What-if Wednesday: Knowledge is Power

While sitting through a training on coercive control techniques, I catch a glimpse of a laminated pre-fabricated teacher poster.  In bright, bubbly letters, it reads, "Knowledge is power."  It might as well read, "Knowledge is a fluffy bunny" or "Knowledge is nice."  Below the bubble letters is an ultra-bright, high-watt light bulb.  

My mind wanders to the nuclear reactor that powers the light bulb.  It's scientific knowledge at its most ruthlessly practical.  Split an atom, let it explode and now I get toast in the morning.  I've heard they're running out of locations for nuclear waste.  I'm not sure if it's just alarmist propaganda, but I'd still tap away at the keyboard and listen to my coffee percolate either way.  

Power is never neutral.  The myth of the twenty-first century is that we could take power as a mouldable Play-Dough and shape it into something positive.  It turns out it's more like mercury.  You can chase after it forever and eventually it drives you crazy.  I'm not saying power is all bad, but it is never neutral.  

Smart people created apartheid.  Intelligent people figured out elaborate systems for the Final Solution.  I thought about this when I saw a horrific documentary on Jim Jones.  The man had a knowledge of the human psyche and with it, he gained enough power to convince himself that he was God.  With both psychological seduction and a guerilla force with rifles, he convinced mothers to hand over children so that they could drink poison.  Almost 1,000 people died.  

What if we taught students that knowledge is power, but that power is dangerous?  What if we taught that, even when we try to use knowledge for good, it can subtly turn our ideas into rot?  What if we coupled knowledge with wisdom?  

If knowledge is power, wisdom is humility.

Maybe I'll laminate that and post it on the wall.

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kuzeytac/2763734090/