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I was recently recommended to read “The Spirit Level – why more equal societies almost always do better” (Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett) and I read this on a flight from Australia to the UK (on an eBook reader on my iphone). I would recommend it.
The authors are UK-based epidemiologists and they marshal an impressive amount of research that shows that societies that are more equal also show better health at all levels of society, lower levels of violence, fewer teenage pregnancies, less crime, fewer people in prison. They show these correlations for about 2 dozen advanced economies (countries for which there is good data) and for about 50 US States.
Their measure of equality/inequality uses stratified incomes i.e. the average income for groups as you move from the poorest to the riches levels in society. The interesting thing is that the most unequal societies do not just have poorer outcomes for people at the lower end of the income scale but they have poorer outcomes at EVERY level of the income scale. The somewhat surprising conclusion is that inequality is bad for everyone in a society. This makes obvious sense in some areas – more crime or more violence will affect all levels of society (even if the richer levels live in gated communities, that in itself is an impact) – but it is true for things such as life expectancy and rates of disease which also affect all levels.
In the past, various attempts have been made to mandate equal incomes for all or to legislate for equal opportunity for all. Neither approach has been successful, and in the case of equal incomes, perhaps, disastrous.
Our extensive work in education makes it clear that when a child is treated as an equal by a teacher then the educational, wellbeing and resilience outcomes are improved for that child and the teacher’s capability grows. This, then, is another way of looking at equality and this way of looking at equality leads to maximising outcomes for everyone involved.
Note that this will lead to income differentials as some people can add very high value and in some areas accumulated experience is more valuable than lesser levels of experience. The key seems to be to keep these within bounds, say, no more than 20 times from lowest to highest incomes.
What does this mean at the child level? It means that no matter how the child behaves and no matter how poorly the child does their work the response of the teacher is always an adult one i.e. it is NOT sarcasm, demeaning or belittling the child, judgement, frustration, anger, etc. but rather it is a calm response focused on helping the child behave and perform better. This is also how a coach would help an adult to perform at their best.
Our research shows that when a child is treated in this way their response is to feel confident in themselves, respect the teacher in turn and have a desire to go out of their way not to disappoint or let down the teacher. Thus, the ideal conditions for children also lead to good classroom management and such conditions are the key to raising outcomes.
The child also learns that this is how you treat other people – with equality – and thus as they move into work and in their own personal and social lives they treat others in a similar way – particularly as they experience success in doing this.
We know how to do this quite systematically now in school environments.
Our innovations in Performance Appraisal 3.0 are based on the realisation that if we create the same ethos and culture within a work environment we will get better outcomes at all levels – organisationally (more creativity, more collaboration, better bottom line performance), and personally (more confident, more committed, more willing to go that extra mile, faster growth in capability).
If these changes also lead to less inequality of income then they bring with them a whole stream of health and other benefits.
