Locus of Control in the Classroom & the World at Large

 

I watch the news and read up on a lot of court cases and pending legislation these days because all of it is related in some way with the work I do in special education as an advocate, paralegal, consultant, and direct services provider. Congressional spending, public policy changes, new litigation, and all kinds of other world events have direct bearing on special education and the individuals I assist and protect. Similarly, how the powers that be respond to the legally protected needs of the individuals I serve speaks volumes to the state of our democracy at the local level and the degree to which State and federal oversight is effective or not.

 

The concept of locus of control is not widely known or understood, but it should be. It's a fairly simple developmental concept to understand for adult-level problem-solvers. It's one of those things that, if the majority of intact adults understood it, it would contribute to what could effectively be psychological herd immunity against the fringe ass-hattery that is taking up way too much political and cultural space right now in our modern day societies, and help us restore and repair things to a more equitable equilibrium.

 

Locus of control describes a person's understanding of the degree to which they have agency over their own lives. A person with mostly an external locus of control believes that life is something that happens to them and some other external force beyond their control is responsible. Having an external locus of control is normal for babies, but dangerous for adults. Conversely, a person with mostly an internal locus of control will assume responsibility for everything that happens around them, engaging in controlling behaviors as well as delusional thought, often to a narcissistic degree.

 

Living at either extreme of the locus of control spectrum is unhealthy. At one extreme is the willing victim and the other is the predator. As with most of these kinds of things in psychology, what is considered "normal" when it comes to locus of control can be expressed through statistics using normal distributions. Here, "normal" means the majority of people who fall along the locus of control spectrum between the two far extremes, with some mix of both internal and external loci of control depending on the unique circumstances relative to the individual developmental maturity of each person.

 

I don't want to focus on the statistical outliers on that spectrum here. I want to focus on the majority of us who fall along the locus of control spectrum between those two extremes and how the relative ratio of internal versus external plays out in each of us such that it affects our behavior and how we raise our children to become intelligent, empathetic, responsible independent thinkers or not.

 

In order for us to apply the science successfully to the classroom and beyond, we have to first apply it to ourselves. We need to understand our own perceptions of locus of control before we can start thinking about other people's individual perceptions of it and how that affects their behaviors and relationships.

 

A healthy concept of locus of control is somewhere in the middle between fully external and fully internal. The reality is that some parts of life are beyond our immediate control and other parts of life are entirely within our control. Rather than applying the concept of the locus of control spectrum to the person as a uniform monolith, one's standing is better understood by applying this spectrum to a specific situation and asking, "How much of this immediate situation is actually within my control?", and "How many things are actually within my control that can change this situation for the better?"

 

There is a commonly used prayer among Christians called the Serenity Prayer, which goes: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." This is the essence of the locus of control self-assessment in day-to-day life. I can think of no better tradition that captures how reality works with such scientific simplicity than this. Science doesn't compete with religion, it measures the truth of Creation. When used responsibly, it reveals miracles that can teach us a great deal.

 

Sometimes the miracles are more magnificent than previously realized and only known once more data comes in, such as when Galileo asserted that the Earth revolved around the Sun rather than vice versa, which contradicted the teachings of the Church at the time. Unfortunately for him, he was found guilty of heresy and had to choose between 1) pleading innocent totally knowing that he would be found guilty and would have to spend the rest of his life in prison