COLLOQUY

THE QUESTION

RESPONSES

BACKGROUND

By Ellen Weber

Through a recent suicide victim at Harvard Graduate School and a secondary Memphis chemistry teacher I saw power's ability to either denigrate or prosper students in their learning pursuits. The Chronicle of Higher Education described Jason, a Harvard graduate student who recently took his own life to escape a power trap of competition he felt he could not win. Friends said Jason wanted through his studies to earn the top job and to retain recognition from his academic advisor. Jason's Harvard peers from grad school said that the young man longed for the kind of power he saw in his famous mentor who had earned a Nobel Prize for organic chemistry theory of "retrosynthetic analysis."

The conclusion of many interviewed was that Harvard professors simply wield too much power over their grad students. Some students said that good jobs, scholarships, and promotions often come from a few profs at the top who hold ultimate power over others' lives, and so can determine a student's ultimate success or failure. In fairness to Harvard, faculty apparently have worked hard since this tragic death to increase each student's contact with several professors so that no one powerful person controls students' destiny.

But Harvard may not be alone in this problem of persistent power held by a few over students' learning and academic success. Good news is that not long ago I ran into power's opposite force, which helped me put this problem into better perspective.

Sometimes by simply looking at its opposite we see a thing in better light. Recently I walked into a junior chemistry class in a large Memphis high school where another kind of power appeared. Here a diminutive Afro-American teacher worked quietly with one student after another in a sea of inquisitive student groups in her lab. The teacher, obviously unaware that she had miraculously empowered students to work hard to solve their chemistry problems together, seemed surprised at my comments about the high quality of learning and teaching. And I admit, as I squeezed my way through group after group I too was amazed at the level of questions and the thoughtful perceptions of these teens. So I asked their teacher, "How do you control so many kids to keep them on task. And why do these secondary chemistry students seem to enjoy their work so much." Her answer was short and to the point, "I don't." Then she added, "the curriculum controls all of us."

The solution seemed as simple to this teacher as the chemistry appeared within reach of all her students. She simply provided an excellent learning environment and created with her young students probing questions that helped them to apply facts from their textbook to solve complex real life chemistry problems. Rather than seek power over the kids, she empowered them instead to investigate chemical knowledge and ideas. It worked. The students seemed engaged in experiments and empowered to gain quality results from their science class.

You could say the Harvard suicide and the Memphis chemistry class illustrated the main difference between power and empower. One Harvard student lamented, "If your chemistry was going poorly, your life was poor. And effort seemed to be a moot point." Criticism was used rather than compliments they reported. The Memphis secondary students, on the other hand, felt comfortable in their teacher's graces. So they took risks, asked questions, and helped one another without much prompting from their teacher, at least while I observed. Since this teacher did not know in advance that I would be touring the school though, it also appeared they had built a collegial relationship with one another and had benefited from empowerment by their teacher over time.

One question these two stories raised for me: "Does power or empowerment touch down on most students in our community?"

-- Dr. Ellen Weber, Director of Secondary Education, Houghton College (posted 10/22, 11:36 a.m., E.D.T.)

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