That's the move you want to make if you are at ease with your authority and judgment and see no reason to share power. One of the clearest expressions of this problem I've seen came from Celina Su (@CelinaSu) in a brief NY Times letter in 2009. Talking about school reform, she spoke of the deep knowledge held by students, who "simmered with complex analyses of the ways in which school conditions prevented them from learning." Occasionally, students rise up and demand a seat at the table when their schools are being discussed, but how often are they invited naturally, without pressure? The powerful are almost always comfortable keeping hold of the controls. Su's writing about this problem continues. My fuller reaction to her 2009 letter went this way:

Silencing the stakeholders. One way to make clear the power of social media is to identify the thing that is broken without it. Clay Shirky, I'm guessing, might speak about creating the opportunity to coordinate a group that can't easily act in concert, or to call to the microphone a group that usually can't speak on its own behalf. I noticed in a 5/11/09 letter to the NY Times from Celina Su a classic circumstance where a group is ordinarily silenced even when they are central figures in a social structure.

Su is responding to a David Books column that sets up a particular school as a model for reform. He concludes one thing about the meaning of the example the school provides, and Su asks him to slow down and reconsider a wider body of evidence. She talks about listening to the students themselves, who are in one way the most expert of anyone involved in the schools. Midway through the letter, Su says:

• It’s startling that urban youth remain hypervisible symbols of the “culture of failure” but are never quoted as the ultimate stakeholders in education policy debates.

• Once we get numbers [indicating success] like those Mr. Brooks trumpets, we need to ask the students themselves about the causal links. The students my colleagues and I spoke with simmered with complex analyses of the ways in which school conditions prevented them from learning.

There is the classic social structure that can be challenged by enlightened practices among bureaucrats or careful work by researchers or by grass-roots organizing or by engaging with social media: "...never quoted...the ultimate stakeholders...simmered with complex analyses of the ways in which school conditions prevented them from learning."

Silenced. Knowledge ignored. Activity toward goals thwarted. Then what? Rage? Alienation? Indifference? Cynicism? And so forth.

I recall having been invited to help review my own high school's programs when I was 16 or so, and in many ways this was the most powerful part of my education in those years. It was a chance to speak on something that mattered and that was close to my experience. It was a challenge for me to formulate useful ideas about the swirl of experience, too. It felt respectful to have been asked and to have been given a seat at the table, along with some of my classmates. It felt great, and I learned a lot. In other areas, those years were pretty standard times of alienation and waiting for life to open up.

The school's review created a structure for engagement, just as social media do now for some people. Su's letter clarifies the circumstances that mark the problem, all too common, and hint at some different kinds of solution.