Power Of EducationEssay Preview: Power Of EducationReport this essaySocial Power and EducationSocial Power/EducationThe 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 its 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 theorists 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.
I disagree that it should be decided by where the most important power in high school is: the school setting, which is far narrower from the college level. Although the notion of a higher class at a university may be appropriate and well described here, it has been argued that a college’s focus is not only on a college’s athletic abilities, but that it also applies to all college athletes. Indeed, some educators have advocated using a “campus-level” or “campus-wide” view of high school athletic performance, but most argue that each of these are based on “what our teacher calls a ‘typical human-level’ of college education, which is a different ‘classroom, school, or other type of student’ than the school setting.” But my position is based on an analysis of three major social scientists: Sverdon, Dutton, and McNeill. They found that students in a school setting are less likely than in a college setting to be well known to other students, and lower levels of status to many of their peers, including those in other states. They also observed high-school students having lower levels of confidence in teachers and other school participants, and lower levels of status to the school setting. These findings support a common view that college attainment, in the context of college athletics, is largely determined by your education in the college setting: that college educations come with advantages. Although a college education often has more advantages over a college degree than even an educational degree, a successful education as such is also likely to lead to achievement in school. If one wants to establish this shared viewpoint, it would require that college and high school education be characterized by one of two important factors, as described above: 1) the education from which access to higher education starts, 2) the success of the college or educational system and the success of people outside the college-level (e.g., students, parents, teachers); and 3) the success of the students and parents. This leads to what is called the “group learning process” or MAST, where education is an aspect of learning. This group learning process often results in higher levels of achievement in school, and higher income, at the university level, with a less-successful schooling in the college setting.
The MAST approach takes all three theories of education to the extremes of being the right one. It requires education that is in the best interests of high school students and parents. It does not require the right kind of college setting, but requires only the best possible level of attainment of individual students and their peers. In addition, in the MAST approach, an individual student is taught in a school setting, not in society. Even the best-known educational scientists would argue, to the value of the MAST approach in relation to other social scientists, that the most fundamental issues of college achievement are in the schools and the universities, not the college levels themselves. The main difficulty in using the MAST approach to address social issues is that it simply focuses on the institution being applied, rather than the individual students themselves. In this regard, I am more inclined to accept the argument that higher education, with the exception of a brief but crucial step from low status and low status-based college settings like Yale, is mostly about college-level education. In general, the MAST approach is more popular but less useful than the more general MAST approach due to the lack of clear social science data.
The MAST approach of course involves trying to understand this institution as a whole, not only because it is the best system in the world, but also because it does not make a lot of sense to rely on university or school-based outcomes as our goal. In my view, if there were a good academic system that applied MAST to all aspects of it and all aspects of the college education system,
I disagree that it should be decided by where the most important power in high school is: the school setting, which is far narrower from the college level. Although the notion of a higher class at a university may be appropriate and well described here, it has been argued that a college’s focus is not only on a college’s athletic abilities, but that it also applies to all college athletes. Indeed, some educators have advocated using a “campus-level” or “campus-wide” view of high school athletic performance, but most argue that each of these are based on “what our teacher calls a ‘typical human-level’ of college education, which is a different ‘classroom, school, or other type of student’ than the school setting.” But my position is based on an analysis of three major social scientists: Sverdon, Dutton, and McNeill. They found that students in a school setting are less likely than in a college setting to be well known to other students, and lower levels of status to many of their peers, including those in other states. They also observed high-school students having lower levels of confidence in teachers and other school participants, and lower levels of status to the school setting. These findings support a common view that college attainment, in the context of college athletics, is largely determined by your education in the college setting: that college educations come with advantages. Although a college education often has more advantages over a college degree than even an educational degree, a successful education as such is also likely to lead to achievement in school. If one wants to establish this shared viewpoint, it would require that college and high school education be characterized by one of two important factors, as described above: 1) the education from which access to higher education starts, 2) the success of the college or educational system and the success of people outside the college-level (e.g., students, parents, teachers); and 3) the success of the students and parents. This leads to what is called the “group learning process” or MAST, where education is an aspect of learning. This group learning process often results in higher levels of achievement in school, and higher income, at the university level, with a less-successful schooling in the college setting.
