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    BOOK REVIEWS FOR ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS    Volume 34, Issue 2 (2014) 

 

92 
 

Book Review 

Educational Leadership and Hannah Arendt 

RReview by Richard Morehouse   
 

Educational Leadership and Hannah Arendt  
Helen M. Gunter 
Routledge Press, 2014 
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada 
160 pages 
ISBN: 978041582002 
$145.00 U.S. Hardback 

 
 

erhaps the best way to encourage academics to read this book is to examine the following quote. 
 

Arendt asks humans to think about the relationship threads of what “I” and “we” are doing: the 

failure to recognize natality and pluralism, particularly evident in the mediocracy and ‘what works’ 

prescriptions. “I” and “we” cannot be spontaneous and do new things while “I” and “we” are filling in 

forms and working out how to handle the next inspection visit (105). 

While Gunter’s comments here and throughout the book are directed toward an internationalization of methods and 
processes in elementary and secondary schools, many in higher education can sympathize and emphasize with this 
sentiment. Before leaving my full time work in the University, I personally witnessed what appeared to me to be the 
dampening of the spontaneity and creativity that I grew to love as an intricate part of my teaching (and learning). 
 
     This work in both intellectually engaging and challenging. The pull of the book comes from Gunter’s deep 
understanding of the educational scene in the United Kingdom and beyond. This wide and deep knowledge-base was 
somewhat problematic for this reviewer as she uses acronyms and short-hand labels to identify the British and 
international organizations that initiate and monitor the vast network of inspections and recommendation frameworks 
that constitute today’s world of education. One of her main antagonist is the ELMA (educational leadership and 
management). This was a new concept to me, not in a general sense but as used here as a cohesive and iterated system. 
According to their website the MLESMA of British Education, leadership, management and administration association 
is: 
 

The British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS) is an 

independent voice supporting quality education through effective leadership and management. Ideas 

and practice, and the relationship between them, are what interest us. Our members are a mixture of 

practitioners in schools, colleges and universities and working academics, encouraging a unique 

perspective which brings together the theoretical and the practical and encourages stimulating 

debate at our conferences and events (https://www.belmas.org.uk/). 

 
What concerns Gunter about groups like this is that while claiming to be improving education, in practice they take all 
the individual initiative and imagination out of teaching and by implication out of learning. 
 
     It is Hannah Arendt’s radical critique of this top down (Gunter would say totalitarian) shaping of education that is 
problematic. She further argues that it is difficult even to “problematize” the important issues of education as there is no 

P 

https://www.belmas.org.uk/


    BOOK REVIEWS FOR ANALYTIC TEACHING AND PHILOSOPHICAL PRAXIS    Volume 34, Issue 2 (2014) 

 

93 
 

conceptual space for leisurely thinking about education in general or specific classrooms in particular. Gunter labels this 
approach the Transnational Leadership Package (vii). 
 
     Gunter’s reading and application of Arendt is what makes her critique both challenging and intellectually exciting. 
Her use of Arendt to thematize problems in the management of education should open the mind of many a reader to 
the subtle ways in which education is shaped, in ways both seen and unseen, through hegemonic systems of 
administration that trickle all the way down to the individual classroom.  
 
     Given her expansive familiarity with educational policy, a familiarity she assumes many readers will share, means her 
work may prove demanding for many at times, but this does nothing to detract from the soundness of her critique. The 
criticisms she raises against the totalitarian tendencies of educational bureaucracies should be taken seriously; and this 
holds even if aspects of her account would benefit from a more inclusive approach that recognized not everyone who 
shares her concerns about the administrative monopolization of learning will also be knowledgeable about the ins and 
outs of how these institutions work.  
 
Address Correspondences to: 
 
Dr. Richard (Mort) Morehouse 
Emeritus Professor of Psychology 
Viterbo University, La Crosse, WI. 
remorehouse@viterbo.edu 


