CADRE Resources

Dynamic Conflict Management: The Wisdom of Mary Parker Follett

Albie Davis

Albie Davis delivers her speech, Dynamic Conflict Management: The Wisdom of Mary Parker Follett, at the "Beyond Mediation: Strategies For Appropriate Early Dispute Resolution In Special Education" conference held by CADRE in Washington, DC (2002).

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Please also find the transcript of this speech below.

Transcript:

FOLLETT ON SPECIAL EDUCATION

1. What a pleasure to be here with you in Washington DC!

1. In my later years, I spoke primarily to businessmen.
2. Over and over, I called for greater study of the creative resolution of conflict. Sometimes I feared I was not understood.
3. How amazing then, today, to find myself in a room full of people dedicated to creatively resolving conflicts in the educational setting. I must tell you how pleased I am.
4. “Special Education?” When we talk later, do tell me more about that term.
5. I see I have not mastered the art of “dressing for the occasion.” Where I have come from, clothes not a priority. Limited choice. Black or White. However, I did insist on a hat!

2. As I begin my talk today, I am reminded of a comment by Virginia Woolf, as she began a talk on the theme of Women and Fiction.

1. Virginia Woolf, whom I had the pleasure of dining with in 1932, shortly before my passing, said “the first duty of a lecturer is to hand you, after an hour’s discourse, a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks and keep on the mantelpiece forever. (VW, 3)
2. On this point I totally disagree, however, she redeemed herself, by continuing to say, “All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
3. On this point, I agree! Money and a room of one’s own! Still a luxury, I imagine. Nevertheless, I always made sure I had a room of my own!

3. May I offer another view on the duty of the lecturer.

1. “The duty of the speaker is not to hand the listener a “nugget of pure truth,” a passive activity at best, but instead there is a reciprocal duty between the speaker and the audience.
2. The reciprocal duty calls for a greater relationship, for it is to spark one another’s’ minds into fresh thinking.
3. For I never react to you, but to you-plus-me; or to be more accurate, it is I-plus you reacting to you-plus me. “I” can never influence “you” because you have already influenced me; that is, in the very process of meeting, by the very process of meeting, we both become something different. (CE, 62)
4. Today, I will pick up the threads of my thinking where I left them in 1933, at the time of my passing.
5. Then, it is your duty to see whether my past thinking meets the needs of today’s world. Where it does, tell us how. Where it does not, it is your duty to express your doubts and together we begin a search for a better way.
6. I hope to complete my prepared remarks in 30 minute of so. Afterwards, you are to ask questions, make comments, what have you, and you can be sure that I shall do the same!

4. I would like to begin by exploring that nat