Term Paper on "Empowerment Disempowerment in Schools"

Term Paper 4 pages (1218 words) Sources: 3 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Empowerment

Knowledge, power, and culture are interrelated. Knowledge is power: it is a source of cultural capital that aids in the creation of elite classes of individuals who possess the skills necessary to gain economic and political might. Using Marxist theory, Almeida Moraes shows how schools are instruments of capitalistic culture. Schools perpetuate class stratification by tracking students, by emphasizing some forms of knowledge over others, and stressing some methodologies over others. Schools are often viewed as institutions that churn out the next generation of subservient workers, too: turning some students into the elite controlling class and others into the large mass of laborers (Almeida Moraes).

Similarly, Giroux notes how culture is directly related to power. The dominant culture maintains political, social, and economic clout. Giroux notes that "youth are constructed as subjects and subject to relationships of power within and across a variety of public spaces." Early in their lives students are molded, disempowered because they either conform to social norms or are labeled forever as deviants.

As primary social institutions, schools foster the relationship between knowledge, power, and culture. If knowledge is power, then schools have the potential ability to bestow power on some children but not others. Schools possess a sensitive and special responsibility: not just to teach facts but to empower. To empower students, educators and the schools they work for must redefine their roles.

If knowledge is power then knowledge is also empowering. Humanistic theory offers one of the most sensible ways schools can change from disempowering institutions to empowering ones. Humanistic educators "strive to provide the kind of education that, on the one hand, liberates their students from the fetters of ignorance, caprice, prejudice, alienation, and false-consciousness, and, on the other, empowers them to actualize their human potentialities and lead autonomous, full, and fulfilling human lives," (Aloni, 1999).

Both Marxist and humanistic theories offer means to transform pedagogy. Marxist theories show how schools are instrumental in reinforcing -- or doing away with -- class stratification. Humanistic theories show how teachers can lead through example, empowering each of their students by encouraging diversity and different ways of seeing the world. Educators should "set personal example in the art of living as well as to create at their schools a pedagogical atmosphere of care, trust, support, dialogue, respect, fairness, tolerance, inquiry, freedom, commitment, responsibility and reciprocity." (Aloni 1999).

Students are empowered when they are respected for their individual differences and their unique backgrounds. They are empowered when they are challenged without being belittled. Educators empower their students by encouraging active inquiry and creativity, refusing to squelch either in the name of curriculum requirements or assessment standards. Students are empowered when their teachers recognize their talents and abilities and encourage their students to maximize them. Schools can become agents of empowerment by allowing teachers wider girth in their curriculum and their pedagogical approach. Agents of empowerment allow a large degree of freedom and show students how to develop personal responsibility. Ultimately schools are agents of empowerment when they teach students the real tools they need to thrive and succeed in the dominant culture, revealing the codes, norms, and mores of that culture. Empowerment is unbiased and egalitarian. No school can be an agent of empowerment if it fails to question why some social groups continue to have more wealth and political clout than others. Students need to question those overarching social realities and educators need to help students ask those questions.

Too often, schools are agents of disempowerment. Students who arrive to class eager and enthusiastic may emerge disillusioned by the end of the year because their grades did not reflect their ability to learn. Assessment… READ MORE

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