il va devant, en mettant son chapeau sur sa
tête. Il n’y avait pas là une simple boutade sans conséquence et
sans portée : c’était, en quelque sorte, la proclamation ex abrupto
des droits de l’homme du poëte et de l’écrivain. Il avait fallu, si je
l’ose dire, toute une révolution littéraire et politique à la fois pour
rendre ces quelques mots possibles, sans que le grand seigneur
chargeât son suisse de jeter l’insolent à la porte à coups de
hallebarde.
Du reste, ceci n’est pas un fait isolé dans la vie de Piron. Malgré
ses folies de jeunesse et l’extrême licence de quelques-unes de ses
productions, malgré ses démêlés bouffons surtout avec les gens de
Beaune, où il faillit plus d’une fois faire connaissance avec le bâton,
et avec mieux que cela, on sait qu’il eut l’orgueil de sa profession et
qu’en général il porta haut la conscience de la dignité des lettres.
Dans sa Métromanie [87] , au moment où Baliveau lève la canne sur
son neveu l’auteur, celui-ci désarme d’un mot l’irascible capitoul, qui
confesse son tort, et il part de là pour plaider aussitôt la cause de
l’écrivain et pour montrer, dans une brillante et chaleureuse
apologie, la noblesse de la profession littéraire. Puis, dans une des
scènes suivantes, Piron nous montre son poëte tirant l’épée pour
demander raison d’une insulte ; et, personne ne l’ignore, c’était lui-
même que l’auteur avait peint dans le principal personnage de sa
comédie.
[87] III, sc. 7.
Poursuivons encore, et nous verrons le mouvement des esprits

se dessiner de plus en plus dans le même sens. Cette fois c’est
Sedaine qui se trouve en présence de M. de la Ferté, intendant des
Menus, le même que nous avons déjà rencontré plus haut. Après la
représentation de son opéra-comique intitulé Albert, sur le théâtre de
Fontainebleau, Sedaine, mécontent de la mise en scène de la pièce,
se livra à des réflexions amères, qui, rapportées au grand seigneur,
enflammèrent sa bile. Il arriva furieux, criant : « Où est Sedaine ? —
La Ferté, dit résolûment celui-ci, Monsieur Sedaine est ici. Que lui
voulez-vous ? » On peut juger de ce que devint un dialogue entamé
sur ce ton. Le poëte-maçon tint tête à l’intendant des Menus, et
répondit à ses injures avec une dignité hautaine, lui disant, assure-t-
on, les vérités les plus dures. Au dix-septième siècle, M. de la Ferté,
qui n’était pas d’humeur facile, comme nous l’avons vu, eût brisé sa
canne sur l’audacieux rimailleur qui osait parler si fièrement à un
homme, doublement son supérieur par sa naissance comme par ses
fonctions. En 1786, les courtisans s’égayèrent aux dépens de la
Ferté ; l’Académie ne s’abstint de réclamer une réparation d’honneur
pour son membre que parce qu’elle l’estima suffisamment vengé par
l’approbation de la reine ; enfin celle-ci, après avoir écouté la
justification de M. de la Ferté, ne lui répliqua que par ces paroles
caractéristiques : « Lorsque le roi et moi parlons à un écrivain, nous
l’appelons toujours Monsieur. Quant au fond de votre différend, il
n’est pas fait pour nous intéresser. »
Du mot de Piron, commenté et confirmé par ce mot de la reine,
date l’émancipation de l’homme de lettres. Dès lors on le met à la
Bastille, — ou on le guillotine, — lorsqu’on croit avoir à s’en plaindre,
mais on ne le bâtonne plus. Il y a là un incontestable progrès.
Ce n’a point été sans une profonde répugnance que j’ai remué
toutes ces ordures du siècle, qui donnent à cette partie de l’histoire
littéraire et artistique la physionomie d’un égout : il m’a fallu la
conviction de faire une œuvre méritoire en portant la lumière au
milieu de ces turpitudes de tout genre, qui doivent nous instruire en
nous humiliant, nous autres écrivains d’aujourd’hui. Plus d’une fois
j’ai senti une violente tentation de soulever la tête au-dessus de ces
miasmes, pour respirer un air plus pur en meilleure compagnie, et je
tiens à constater ici, pour qu’on ne m’accuse pas d’un pessimisme
systématique, que je l’aurais pu sans beaucoup de peine. Il est des
vies littéraires, comme celle de Vauvenargues, qui semblent faites
exprès pour consoler les regards attristés, par la réunion des plus
hautes qualités morales, et du respect qui en est la récompense : il
est bon, à la suite de cette excursion à travers les mœurs souillées
du dix-huitième siècle, de s’arrêter un moment à un nom pareil, qui
suffit à purifier ces pages. De ces vies découle une leçon qui doit
être jointe à toutes celles dont ce petit livre abonde. Voilà le type du
véritable écrivain, et celui-là n’a jamais été et ne sera jamais le héros
d’une chronique scandaleuse comme celle qu’on vient de lire.
Il ne faut pas, bien entendu, voir dans cette phrase une
condamnation absolue des auteurs bâtonnés, condamnation qui
serait par là même une espèce d’acquittement pour la sauvage
brutalité de leurs bourreaux. Seulement il est impossible de ne point
remarquer combien toutes ces fustigations, qui, autrefois,
lorsqu’elles s’attaquaient à Racine, à Molière, voire à Boileau,
n’avaient nulle atténuation à leur honte, peuvent le plus souvent, au
dix-huitième siècle, trouver une excuse, — bien insuffisante, il est
vrai, — soit dans le nom méprisé et les habitudes de celui qu’elles
atteignent, soit dans l’acte qui les a provoquées. On l’a vu, — et
peut-être a-t-on été tenté de croire alors que je m’écartais du sujet,
— presque toujours, depuis que nous sommes entrés dans ce
siècle, c’est sur un terrain autre que le terrain littéraire, c’est pour un
autre délit qu’un pur délit de plume, que le bâton est en jeu, et il en
sera ainsi, à plus forte raison, désormais que, par suite de l’égalité
civile enracinée dans nos mœurs, et de l’honneur croissant accordé
aux lettres, il n’est plus loisible, fût-ce à un Rohan, de bâtonner le
moindre des vilains, simplement parce qu’il tient une plume.
XII
Nous voici arrivés au dix-neuvième siècle : c’est dire que notre