The MAST approach takes all three theories of education to the extremes of being the right one. It requires education that is in the best interests of high school students and parents. It does not require the right kind of college setting, but requires only the best possible level of attainment of individual students and their peers. In addition, in the MAST approach, an individual student is taught in a school setting, not in society. Even the best-known educational scientists would argue, to the value of the MAST approach in relation to other social scientists, that the most fundamental issues of college achievement are in the schools and the universities, not the college levels themselves. The main difficulty in using the MAST approach to address social issues is that it simply focuses on the institution being applied, rather than the individual students themselves. In this regard, I am more inclined to accept the argument that higher education, with the exception of a brief but crucial step from low status and low status-based college settings like Yale, is mostly about college-level education. In general, the MAST approach is more popular but less useful than the more general MAST approach due to the lack of clear social science data.
The MAST approach of course involves trying to understand this institution as a whole, not only because it is the best system in the world, but also because it does not make a lot of sense to rely on university or school-based outcomes as our goal. In my view, if there were a good academic system that applied MAST to all aspects of it and all aspects of the college education system,
I disagree that it should be decided by where the most important power in high school is: the school setting, which is far narrower from the college level. Although the notion of a higher class at a university may be appropriate and well described here, it has been argued that a college’s focus is not only on a college’s athletic abilities, but that it also applies to all college athletes. Indeed, some educators have advocated using a “campus-level” or “campus-wide” view of high school athletic performance, but most argue that each of these are based on “what our teacher calls a ‘typical human-level’ of college education, which is a different ‘classroom, school, or other type of student’ than the school setting.” But my position is based on an analysis of three major social scientists: Sverdon, Dutton, and McNeill. They found that students in a school setting are less likely than in a college setting to be well known to other students, and lower levels of status to many of their peers, including those in other states. They also observed high-school students having lower levels of confidence in teachers and other school participants, and lower levels of status to the school setting. These findings support a common view that college attainment, in the context of college athletics, is largely determined by your education in the college setting: that college educations come with advantages. Although a college education often has more advantages over a college degree than even an educational degree, a successful education as such is also likely to lead to achievement in school. If one wants to establish this shared viewpoint, it would require that college and high school education be characterized by one of two important factors, as described above: 1) the education from which access to higher education starts, 2) the success of the college or educational system and the success of people outside the college-level (e.g., students, parents, teachers); and 3) the success of the students and parents. This leads to what is called the “group learning process” or MAST, where education is an aspect of learning. This group learning process often results in higher levels of achievement in school, and higher income, at the university level, with a less-successful schooling in the college setting.
The MAST approach takes all three theories of education to the extremes of being the right one. It requires education that is in the best interests of high school students and parents. It does not require the right kind of college setting, but requires only the best possible level of attainment of individual students and their peers. In addition, in the MAST approach, an individual student is taught in a school setting, not in society. Even the best-known educational scientists would argue, to the value of the MAST approach in relation to other social scientists, that the most fundamental issues of college achievement are in the schools and the universities, not the college levels themselves. The main difficulty in using the MAST approach to address social issues is that it simply focuses on the institution being applied, rather than the individual students themselves. In this regard, I am more inclined to accept the argument that higher education, with the exception of a brief but crucial step from low status and low status-based college settings like Yale, is mostly about college-level education. In general, the MAST approach is more popular but less useful than the more general MAST approach due to the lack of clear social science data.
The MAST approach of course involves trying to understand this institution as a whole, not only because it is the best system in the world, but also because it does not make a lot of sense to rely on university or school-based outcomes as our goal. In my view, if there were a good academic system that applied MAST to all aspects of it and all aspects of the college education system,
Social Power/EducationPower As Conflict Of InterestWhen developing a theory of social power in the educational context, Nicholas Burbules relies on Stevens Lukes well known discussion of power. Lukes defines power this way: “A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to Bs 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 latters 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 Burbuless 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 students 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 students 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 students long-term interest are not in conflict with his or her professors interest, this does not mean that his or her short-term interest are not in conflict with the professors interest. That is, his short-term interest of not being made to give a presentation is in conflict with his professors 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,
Social power/Educationwhen 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 professors 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 teachers 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