This morning when I was out mowing the grass, I noticed that a dogwood tree that we have had in front of our house for almost 20 years had a mess of weeds growing under it. My wife normally does the weeding and she had done so last week. The weeds, like other weeds, were hard to differentiate from the tree. The dogwood is not the flowering type, in fact it is a dogwood bush that over the years we have tried unsuccessfully to compel into becoming a tree. The overtaking weed has a tiny purple flower on it which is the primary distinguishing characteristic that you see. After I ate my luch, I decided to go pull those weeds.

What started out as seemingly only a few stragglers at the base of the tree turned out to be twisty vines that had taken over the tree. The stalks of the vines looked so much like the stalks of the dogwood that it was hard to differentiate. The task which I thought would take minutes turned into a fairly sizeable amount of time to complete. While pulling and clipping, I started to notice subtle differences between the weed and the shrub and I managed to remove much of it. After all of the weed was removed, the tree was substanially less green than it had been when I started and there were unquestionable dead spots in the tree.

Earlier in the day I had received a text from a friend and former colleague. The crux of the text was that they had been educating themself on the laws of aerodynamics. As an educator, the texter noticed the interconnectedness of these laws and the current state of education. Probably not the education systems everywhere but notably the education system that they are a part of. We went back and forth a bit about entropy and systems and energy and work. Between the two of us we had a pretty amazing treatise on the comparison. And while we were using education as our comparator, the parallels would be true of most systems. I tell you that because as I weeded that dogwood, I couldn’t help but think of systems and thermodynamics.

Within the system that is the dogwood, there is a finite amount of energy available. In a vacuum, that shrub would eventually fall victim to entropy through its natural lifespan. That plant would do what it is meant to do: grow, add beauty, supply oxygen. The addition of the weed to that ecosystem added to the decay of the system. The energy that was meant to maintain a tree now had to be split with the weed that also had energy needs. This introduction of another species served to hasten the downfall of the tree. It created chaos in a place where previously there was none and, in this case, it was leading to the downfall of the system.

Now, if I was a persistent gardner, I would have attacked those weeds sooner. As in the second law of thermodynamics, when the root of the problem was not addressed when it was probably merely one single stalk, the degree of chaos caused by the weed was heightened to the point where the energy to remove it was far greater. With some energy now being directed to the weed instead of the dogwood, the dogwood did not have the energy to go about it’s intended purpose. As the months or years rolled by, more and more energy was being used by the weed than by the tree. The tree now had dead limbs where greenery should be.

Every system will work it’s way into deterioration. No matter what my wife and I would have done with the tree and the weed over the years, a certain amount of decay was going to happen. No system is perfect and weeds, poor soil and lackadaisical caretakers will all have their impact. 

It’s been a long walk here but if you are like me you inherently see the parallels to education in some systems, locally if not otherwise.

• What slows a machine or the growth of a plant is also what slows the progress of educational systems: spending energy in the wrong places. When the finite energy within a system is directed elsewhere, the system either cannot meet it’s purpose or it’s forced to trudge sloggingly toward its mission. In education, the North Star, the mission, is always to provide for the education of the populace. Energy spent on bullheadedly defending unpopular decisions, stripping away programs, grinding personal axes is energy that isn’t available to advance the mission.
• Like plant ecosystems and thermodynamics, education is a system. In order for systems to run as friction-free as possible, the need to be considered systemically. If we concentrate on lubing one cog, we fail to grease a thousand others. When I think of the weed I am reminded of ‘broken windows’ theory. It is important to address small problems before they become large problems. Again, the energy is limited by the system. It takes much less energy to address a small problem than it does a large one. Eventually a large problem only has two exit routes: Either the system collapses upon itself or the ‘problem’ becomes the new system. If education is about educating children, there are enough problems inherent to the system that need addressing on a daily basis. The system as it is designed creates it’s own daily friction. When additional outside friction is added to the amalgam, unfettered it will take more energy than is reserved for education. When unnecessary problems are created, unnecessary waste of energy becomes necessary.
• No matter how you address the weed, the problem, no system is perfect. No system will ever reach zero entropy. This is why quality educational leadership is so important. The leaders’job, both administrators and school directors, is to abate the consequences of entropy while working to ensure that the energy of all stakeholders is focused on the goal, the mission, the North Star. Leadership will never be able to perfect a system but leadership that can reduce friction will have the most success at moving the ‘heat’ through the system to the ‘cold’ parts. The parts that most require the most attention. It has become obvious that some leaders would prefer to spend the scarce amount of energy, the heat, on other ventures which eventually leaves the needs of the students, the cold, unpowered.

Can we differentiate the weed from the tree? Has the weed already overtaken the system to the point of collapse? Is there leadership in place that can slow the pace of entropy? Do we have enough energy left?