In a Lee Jenkins (the originator of the L to J strategies) presentation a few years ago, he challenged his audience to reflect on whether they spend more time dealing with symptoms or more time on alleviating root causes. He used an example from Washington D.C. The Lincoln Memorial grounds, at one time, were much dirtier than the grounds at the other Washington monuments. The solution they came up with to control this problem was to assign a large number of custodians to daily scrub it. This did not solve the problem, however. The monument continued being the filthiest even though they spent a great deal of money, time and energy cleaning it. After assigning these extra people for a long period of time to keep it clean, someone decided to ask why that monument was still so much filthier than others? When they checked, it turned out to be bird droppings that made the area so dirty. Then it was asked why there were so many more birds in that area than other parts of Washington? The answer was that there are more insects there which attract hungry birds. Then the question was why are insects attracted to the monument? The answer was they were attracted to the bright lights there. Why were they more attracted to those bright lights and not to the bright lights of other monuments? The answer was that the Lincoln Memorial’s lights were turned on first each evening. As a result all the insects from the city headed there at dusk. This was the root cause of the nagging problem.

Once the problem was identified, the people in charge of the monuments decided to have the lights of all monuments put on the same timer which started them at the same time throughout the city. The result was the Lincoln Memorial’s bird dropping problem disappeared. They no longer needed the extra people to clean it. Countless hours, dollars, and effort were saved from that time on.
We could come up with similar stories in education. They may be in the area of failing grades, poor attendance, dropouts, classroom misbehavior, etc. Instead of asking why these problems are occurring, we can act like the people in charge of the monuments: spend more time and effort dealing with the symptoms. As a result, the symptoms never decrease, and the problems persist. The only way to eliminate problems is seeking and solving their root causes. Once we do this, we find the problems decrease and sometimes are eliminated.

I would challenge all of us to do this as we face persistent school problems: Ask the question “why?” five times. When we get to the fifth answer, we likely have the root cause of the problem. It is then that we can strategize to solve that root cause. My bet is if that root cause is addressed, the problem will be significantly decreased and may even go away.

This forces us to spend more time in the beginning reflecting on the problem and seeking answers. However, it will reduce time waste overall by not having to continually address the same symptoms over and over again. Another side benefit is that solving root causes is much more interesting than constantly doling out punishments and consequences. We also gain the satisfaction of knowing we have truly made a difference in helping others improve rather than simply cleaning up the problem for one more day. Think of the Lincoln Memorial: Do we want to continually keep cleaning up bird droppings or would we rather end the problem by turning on the lights more wisely?

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