Development of Will
J'Anne Ellsworth

The interplay of autonomy and heteronomy are so ubiquitous in human nature, that a great deal of energy and deep emotion surround social and community issues of power, control and responsibility. We sometimes take the social surroundings for granted. As a solitary being, the child is not competitive, has no jealousy, no context for competitiveness. There is no one to lie to, no one to cheat. To be alone is to be powerful. To be alone is to be lonely.

The youngster is drawn to have power, to construct life as a soliloquy, yet is not satisfied. The youth’s ideal fantasy suggests community that provides companionship, yet community that consists of a powerless entity who exists to serve, who thinks of nothing but meeting the child’s needs. Even if we were to accomplish that momentary end, there would be great dissatisfaction in it. To have the abject devotion of another is little different than having a sniveling cur for a companion. Thus our early dreams of total subjugation of others in our own service are immature and impossible whimsy.

Some people spend a lifetime learning that community is a give and take. Some never seem to move from egocentric self involvement to find the joy and satisfaction in pleasing self in the service of others. Power and control are keys in understanding this function of ourselves, our students and the dynamics of the family, the classroom the child in social context. The importance of these keys to human behavior emerged in early literature in the writings of Aristotle, Homer, Shakespeare, Bacon. It is woven through the writing and theories of many philosophers. It is noted in texts about human development by numerous writers, notably, Piaget (1965), May (1966), Fromm, (1973), Glasser (1984), and is measured in personality tests using terms like ascendance - submission, internal locus of control, leadership, empowerment. It is a recurring theme in psychology, and a primary component of understanding development of the self (Jung,1933; Erikson,1980).

Power and control are an integral part of social interactions, relationships, and community interchanges (Montuori & Conti, 1993). They may be external cues of personality traits that are embedded in interactions. If so, we can recognize, study and understand this part of a child or person in social context and relationship. The awareness that power and personality are intertwined may explain the ease or difficulty a student has in becoming part of the learning community or a child fights blending into a group of siblings and also explain why some youngsters seem difficult to manage.

Seeing power as both social and personal (Elias & Clabby, 1992) also allows teachers and parents to view youthful persistence in maintaining a set of responses and behaviors as more than stubbornness and different from dysfunction. It could assist those in authority to see a systemic base for repercussions that are the common result of efforts to step in and wrest authority through a power struggle. It may provide new ways of viewing teacher responses to power struggles and open untried and better ways of dealing with child behavior that is currently viewed as fractious and willful. Looking at internal need for control - for autonomy, can also also give us some perspective on why students "misbehave" and what some of the payoffs may be. Frequently the changing human element leads us to misinterpret who is in control and who has been listed as being in charge or claims to be in charge. The following story provides an illustration of these points.

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