Authority plays a central role in various areas of our life. We encounter authority in the family, army, religious community, etc. We notice that some men or women are given the right to lay down rules and apply these rules to particular cases. Whenever a special person (or group of persons) is considered as source, interpreter and enforcer of rules, the term authority is used. We may define authority as the power or right to create, lay down, and enforce rules. Authority is connected with the rule-governed form of social life.

Authority involves power, to produce (being an 'author') and to regulate a certain kind of behaviour. This power is communicated and maintained through words, symbolic gestures, rituals, etc. We need only think of the manner of speaking and dressing of legislators, judges, police forces, priests, and doctors to illustrate this.

We usually make the distinction between two kinds of authority: formal and personal. Formal authority is the power given to someone by a social institution as a consequence of one=s place in a system of rules. Therefore, by virtue of their appointment, election or selection, the army officer, the magistrate, and the teacher are in authority. They help to maintain a social order or enforce a specific type of social control. Their authority is usually supported by a legal power. The policeman is able to get his orders obeyed because his power rests on the legality of some normative rules.

Personal authority is a power conferred spontaneously to people because of their competence, special knowledge, or moral quality. This kind of authority does not rely on an impersonal normative order; it is recognized freely by the members of a community. It can always be challenged and the refusal to accept this authority does not entail legal sanctions. Personal qualities (leadership, wisdom, charity, etc.) are the most common sources of this type of authority. It is through their prestige, popularity, magnetism, or charisma that some people are able to elicit and regulate human behaviour.

The teacher is an authority figure in both of the above senses. On the one hand, he is put into authority by a community (city or state) in order to educate his students. On the other hand, he is able to leave a lasting influence on his students if he displays some personal qualities such as enthusiasm, love of the subjects, compassion, sense of humour.

Doubtless, the formal authority of a teacher is a very important element in every educational process. A teacher needs to be supported by the local community or the government, especially when he is exposed to the criticism of the parents. Thanks to this support, he is able to transmit to his students not only knowledge and skill but also the norms and values of a specific community. A difficult problem that every conscientious teacher has to deal with is this: should he defend, uncritically, the interests of those who put him in authority? Should he identify himself uncritically with every single norm of his own society?

To be truly effective, teaching must rely on a personal authority. This means that the sincere and committed teacher comes to recognize the freedom and legitimate rights of each student. He knows that learning greatly depends on the student=s voluntary participation in what is going on in the classroom. Authority and freedom cannot be dissociated one from the other: freedom without authority lacks goals and guidance, authority without freedom transforms power into tyranny. Therefore, a good teacher does not wish to see his orders carried out mechanically and wants to work with individuals who submit themselves freely to his demands. He also accepts the challenges of the students, remains open to their criticism, and evolves just as much as they do. He is never certain that his orders or advice will meet no resistance. From this uncertainty arises the risk of giving orders, a risk that the teacher must accept. When a student calls the personal authority of his teacher into question, the teacher has failed in his primary educational function. Yet only by taking this risk of failure, in the practice of authority, can educational successes be attained.

A major problem educators have to deal with is the general decline of authority. In our age, not only their own authority, based on their own power of conviction, is called into question but also that of the parents, political figures, and older people. Notwithstanding the current refusal to make use of the parents= or older people=s accumulated wisdom, authority does not disappear. It surfaces, often in a less conspicuous form, when one relies on experts, follows some social conventions, or accepts the moral standards of corporations and other communities. It has been convincingly shown that those who reject, the most energetically, the authority of their parents or teachers will readily submit themselves to the "tyranny of the majority" within their own group. The authority of a youth group is considerably stronger than the severest parental authority. There is in every human being a great desire to belong and to conform to the norms and orders of a specific social unit. One of the most important lessons of our century is that individuals, as well as nations, cannot live without authority. Therefore, it is important to teach people to accept authority, and teach them in such a way that their acceptance will never turn into blind submission. In other words, a critical and responsible attitude in the face of authority should be nurtured. No less important is the self-education of the teacher: he should continuously change, evolve, and remain open to criticism.

Another important source of worry for educators is the refusal to acknowledge the validity of a particular tradition. Tradition is a stock of experiences, customs, values, habits, and institutions acquired or created by previous generations and transmitted to each new generation. Tradition is a form of authority since it contains a prescriptive value-system, insights, advice, and orders. We live in an age in which many tend to vigorously reject the legacy of previous generations. On the one hand, this divorce from past ideals can be explained by the erosion of a sense of community. On the other hand, a bitterness over, and attack on, tradition is prompted by the dissatisfaction with the evils left behind by the previous generation: wars, pollution, greediness, joblessness, and increasing mechanization of human life, etc.

Once again, it is important to emphasize that it is impossible to step outside a tradition: contemporary individualism is just as much rooted in a particular tradition as is the discontent with some inherited mentalities and achievements. In short, one fights or recognizes a tradition in the name of another tradition.

Teachers should encourage their students to approach the legacy of the past with an attitude of critical solidarity, an attitude that rejects both careless revolt and blind conformity, and analyzes, re-interprets, and selectively assimilates a particular tradition. Thanks to this attitude of openness, students are able to creatively dissociate themselves from of the bondage of fixed behaviour while discovering and preserving the great achievements of the past. According to the English philosopher Alfred N. Whitehead, both change and conservation are needed. A change without conservation is a leap from one disappearing entity to another, from nothing to nothing. Mere conservation without change cannot conserve.

The teacher should emphasize not so much the >authority= but the >spirit= of tradition, a tradition that provides students with a range of possibilities, a sense of order and belonging, and an urge to keep alive their creative powers and adventurous mentality.