Lessons On Power and Control For Your Classroom
Educators prepare their students for the future. Understanding how power and control can impact their lives and learning to manage those issues is imperative for today’s students. Power and control play a crucial role in both personal and professional relationships. Leaders of tomorrow must understand that the ethical use of power and control, applied with integrity in our world, will effect meaningful change.
Learn to Recognize Power
Students deal with power every day of their lives. It plays a significant role in every relationship, whether at home, school, or in their social sphere. Understanding power dynamics will help them manage power-based situations, identify the misuse of power, and seek equality in their lives. It will also play a significant part in their world of work in the future. From being an effective employee to being CEO, applying power appropriately and effectively will be paramount.
Power is a complex element. It is not just a singular action. It is a continuum of different degrees of power from nonlegitimate power to empowerment.
Recognizing the Language of Power Using Peace Education Foundation Terms
As with any aspect of emotional intelligence, ensuring your students understand the language of power is the place to start. Legitimate and non-legitimate power are opposite sides of the spectrum. Legitimate power demonstrates thoughtful decision-making, commands respect, and is inclusive, whereas non-legitimate power seeks to influence and control using fear, intimidation, and consequences.
Legitimate power looks like someone with high self-esteem, respect for others and themselves, who negotiates their power with integrity. We see nonlegitimate power in the person needing to control others in an authoritarian way, at any cost.
Power-over and power-with are also two sides of the power spectrum. Power-over is the authoritarian making nonnegotiable demands where the other person feels helpless. An example is the bully situation, when the bully controls the power dynamic in the relationship. Power-with is a shared or mutual joint effort to effect change and is seen in healthy relationships based on respect, honesty, and fairness.
The language of power makes a compelling introduction to the topic.
A Lesson in Power
You can start with your classroom. Highlight the previously learned terms and apply them to the class. Have your students look for examples of each of the four aspects of power. Follow up by asking what they learned in that exercise. Can their findings effect any change in the classroom? This type of exercise will also help you gauge the emotional health of the class.
Apply this lesson to the school, town, and the outside world. It is an excellent way for students to see how power exists in our world.
Control
It is commonly accepted that youth feel a lack of control over their lives. This makes it an appropriate classroom topic and dovetails with lessons about power.
Discussing peer pressure as one example where power and control collide makes it relevant to every student in the classroom. However, this topic has a broader application.
It can be applied to the wider world because power and control play a significant part in change in every aspect of society.
The following discussion questions are ripe for classroom discussion.
How does one person make someone else do something using power– over? Is control pressure applied? If so, what is the change outcome?
How could the issue have been resolved using legitimate power?
How does one town or country use power-over to make another do something? Is control pressure applied? If so, what is the change outcome?
How could the issue have been resolved using legitimate power?
Empowerment
The goal of power and control lessons is to guide students to empowerment. Negotiation over isolation, respect over coercion, and trust over threats and intimidation all help to balance power in any relationship. Recognizing positive power tactics over negative ones is important.
Empowerment begins with a keen sense of self that will withstand the threatening pressures of negative power and control. Tactics employed in nonlegitimate power include isolation, pressure, anger, and threats. Every person in your classroom needs to develop resiliency and self-confidence to withstand the negative power they will encounter. There are numerous examples of empowerment in real life. Every student needs role models.
Critical thinking skills apply.
Revisit critical thinking skills. These skills play a key role in navigating the world of power and control. When faced with a nonlegitimate power situation or power-over them, applying critical thinking skills will help them navigate the issue effectively, constructively, and empowered. It is the pathway to managing the many aspects of power and control. These life skills are useful throughout their lives.
When faced with nonlegitimate power and negative control, they will have the tools to approach the situation with calmness, curiosity, and effective decision-making. These skills will last a lifetime, and with that, you really will touch the future.
This article is available and can be accessed in Spanish here.
