Page 87 - Cultures and Organizations

More Equal than Others 69

Power Distance at School

In most societies today, children go to school for at least some years. In

the more affluent societies, the school period may cover more than twenty
years of a young person’s life. In school the child further develops his or her
mental programming. Teachers and classmates inculcate additional values,
being part of a culture that honors these values. It is an unanswered ques-
tion as to what extent an education system can contribute to changing a
society. Can a school create values that were not yet there, or will it unwit-
tingly only be able to reinforce what already exists in a given society? In a
comparison of schools across societies, the same patterns of differences that
were found within families resurge. The role pair parent-child is replaced
by the role pair teacher-student, but basic values and behaviors are carried
forward from one sphere into the other. And of course, most schoolchildren
continue to spend most of their time within their families.
In the large-power-distance situation, the parent-child inequality is
perpetuated by a teacher-student inequality that caters to the need for
dependence well established in the student’s mind. Teachers are treated
with respect or even fear (and older teachers even more so than younger
ones); students may have to stand when they enter. The educational process
is teacher centered; teachers outline the intellectual paths to be followed. In
the classroom there is supposed to be a strict order, with the teacher initi-
ating all communication. Students in class speak up only when invited to;
teachers are never publicly contradicted or criticized and are treated with
deference even outside school. When a child misbehaves, teachers involve
the parents and expect them to help set the child straight. The educat-
ion al process is highly personalized: especially in more advanced subjects
at universities, what is transferred is seen not as an impersonal “truth,”

but as the personal wisdom of the teacher. The teacher is a guru, a term
derived from the Sanskrit word for “weighty” or “honorable,” and in India
and Indonesia this is, in fact, what a teacher is called. The French term is
a maître à penser, a “teacher for thinking.” In such a system the quality of
one’s learning is highly dependent on the excellence of one’s teachers.
In the small-power-distance situation, teachers are supposed to treat
the students as basic equals and expect to be treated as equals by the stu-
dents. Younger teachers are more equal and are therefore usually more
liked than older ones. The educational process is student centered, with

a premium on student initiative; students are expected to find their own