For the fifth UWIDITE session we shall be dealing with two separate topics: authority and competition.

Corresponding to my two sections on these topics are Kleinig's chapters 16 and 13, respectively.

The question to ponder is: Why can't schools be organized like a university?

The problem

The reason we can profitably examine the concept of authority is that several ideas get invoked when people talk about it, and they are not carefully demarcated. Authority is important in teaching and in running an educational system in different ways; but I think it important to keep them distinct.

In reflective social or political thought, there are several distinctions commonly made with resepct to authority. Kleinig mentions most of them: de jure versus de facto authority; being in authority versus being an authority; Weber's categories of the main types of authority — traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational. (I shall leave it for you to discover what these distinctions are.) Kleinig suggests that while these distinctions have their value they have lead to "a fragmentation of the notion" and "an overemphasis on institutional factors" (p. 211). But my own reaction to Kleinig's account is that it replaces dispassionate analysis with a moderate demand for certain sorts of authority rather than others.¹

Another logical skeleton

Authority is an asymmetrical relation. To use Kleinig's variables, if X believes or does A because Y says or permits so and X thinks Y is rightfully able to do this, then Y won't do A because X says so and Y thinks he has a right to do so. Y has a kind of power over X, with respect to A. The precise kind of power takes some specifying — I have suggested that when Y has authority over X, X believes something about Y, that Y has a right to make demands with respect to A. But there is a problem here in that it may only be that someone (often the person making the remark) thinks Y has such a right. Does the South African government have authority over Soweto? The account I offered is more an account of being able to exercise authority, rather than simply having it. But since exercised authority is what usually counts in the long run, this may not be so bad.

Kleinig, on the basis of work by Young, suggests that the kind of power is that where X believes that Y is in a position to know with respect to A, or merely that Y knows what he is about. Without Young's arguments, this seems unacceptable. It is correct that often persons in authority are in some way relieved of that authority when they are thought insane, but it is not enough that I think you are in a position to know about A, I must think you are the person to be obeyed and not your brother who may equally well know about A. This is simply to say that it seems to me important to distinguish cases where Y is in an institutionalized position of authority (and may be totally ignorant of anything to do with A) from those where Y is an expert on A (but may have no chance of having his views taken into consideration). The way Kleinig presents his case makes it seem that a person in authority is or at least should also be an authority — this may be a desirable goal but it is certainly not a description of the facts.

One further point that arises from the logical skeleton is that we often omit to specify the respect, A, in which Y has authority over X. This ellipsis is once again worth noticing since it encourages the imperialistic tendencies of power holders: imperium sine fine² may have been given to the Roman Empire, but not to many other authorities,³ but when we fail to specify the limits of delegated power we make it that much more difficult to restrain it within acceptable bounds. Similar remarks may be made about the false supposition that an expert in A has views that are more valuable than the rest of us regarding B, C, and D.

The importance of authority

Being an authority on the matters taught is something we can rightfully expect of a teacher. It relates to the points I made earlier about the knowledge and wider understanding we should look for in a teacher of A. What one might desire is authoritative teaching, and we can note the pleasing incompatibility between authoritative and authoritarian teaching that Straughan and Wilson mention.⁴ Though we should also note that this incompatibility begins to dissipate when the teacher is possessed of Weberian charisma — almost always an anti-rational characteristic. In fact, I suspect we might be better advised to want more diffident, though no less accurate, teaching: people are unwilling enough as it is to think for themselves; an authoritative aura is an immediate excuse for not doing one's own thinking.

When learning is institutionalized, and particularly when the learners are more or less unwillingly corralled into it, authority becomes important for the simple management of instruction. For these and other reasons, schools and the teachers in them are often regarded as in loco parentis, and so endowed with that authority of unspecified scope that we give to parents. Authority has got a bad press from the incompetents and criminals who often exercise it, but we have here a reason not to extend our distrust of institutional authority to all cases. We can again note that institutional authority does not have to be exercised in an authoritarian manner. But what I think we can and should seriously do is to re-examine the institutions we run in the name of education with an eye to asking how much of their "authority structure," the rules, regulations, conventions, etc. upon which we insist, can really be justified on grounds that are independently acceptable to impartial observers. One small beginning would be to examine the alternatives that other people, other countries, etc. operate; or again, the alternative ways we organize things for different groups. Why should there be such a difference in rigidity between a secondary school and a university? Or between a summer camp and a primary school? Merely noting that this is how it has traditionally been is no answer.

Footnotes

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