Conventional wisdom

We all know that teaching is a very demanding job. Sometimes poorly rewarding financially, today’s teaching has to deal with society’s social problems. Teachers have at heart our kids future. In short, that our kids be the best equipped knowledge-wise is at the top of their priority.

What if

What if making the students learn was nowhere near the top of their priorities? What if their first priority by far and away was class management? Impossible you say. Well let us look into that.

If you think of it, the very foundation of a class is how people accept authority and abide by the rules. Without it nothing gets learned or accomplished. And because it is not easy to continually assess progress, teachers naturally turn to classroom discipline which is a very much easier thing to assess.

Profiling tells us that where there is interaction there is a power struggle, tacit or implicit. Such is human nature. Remember that this is an ongoing struggle in the sense that it cannot be won once and for all. The leadership gained must be defended at every moment thus exacting a great stress on the teacher. Do not get me wrong, the leadership struggle can be fought with humor, niceness, anecdotes or any other positive strategies but it remains nonetheless a constant pressure that keeps conventional learning a low priority. Needless to say the teacher who uses intimidation tactics will probably be under even a harsher stress. Add to that that certain school authorities are sometimes perceived as too lenient and unsupportive of their teaching staff and you will realize that pressure on teachers has just increased a notch. Obviously a worried teacher tends to be more power hungry.

While we are on the subject of power, let us examine it some more. It is a well-known psychological fact that power is a self-feeding creature. You often see it, for example, in the carceral world. Prison guards are given great powers over prisoners. Perversely, soon enough, great powers do not seem adequate. Under a certain strain, prison guards are soon looking for total power (or the most complete they can get). Although you may shudder at the analogy the same basic patterns applies in a classroom.

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It thus follows that anything relevant in a class will be studied through the scope of the power struggle. Do you give homework? Yes, if it solidifies somehow the stronghold you have on the class. Do you use that new teaching method? Yes, if it keeps the students busy and under control. Do you present yourself as a warm human teacher? Yes, if you are loved for it thereby increasing your control.

Cynical? Not at all. The students on their side are just (as unconsciously) waiting to seize control. What’s more you would do exactly the same in the confines of your own social capabilities if you were the teacher.

What to make of it

What you have to understand is that humans tend to react as animals do in any subject that is even remotely linked to their survival. For instance the teacher in any given class has to uphold a control on the class. Upon that control rests his professional life. The keyword here is life. The teacher’s life is threathened. If the students seize some of the power, say by whispering among themselves, the anxiety level increases. If the anxiety level remains high for a long time, or if the situation comes up repeatedly, the teacher in question will crave power to soothe his anxiety, this is an undesirable emotional state from an educational point of view. On the other hand if the teacher uses repression (yelling, giving detention, intimidating succesfully) in a manner that reduces his anxiety, the concept that power protects his well-being is getting reinforced. This is why good teachers often end up wanting more and more power. Their very situation (their emotional safety being so to speak at the mercy of events or people on a constant basis) makes them crave power.

Money works pretty much like this. When people are confident they do not need to save so they spend thereby helping the economy. When people’s jobs are threathend they will save more (livelihood which can be seen as a hunting ground that an animal would fight for). On an individual basis people who have suffered the Great Depression have been marked for life. Those people will usually save money for the rest of their life. Some of those people accumulate enormous amounts of money without it lessening their insecurity, they just go on saving. The point is that the higher the perceived threath the higher the demand for control.

This is why confident individuals are less impacted by the increasing need for absolute power. This is also why principals should make great efforts to lessen the worries among the less confident portion of their staff. What they do is usually the opposite. The principals sees the increasing demands of less confident teachers with justified misgiving and they try to take away from the teachers some of that power. The teachers seing that freak out, get into personal arguments, dig their heels and give in totally to their fears. Now they crave power more than ever and it spins downward from there.

Obviously, the more secure you are the less likely you are to get into the total power craze. As long as people will perceive themselves as being in a vulnerable position that tendency will weight heavily in the balance. If you think that wanting absolute power is not in your personality, it usually is because you have not felt threathened. Were that to happen you would have to fight it.

Because kids are involved we would like school not to be governed by human psychology’s basic laws. Unfortunately teachers are human and children are just that as well, so the same occasionally sad laws apply.

Remember, as teachers go, that the ones with the most solid self-image can stay away from power struggle more easily than others.