Power Of Education

Social Power and Education

Social Power/Education

The focus of this essay is to expand on the concept of social power and education. The phrase "social power" has been used by political scientist and philosophers to refer to the power that is exercised by individuals or groups within a society. The question of power in the educational context has troubled educators, off and on, for years. Ambitious students have attempted to change the landscape of education by injecting the power of the student body into the contemporary political thinking of college presidents and faculty.

Political theorists have also attempted to rework liberal political thought but have once again thrust this issue to the forefront of the educational debate. This essay will also focus more intently on the African American college student during the time of the Civil Rights movement and the controversy related to South Africa and it's racism. These two historical events have shaped the way college students have instituted some type of power structure to challenge the powers that be.

Appropriately. several recent philosophers of education have examined the issue of social power in the educational context. It is my contention that this issue must be explored before any meaningful revision of how college educational theory can be made. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the investigation of the important question of power in education. This approach will not be limited to the college level, I will also include the high school approach. Dennis Wong asserts that past attempts at classifying specific forms of power rarely succeeded in dispelling confusion, but rather have revealed "at least as much diversity as uniformity". Instead, I begin by looking at one educational theorist's view, before describing my own alternative. Then I draw from my view educational implications that seem important. Following this, I challenge the idea that power-over has control and show how the power of grading supports such a challenge.

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Social Power/Education

Power As Conflict Of Interest

When developing a theory of social power in the educational context, Nicholas Burbules relies on Stevens Luke's well known discussion of power. Lukes defines power this way: "A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interest." Following this basic understanding of power, Burbules maintains that "power relations begin with a state of conflicting interests"

A theory of power built only on the idea of conflicting interests is inadequate. Such theories are incapable of dealing with cases of professor and student paternalism. Paternalistic behavior is characterized by the use of power by one person over another in an effort to advance the latter's best interest. A professor who forces student to do a presentation even though the student has a stuttering problem is acting paternalistically, and, it seems to me, is obviously exerting power over the student. However, according to Burbules's view of power, the professor is not exerting power over the student since he or she is not effecting the student in a manner contrary to the student's interests. This seems to fly in the face of the ordinary understanding of power.

In response to this problem, Burbules suggests that in situations like the one described above, the professor is meeting the student's long term interests. When viewed from a short-term perspective, the professor and student appear to have conflicting interests. However, from the long-term perspective, it is clear that they actually do not (TPE, 98). But this is very false. I argue that just because the student's long-term interest are not in conflict with his or her professor's interest, this does not mean that his or her short-term interest are not in conflict with the professor's interest. That is, his short-term interest of not being made to give a presentation is in conflict with his professor's interest to get the student to overcome his stuttering problem. This raises an interesting problem. Based on the idea that power amounts to a conflict of interest, when certain cases of paternalism are viewed from the short-term perspective, paternalism appears to amount to power. But,

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Social power/Education

when viewed from the long-term perspective, these same cases of paternalism do not appear to amount to power.

There is another problem with views of power that are grounded on the idea of conflicting interests. Such views seem to imply that power, because it occurs only when there is a conflict of interest, is something that is only a factor when a discrete action or event occurs between two individuals (or groups) that changes the manner in which these two previously interacted. If this is correct, then such views appear to deny an important intuition concerning power; namely, that power can exist as a complex structural feature of a normal, ongoing, social relationship. This intuition, it seems to me, is especially important for understanding the power relationship between professor and students.

Views of power that are grounded on the idea of conflicting interests are clearly capable of accounting for situations in which a professor's power of his or her students is the result of some interventional action he or she performs; an action which causes the student to alter his behavior in a way that changes the manner in which the professor and his student previously interacted.

Consider the example of a teacher who punishes a student who speaks out of turn by sending him out of the classroom. The teacher has performed an interventional action and has clearly exercised power. According to views of power that are grounded on conflicting interest, the teacher exercised power over his student when he sent him out of the classroom because he acted in a way that negatively affected his interests.

However, views of power that are grounded on conflicting interest cannot generally account for the fact that even when teachers do not perform interventional actions, students, nonetheless, behave in certain ways as a result of the teacher's power over them. For instance, under normal circumstances, a teacher does not need to threatened his students to get them to speak in turn. The mere fact that the teacher will grade the quality of their class participation is enough to cause them to