The Leadership of a Functional School in a Dysfunctional Environment

With acknowledgement to Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities", it was the best of emotional intelligence, it was the worst of emotional inelligence, it was the school of functionality, it was the school of dysfunctionality, it was the epoch of opimism, it was the epoch of pessimism, it was the season of teamwork and collaboration, it was the season of absenteeism and defiance, it was the spring of hope in the functional school, it was the winter of despair in the dysfunctional school, the functional school had everything before them, the dysfunctional school had nothing before them, the learners in the functional were all going direct to university, the learners in the dysfunctional school were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest teacher unions insisted on being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.