tâche est enfin terminée. Grâce au ciel, le bâton est aujourd’hui une
royauté complètement déchue, et ce brutal Deus ex machinâ n’ose
plus apparaître pour dénouer les drames ou les comédies de la vie
littéraire. Non pas sans doute qu’il n’y ait plus de poëtes crottés, de
cyniques écrivains plus ou moins bâtonnables ; mais ceux-là même,
il n’y a plus de grands seigneurs pour les bâtonner. L’aristocratie de
la naissance et celle de la plume ont fait chacune un pas en sens
inverse, si bien qu’elles ont fini par se rencontrer, marchant de pair
sur un terrain uni. Le niveau général des mœurs littéraires s’est de
beaucoup élevé. L’écrivain n’est plus un valet ni un parasite, le fou
de cour de monseigneur le premier ministre, ni l’épagneul de
madame la marquise. Le haut personnage et le petit bourgeois n’ont
pas plus d’autorité l’un que l’autre sur lui : tous deux font, au même
titre, partie du public, son seul maître, s’il est vrai qu’il ait un maître.
Tous sont égaux devant la plume : à ses attaques, les uns, — ce
sont presque toujours les plus sages, — répondent par le silence ;
les autres, par l’épée ; d’autres encore en appellent à la justice ou à
la plume elle-même. Personne ne songe à l’argument du bâton. Ni
l’opinion, ni les lois, qui protégent aujourd’hui les gens de lettres
autant que les portiers, ne badineraient plus sur ces passe-temps
d’un autre siècle, et je doute qu’il se trouvât encore quelque poëte
en belle humeur pour chanter, dans d’ingénieuses épigrammes, ces
petits inconvénients du métier.
Que Talma, poussé à bout par les sarcasmes de Geoffroy, se
soit, pendant une représentation, précipité dans sa loge, et l’ait
souffleté, suivant les uns, lui ait violemment serré et tordu le poignet,
suivant d’autres [88] , ce n’était pas à l’écrivain, mais à l’insulteur que
s’adressait le grand tragédien, qui avait trop le respect des lettres
pour n’avoir pas celui de la critique et des littérateurs. Et puis ce ne
fut là qu’un invincible et irréfléchi mouvement d’indignation, non plus
au nom d’une prétendue supériorité de race, mais d’égal à égal, et
pour venger une injure personnelle.
[88] Mademoiselle Contat ne se montra pas plus
résignée que Talma, et l’éventail de la célèbre actrice
vengea ses injures sur la joue de l’abbé Geoffroy.
Qu’une Lola-Montès, ou quelque autre femme de cette race, ait

