Trigger words: Power absolute power (6) power (11) Absolute power
Indicator sentences: You're using a very narrow definition of "absolute power", and I'd argue even "power";
Negotiation parts: On the surface, a teacher has some power over her class, but when you get right down to it, the teacher has little to no actual power over her students. What can they actually do to enforce any rules, other than what amounts to altering the length of time the student spends with the class, or kicking the responsibility up to the higher levels? All in all, they don't have much power at all. And parents? They can take things away from their kids, but ultimately the only enforcement power they have is to get the police involved, or greater physical strength to prevent their kid from simply taking back what they want by force. If the parents use any force to enforce their "power", then child abuse, CPS, etc. So, no real power there either. Now, let's look at some people with actual power: The police. How often have we been hearing of police overstepping their bounds/abusing their power? And how much of that do you think is just because it was *too extreme* to cover up, and indicates a ton of other shadyness going on that most people don't know about? They have power, true power, over life and death, with minimal (though this is changing) power. I think teacher's have more power than that. Considering teacher's can issue detentions, and have a huge say in a student's final grade, I would say they have more than just a little power. Even parents. They can take literally everything away from their children. They can ground them, meaning that the child is not able to do anything for an arbitrary amount of time. Force them to do an unrealistic amount of chores, they set all the rules in the house. I'd say this is a pretty big example of power. I think even your police example agrees with my post. Sure, I agree with you that many police officers overstep their bounds and abuse their power. It may very well even be the majority of officers. However, the fact that there are police officers out there who don't abuse their power strengthens my point, because if the power corrupted, there would not be officers that don't abuse their power. Detention is no where close to taking a person's life away Parents have a lot of power, in my opinion. Not only can they use any form of discipline they see fit, up to and including physical violence, but they can utilize mental and emotional violence as well (you're stupid, you're a terrible son/daughter, no one will love you, I'm going to lock you in this dark, cramped etc). But the real kicker is that these parents can refuse to financially support or shelter their child - all a parent has to do is walk away and there is nothing the child can do to stop him or her. There isn't even much a court of law can do, if the parent is fairly determined and leaves the country/changes his name/any of a dozen other things. Children are abandoned all the time - that's when they go to State institutions, orphanages, etc. So really, a parent has a near-absolute amount of power over their child's life. Whether they can use this power effectively, well, that's a different story. Not a lot of parents really threaten to abandon their children if they're too rebellious, for example. [STA-CITE]>Considering teacher's can issue detentions [END-CITE]Altering the time they have to stay in the class [STA-CITE]>and have a huge say in a student's final grade [END-CITE]Grades don't particularly matter, in the grand scheme of things, beyond being an indicator of how much work a student was willing to put in. The only thing it DOES influence is if the grade is failing and the student has to, well, spend more time in the class. [STA-CITE]>They can take literally everything away from their children. They can ground them, meaning that the child is not able to do anything for an arbitrary amount of time. [END-CITE]Okay, sure, but they can't actually enforce that. They can lock the kids in until the kids learn to pick locks, they can take stuff away until the kid doesn't care about its stuff, and parents are, typically, ineffective at stopping a child from being rebellious. [STA-CITE]> Grades don't particularly matter, in the grand scheme of things, beyond being an indicator of how much work a student was willing to put in. The only thing it DOES influence is if the grade is failing and the student has to, well, spend more time in the class. [END-CITE]It makes a big difference for uni applications. And that particular threat is only viable if you particularly care about which university you go to, or don't go to a community college for the first 2 years of schooling (which a lot of people do anyway since that's way less expensive), or indeed even care about post-secondary education at all. Pretty much everyone that cares about learning at school cares about making a decent mark. Even if you don't care about university/trade schools, students get directly punished by their parents for receiving poor marks. Uh... no, I never did in high school. I didn't care about grades because they actively got in the way of my learning. Math teachers who assigned 50+ homework problems a night, when I had better things to be doing with my time, and I understood the math already. I graduated with something like a 2.0, went to community college and aced my classes, transferred to a 4 year, got my BS, got a job I actually enjoy... And yeah, my parents totally *tried* to punish me for my bad marks, I just didn't actually listen to them, snuck out, etc. They made my life slightly more *difficult* at the time, but that was hardly power. They've changed educational doctrine since you were in school. They abandoned mass math drills, repetitive composition writing, and spelling testing. Mandatory routine hw seems to be the exception rather than the rule. If a student shows up, does the mandatory assignments, studies the material on the tests, and works hard on the projects, they do well. Based on your vernacular, it sounds like you're in the UK? As far as I can tell, the US isn't getting much better in that regard. It's certainly location-specific, at any rate. But we digress; regardless of this, the ability to give out bad grades is hardly absolute power.