Adonis Diaries

The term “performance” is defined to be the scapegoat to firing employees in private and public institutions.  For the daily workers, performance is made very easy to evaluating: “How many units has the worker churned out?”  For the educated and graduate students (or technocrats), performance is evaluated with a rather long list of indices that the various managers in the hierarchy subjectively judge accordingly.  Primarily in the list are keeping on schedule and obeying the rules and regulations of a corporation or a public institution.  In order to fulfill the “mission” (or the  faked lustrous image of an institution), an educated or semi-professional employee has to come 30 minutes earlier than regulation and leave at least two hours later of regulation:  You have to prove to the corporation that the company is your first family to pay allegiance to and to do various chores free of charge.  Competence or creativity is on the list but secondary in value for hiring.

Why competence is not highly valued and performance of routine jobs is given so much priority?  The school system in the US (primary, secondary, and high school) is structured to satisfying corporate value system.  The school system passes every students who showed up on time, kept on schedule, and was obedient to rules and regulations.  Students who proved to be creative might b e on the honor list; but how many students learn to care being on honor list?  Corporations don’t care about creativity when you are first hired; they give priority to how obedient you tend to be to your master. 

The German scientist and educator Von Humboldt wrote:  “When you produce on command, we may admire your product, but we definitely despise the man.” He resumed ” What you fail to choose by your own volition, what you are forced to learn against your inclinations  will remain stranger and never be identified as a trait of your personality.  When an action or a learning process is done mechanically then, it cannot lead to creativity since you didn’t employ your human force and zeal in it.” 

British economist Adam Smith warned:  “State should intervene to preventing chain production by workers that renders them stupid and ignorant.”  The American social reformer and educator John Dewey (1859-1952) considered as “non liberal and immoral to forming kids for the job market in the perspective of just gain.”

Actually, experts and professionals learn that in order to keeping their jobs they should not indulge in “emotional” or ethical considerations in their reports.  What is of value is the end results; the corporation tells them:  “Show me the range of practical methods to bypassing laws and ethical situations in order to reach a winning contract.”