cravaché tel journaliste qui avait porté atteinte à sa considération,
c’est un accident en dehors des mœurs générales, comme la
créature à laquelle on le doit.
Que le czar Alexandre Ier ait fait, dit-on, donner des coups de
fouet ou de knout au poëte Pouschkine pour le punir des libertés de
sa plume, cela ne regarde que les Russes, et ceux qui ont affaire à
des czars.
S’il y a d’autres exemples, que j’ignore, je n’éprouve ni le besoin
ni l’envie de les ravir à l’obscurité salutaire sous laquelle ils se
cachent.
Dernièrement, nous assure-t-on, au milieu d’un dîner, un jeune et
noble fabricant de romans-feuilletons se serait écrié : « Je suis
honteux de faire de la littérature, quand je pense que mes aïeux ont
bâtonné les gens de lettres. » Nous aimons à croire que les fumées
du vin avaient obscurci l’étroit cerveau du jeune homme, lorsqu’il se
livra à cette gasconnade, dont nous ignorons l’effet sur les convives.
Qu’il se rassure d’ailleurs ! Outre que ses aïeux n’ont probablement
bâtonné personne, il peut se tenir pour certain qu’il ne fait pas et n’a
jamais fait de littérature : c’est pour cela sans doute qu’il est honteux
de sa plume, et il a raison. S’il en faisait, ses aïeux, mieux avisés
aujourd’hui qu’autrefois, auraient droit d’être fiers de lui.
FIN.
TABLE
DES PRINCIPAUX ÉCRIVAINS ET
ARTISTES
BATONNÉS [89] .
[89] Je prends le mot bâtonnés dans son sens le plus

large, c’est-à-dire comme synonyme de battus, même
quand on s’est borné à la menace, pourvu qu’elle ait été
publique et sérieuse.
Amant (Saint-), 23.

André (Maître), 207.
Ange (Saint-), 172-5.
Archiloque, 114.
Arétin, 70-1.
Audinot, 201.
Baculard (D’Arnaud-), 175.
Balzac, 49-50.
Barthe, 185-7.
Bautru, 38-41.
Beaumarchais, 203, 223-4.

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PART ONE Describing and Identifying the

2 The meanings of sustainability and the dynamics of its

4 Efficiency, sufficiency and educational leadership 53

PART TWO Global Drivers of Unsustainability 69

5 Cultures of economic growth and consumption 71

6 Global energy challenges 93

7 Climate change and the assessment of evidence 113

8 Emerging population patterns: impacts and responses 135

PART THREE Towards a Leadership for

10 The leadership of well-being 175

11 The futures of educational leadership 189

Introduction: A leadership of pressure

such as Fullan (1997) in Canada and the US , Williams (2001) in Canada,

Principals have always had mandates—federal, state, and district. But

Global evidence is clear – lack of control and autonomy in your job

if individuals are constantly asked to do more with less. Again, whilst

species of animals in the near future is increasingly seen as gloomy and

Sustainability through the greater

Educational leadership and the evaluation of

important role lies in exploring the methods that need to be used in

global temperatures, higher carbon dioxide concentrations, the declining

An educational leadership response

The Meanings of Sustainability

Creating greater sustainability: Maintenance

Business influences on the definition

exceptional individual’. The danger of such an approach then lies not

Sustainability and educational leadership

and has the ability to endure constant changes in the conceptualization of

It then seems significant that in a recent US study on the factors influencing

needs to be created for an educational culture to be changed to allow such

Environmental influences on sustainability

environmental protection, poverty eradication, and the free market’.

1 What issues should educational leaders be most concerned with?

From sustainability to unsustainability:

systems were not seen as becoming increasingly unsustainable when

From sustainability to unsustainability:

to financial, physical and intellectual resources in educational systems. The

From sustainability to unsustainability: