My classroom experience suggests that in practical terms attempts at herding cats are doomed to failure. From my practice I have come to see the futility of trying to organise people, and find when people are removed from controlling influences they are capable of organising themselves. My own insight is that, contrary to conventional wisdom, people resist change only when it makes them feel out of control. They will resist if change is foisted on them without their consent (Dawson and Jones n.d). But learning is a process of change. It is likely that the factors that affect change are some of the factors underlying learning. Dealing effectively with learning or change involves valuing the people involved and while many organisations claim that their most important assets are their people, few behave as if this were true. I am conscious of times in school when the principal told the staff as a group that we were the ‘best staff in Ireland’ but I would have thought that the ‘best staff’ might have had ideas that would be listened to, approaches that would be adopted and insights that were valuable. This did not appear to be the case. In hindsight I see this in terms of Arnstein’s ladder of participation as the lowest rung on the ladder (Arnstein 1969: 216). Arnstein attempted to clarify issues around citizen participation in planning matters by developing an eight rung ladder of participation. From the first to the eighth, the levels represent ascending levels of participation. She further subdivides the eight rungs into three sets. The lowest two rungs represent non-participation; the middle rungs represent tokenism and the top three, varying levels of citizen power. The first rung represents manipulation. I see the ‘best staff in Ireland’ comment as manipulation. I realise that at times I have indulged in such manipulation with students when I have said ‘Sure, you are great lads’ and not meant a word of it!