During my nineteen-year community organizing career (which happened before my ongoing twenty-three year – so far – career as a high school teacher), our almost constant refrain was that power is not a finite pie. If our community leaders would gain some, that did not necessarily have to mean that those with power would have less. In reality, the more power was spread out, the bigger the pie was likely to become, and more opportunities and possibilities could realized for everyone.
I continue to believe that this is how power dynamics tend to work, especially in democratic societies.
I don’t think it’s that difficult to see many historical examples of things working out this way.
Eduardo Porter has written a Washington Post column describing a similar way of looking at things, and discussing the dangers of looking through this kind of “zero-sum” lens. It’s headlined Zero-sum thinking is destroying America, and particularly highlights the dangers immigration restrictions can have for the U.S.
We teachers aren’t immune from this kind of thinking in our classrooms, and many educators have similar perspectives in regards to their students. I share ways to get beyond that in A Look Back: Six Ways For Students To Be Powerful In The Classroom – What Are More Ideas?
And soooooo many district leaders have that same damaging perspective when it comes time to negotiations with teachers unions (not to mention school-based administrators with their faculty).
This isn’t a great video on zero-sum thinking, but it could be useful for starting a classroom discussion on the topic:
During my nineteen-year community organizing career (which happened before my ongoing twenty-three year – so far – career as a high school teacher), our almost constant refrain was that power is not a finite pie. If our community leaders would gain some, that did not necessarily have to mean that those with power would school reform Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
