Laurence Peter Dies; Theorized on Incompetents

Laurence J. Peter, the psychologist and professor of education whose 1969 book “The Peter Principle” unmasked incompetents with searing satire and contributed a phrase to the language, has died of complications from a stroke, his wife said Sunday.

Peter, 70, had also suffered from heart trouble before he died in his sleep Friday at his home in Palos Verdes Estates, said his wife, Irene. He had suffered a stroke two years ago, she said.

With the publication of “The Peter Principle,” its author became an international celebrity with a runaway best-seller for the principle he expounded: “In a hierarchy, individuals tend to rise to their level of incompetence.”

This means, he wrote, that if you can do your job to your superior’s satisfaction, you will be promoted. If you function appropriately in your new position, you are eligible for promotion again.

Eventually, however, you will be promoted to a job you cannot do--and there you will remain, “bungling the job and eroding the competence of society.”

In time, Peter noted, every post tends to be occupied by someone too incompetent to carry out its duties.

And, he said, the only people who accomplish any useful work are those who have not yet been promoted to their level of incompetence.

The Peter Principle took its place alongside Murphy’s Law--”Whatever can go wrong will go wrong”--and Parkinson’s Law--”Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”--as penetrating aphorisms for the technological age.

Peter had written the book with free-lance writer Raymond Hull several years before its publication, but 13 publishers rejected the manuscript--proving the book’s central point.

The book had grown out of his hobby of writing satire as a respite from his complex and difficult research on training teachers. After enduring the barrage of rejection slips from publishers, Peter submitted an article to The Times, applying the principle to California.

His examples--Ronald Reagan took the oath of office three days before Gov. Pat Brown’s term expired, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty was out of town when Watts exploded in urban revolt--left publishers “almost lining up at my door,” Peter once said. “So I just dusted off the manuscript and handed it to the one I decided was the best.”

The book sold more than 8 million copies, earning its author enough to retire in 1970 to devote all of his time to exploring ways to improve teaching.

He also found time, however, to write several more “Peter” books, among them “The Peter Prescription,” “The Peter Plan,” “Peter’s Quotations,” “Peter’s People and Their Marvelous Ideas,” “Why Things Go Wrong” and “The Peter Pyramid.”

Peter was born in Vancouver, Canada, on Sept. 16, 1919 and grew up amid poverty. His father, a railroad worker, died in a drowning accident.

“It was a primitive style of life,” Peter once recalled. “In order to survive we had to make everything functional, getting maximum use of our limited resources.

“Our home was just a shack. We cut wood out of the bush to give us fuel. We grew most of our food in the garden. It was unthinkable to waste anything.”

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Western Washington State College and a doctorate in education from Washington State University.

Peter taught in Vancouver’s public schools and later as a psychologist at the University of British Columbia.

He had long been preoccupied with the study of teacher competence--he called it his life’s work--and he set out to initiate some reforms in the way teachers were prepared at the University of British Columbia in 1963.

“The lack of sequential, cumulative step-learning continued to amaze me,” he told The Times in a 1975 interview. “Student teachers were told to observe children, given time to observe children--but never, ever shown how to observe children.”

In 1966 he moved to Los Angeles where he had accepted a job as professor of education at USC--a post that enabled him to continue the project begun in British Columbia. The result was the four-volume study “Competencies for Teaching: System of Accountability for Teacher Education.”

Peter said tests and studies with his system “can improve teacher performance and student learning by, in some cases, several hundred percent.”

Along with his wife, Peter is survived by two sons, John and Edward Peter of British Columbia, and two daughters, Alice Boren of Falls Church, Va., and Margaret Denney of British Columbia.

There will be no services. Contributions may be made to the Laurence J. Peter Scholarship fund at the Washington State University Foundation in Pullman, Wash.