Power to the Pupil

No matter how long I work with folks or how much I believe we are on the same page, I occasionally still get caught off guard by a fundamental question about youth/student power. It dawned on me recently that I have had a number of these questions come directly back, or filter back circuitously, to me over the years, many times deep into a relationship. Co-workers, colleagues, partners, educators and even just friends have on occasion finally asked that ultimate question, or perhaps even offered it more as an assertion: “I know you talk a lot about the power of students, Anderson, but…I mean…they really don’t have power…(do they?)”

So, here we are; the fundamental question. And, to be clear, I want to thank, not criticize, those who are willing to voice their uncertainty; I just wish many times that they would do so earlier in our work together. Addressing this question together is the only way we can move forward effectively around youth and student engagement. 

In response to this very legitimate question, I offer a few scenarios:

What would happen (and does happen) if the students in your community decided they had had enough of the over-suspension of black males in their school? 600 students decide to walk out and refuse to go to class until new policies are put into place. The school is effectively shut down.

Do these students have power?

What if students decided that they were sick and tired of their futures and their education boiling down to standardized test scores? They all decide to sit in on the test but not answer any questions. The school gets near a 100% failure rate as a result. The school, its faculty, staff and the central administration are now in academic crisis.

Do these students have power?

What if students decided that they had seen enough bullying of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans-gender youth in their schools by students and faculty alike and took their cause to the school board? They manage to get the district to add GLBT language into their school safety and anti-bullying policies. They establish a process and recourse for complaints and the implementation of new teacher training. They shift the climate of the school.

Do these students have power?

It’s hard to argue that these scenarios don’t present powerful students. What we see in these scenarios is student power organized and exercised and aimed at a clear target for change. 

But, now the question is: in the absence of this level of student organizing (which admittedly is not as common as I believe it should be given the state of many of our schools), do students still have power? 

To answer this question, it is important first to understand that latent power is still power. Fuel un-ignited is still fuel. But are student organizing and advocacy like these scenarios the only way students ignite power? Or, are we just ignoring the more ad hoc power they exercise every day that impacts our communities, the educational system and really every one of our lives in some way or another?

We spend billions of dollars every year and have rung the bell of a national epidemic to address the dropout crisis and to understand the failure of our urban schools. And yet, in our strategies for change and improvement, we don’t talk much about student power in this crisis (thus obviously failing to leverage it). 

Students are choosing to walk away from our schools. That’s power. Students are choosing not to engage in boring and irrelevant curriculum. That’s power. Students are refusing relationships with teachers and staff that don’t respect their lives or understand where they come from. That’s power. Students are choosing to join gangs rather than after-school or extracurricular programs. That’s power. On the other hand, there are even more students every day who are choosing to stay in school, to study, to engage and to do myriad positive things in their communities, for their families and with their friends. That’s also power.

Choice is power. The fact is that students are making choices every day and their decisions impact nothing less than the direction of this country and its educational system. And, in regard to the exercise of student power, whether we adults accept, validate, lament or otherwise punish these choices is effectively immaterial. Power is power, and we’re not engaging it.

We cannot choose for our students to stay in school. They have to choose it. We can only co-create with students the spaces, the relationships and the opportunities for effective and informed choices. If this is not co-created, but solely adult-driven, it becomes coercive at best and compulsory at worst.

Our efforts to improve our schools and rebuild our communities must genuinely acknowledge and understand the power of our students without obscuring that power through our adult value judgments. Power has no innate value. Without this level of understanding, inclusion, and leveraging of collective power with students, we will never find the means to co-create change, but will continue merely to impose change that students will ultimately decide if they agree with or not. As we have heard a thousand times, they will “vote with their feet.” Students, in fact, will ultimately decide whether all of our efforts achieve success or are all for naught. They have the power.