Have you visited a school lately? Have you walked into a classroom? It’s a different place from the one you might
have attended if you are approaching my age.
Technology has hit the schoolhouse; it’s wired nowadays. So schools are no stranger to change, yet
change can still be a daunting process.
This blog is dedicated to convince you, the reader, that change is
needed. My target is not a “thing”
technology, but an idea. It is how we
view the content of our civics curriculum.
The challenge which I write about will prove to be more difficult to
accomplish. Such a curricular change
hits at basic assumptions, biases, aesthetics, senses of loyalty, and even
notions of self-worth. For example, the
change I am advocating questions how we view liberty, such a cherished,
self-defining attribute that we, as a nation, hold. Yet, as I pointed out in my last posting,
there might be certain historical trends, currently making themselves felt,
that would help, if not necessitate, a move toward what is being “pitched” in
this blog.
Of course, the proposed change is to move our view of civics
from one which holds the natural rights construct as the dominant view in
determining the content of our civics lessons, to what I have termed the
liberated federalism construct. As a
proposed change, any effort to accomplish it would benefit from understanding what
is involved with planned change, change that is conscious and deliberate. There is a literature, in the social
sciences, that reflects the research that has been done in this field. I want to visit a portion of that literature
so that we can consider the overall challenge of what I am proposing.
Robert Chin and Kenneth D. Benne offer an overview of
strategies that have evolved. These
strategies represent three different approaches to the efforts of change. But before I review these three approaches (a
topic of my next posting), I want to tie these strategy types to a basic
political concept, power. I have written
earlier in the blog about power. I have
used Robert Dahl’s relatively simple definition of power: a person has power over someone else if he/she
can get another person to do what he/she would not do otherwise.[1] Further, I have cited two scholars’ work that
identifies different forms of power. John
R. P. French and Bertram H. Raven identified five motivational
types based on why someone would be convinced to yield to the dictates of
another; i. e., the mental states that would lead one to do something he or she
would not do otherwise. They are perceptions of coercion, reward, legitimacy,
expertise, or referential desire (known as coercive power, reward power,
legitimacy power, expert power, and referent power,).[2]
Coercive power occurs when a person acts in
accordance with the wishes of another in order to avoid punishment, either
initial punishment or the continuation of punishment. Punishment can take many forms from physical
harm to financial losses. It can also be
psychological in the form of guilt, shame, love lost, embarrassment, fear, and
the like. If experienced, punishment,
especially if it is viewed as unjustified, can and is likely to elicit a desire
for revenge. If the conditions are
right, the exercise of coercive power can lead to a cycle of coercive activity
as in violence begetting violence. This
should be a consideration one would be wise to calculate before using coercive
power. On the other hand, coercive power
might be viewed as the only option to attain what is perceived as an essential
state of being.
Reward power is doing the bidding of others in
the anticipation of receiving what one wants to attain. Usually, this is in the form of money, but it
can be in the form of psychological benefits – affection, love, kinship, fame,
respect, and the like – or some physical entity – a car, a diamond ring, a
trophy, a favored parking space, etc.
Reward power does not spur negative consequences other than the costs of
issuing them. These costs, though, can
be substantial.
Legitimacy power occurs when someone does
something he/she will not do otherwise due to a sense of doing the right
thing. Usually involved is a sense of
duty or obligation. One can see that if
the act is not done, guilt can be the result so there is, in such a case, an
overlap with coercive power; the difference being that there is no inkling that
the requested behavior is unjustified.
Therefore, if one can convince a person or population that certain
behaviors or aversion to behaviors is legitimate, then compliance will not
elicit any resentment. If the necessary
beliefs are not present, then the party wanting to exert legitimate power needs
to instill such beliefs. This can prove
to be expensive and difficult.
Expert power occurs when someone does something
he/she would not do otherwise because he/she is being told to do so by someone
who knows what is the best (or better) course of action. An example from everyday life that comes to
mind is the power a doctor has over a patient when the doctor convinces the
patient of a change in lifestyle choices – such as giving up smoking. The key here is twofold: convincing the subject that the power holder
is expert enough and that the subject is disciplined enough to follow suit.
Referent power occurs when someone does something
he/she would not do otherwise because he/she wants to be associated with some
person, group, movement, or something such as an idea (ideology) or
symbol. It is a form of reward power,
but association usually involves an ongoing connection into the future. A sense of belonging is the “reward” and, as
such, deserves to be distinguished from what is usually considered a reward.
Those are the types of power that French and
Raven insightfully wrote about back in the 1950s. This formulation, I believe, is still a
powerful conceptualization. It is
particularly helpful for those who want to begin to learn what is needed in
order to initiate change. If we look at
civics education, for example, the current view has been institutionalized for
a fair amount of time. So if one wants
to work toward changing an important element of our national curriculum, one is
taking on a difficult task. There should
be no doubt about that. Elementary use
of the above list of power types quickly points to the fact that most coercive
resources, in the form of job security, and most reward resources, such as job
advancement, are in the hands of those who hold the current curricular biases
that support the natural rights construct.
This should be kept in mind as I review the types of strategies Chin and
Benne offer. As I stated above, I will
review those strategy types in my next posting.
[1]
Dahl, R. A.
(1957). The concept of
power. See https://www.unc.edu/~fbaum/teaching/articles/Dahl_Power_1957.pdf
.
[2]French, J. R. P. and Raven, B. H. (1967).
The bases of power. In. E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt (Eds.) Current perspectives in social psychology
(504-512). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
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