Lisa Ciarfella
12/18/14
English 696/Arroyo
Final Seminar paper
Power, Punish, and Potter’s Dolores Umbridge:
“Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all
resemble prisons? (Foucault 1490).
“The power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating. The
carceral… naturalizes the legal power to punish, as it legalizes the technical power to
discipline…it makes possible to carry out that great economy of power whose formula
the eighteenth century had sought, when the problem of the accumulation and useful
administration of men first emerged” (Foucault 1498).
In Michel Foucault’s 1969 work, “Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison,”
Foucault states, “The power to punish is not essentially different from curing or
educating” (1498). And it’s in this renowned chronicle where he lays out the historical
transformation of the French penal system from pre-1800 where publicly held torture
and barbaric-stylized executions were the norm, to the 1840 opening of Mettray, the first
more humanely oriented penitentiary style penal colony, and where we start to see the
links to both historical and modern day educational methods. As Foucault describes,
Mettray, was “ an institutional new type of supervision- both knowledge and power …the
supervision of normality …supported by…a legal justification...a carefully worked out
technique for the supervision of norms”(1492). Which, as he prophetically notes, and
where we shall see other critics like Reigart, Helfenbein, Hogan and more have since
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agreed, has “continued to develop right up to the present day ” (1492, Foucault).
In his work, Foucault’s focuses his query on the techniques used at Mettray as
well as those social institutions like schools, barracks and hospitals included in his
“carceral” network of organizations, to discipline, punish, rehabilitate, educate,
normalize, and ultimately control and administer those individuals considered socially
deviant and or in need of incarceration. And it’s in this focus where the many similarities
to the approaches used by educators arises, especially when looking at the K-12
system, where similar desired outcomes prevail, such as controlling and managing
classroom behavior and producing well behaved, homogenously-standardized,
normalized and ultimately socially productive “docile and capable bodies ”(Foucault,
1492). Garland makes a good comparison in his analysis when he states that Foucault’s
work is a “diagram of disciplinary technology reduced to its ideal form” with techniques
like “training the body and “normalizing deviance” through a “society of
surveillance…subjected to infinite examination…in the panoptic machine” (Garland 859860). And Foucault further expands on that comparison when he details both the
panoptic and carceral system’s functions with regards to training: “their deputies had to
be not exactly judges, or teachers, or…parents, but something of all these things…in a
sense, technicians of behavior; engineers of conduct…their task to produce bodies that
were both docile and capable” (Foucault 1491).
Although Foucault’s account stops short of fully equating educational institutions
with either the carceral or panoptic systems, and does not advocate out-right rebellion
against such similar practices within the realm of education, it certainly does raise lots of
questions with regards to the positive nature, legitimate rational and or overall
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effectiveness of such practices in the world of academics, especially within the modern
educational system that not only celebrates but mandates acceptance of diversity and
individuality in all it’s forms. And the carceral’s stated goals of producing “the knowable
man, (soul, individuality, consciousness, conduct) as the object-effect of this
domination”(Foucault 1499), with its standardized, normalization of all as its goal may or
may not be an accurately reflected desire or appropriate goal for parents, students and
teachers, and in fact, leaves some looking for alternate options. Options like the
Sudbury school model developed in Maryland. Based on outside the mainstream
thinking educational methods, Sudbury allows students total control of scheduling
their own days, and by extension, they learn to “schedule one’s own life, wrestle with
one’s own questions, seek the answers, and master one’s own destiny”(Mission
and Vision Statement: Sudbury Public Schools).
But before exploring this type of option further, and to help us better connect the
dots and grasp these overall connections, we look again to Foucault’s colorful
description and brief historical lesson on the penal system’s eventual progress:
“We are now far away from the country of tortures, dotted with
Wheels, …gallows, pillories…an endless…representation of justice where the
punishments meticulously produced on decorative
scaffolds…constituted
the
permanent festival of the penal code” (1501)
Here, Foucault notes the hugely significant changes in the actions and methodologies
used for disciplinary measures, and in his historical accounting of the traditions of mass
schooling, Roger Deacon tell us, “ it’s within the context of seventeenth-century
Europe…that a Foucauldian account of modern school must be located.”(126). Before
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Mettray, the feudal based ruling system dominated, where lords and kings held all the
power and ruled with iron-like totalitarian control. Deacon further tells us:
“As feudalism declined in the face of the consolidation…of royal
absolutism…one common theme emerged: the re-imposition of
order through confinement of disorder…this resort to simple and
uncomplicated enclosure laid…a demand for the associated
disciplinary
mechanisms of hierarchy, surveillance, examination
and normalization”(126).
In accordance with Deacon, Foucault notes that these new measures produced a
more efficient and socially productive system, emphasizing not just punishment but
reformation in all areas including educational, emotional, medical and social. And that
the carceral’s function was to take over after release, with a variety of organized
institutions to ensure that “the indigent does not remain a moment without help from the
cradle to the grave” (Foucault 1496). Going back to Garland, who described Foucault’s
observations as “training the body…normalizing deviance…through a society of
surveillance…subjected to infinite examination…in the panoptic machine” (Garland 859860), it is not hard to make the comparison to educators, who might see these types of
techniques as familiar, even comfortable.
After all, “training the body,” sounds suspiciously similar to the common P.E. class
found in almost all K-12 schools today. And the goal of “normalizing deviance” through
an educators eyes could easily equate to the arduous task of assigning after school
detention for miss-behavior, where the “surveillance” aspect could easily reveal itself in
the form of an army of school aides diligently watching for the first signs of acting out,
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where the “deviant” in question might be promptly referred to the head-trainer or
principal’s office for father disciplinary measures. In addition, the prospect of “infinite
examination” must certainly ring true for both educators and students alike, where the
testing on acquired knowledge is on going from day one. As such, Foucault’s outlined
panopticon and carceral system of methodology might seem an appropriate disciplinary
fit for the educational system, under the guise of its “marvelous machine” where
“prisons, hospitals, schools and factories resemble each other because they are all
places where ‘bodies’ are observed, classified and trained, aligning their conducts to
pre-established norms”(Sargiacomo 276). Foucault even states that this designed
carceral network was a place ”where the frontiers between confinement, judicial
punishment and institutions of discipline…blurred… a sort of disciplinary training,
continuous and compelling, had something of the pedagogical curriculum” where
‘careers’ emerged from it”(Foucault 1493-96).
But as good a fit as Foucault makes it sound, quandaries do arise. In fact, the
notions of creating “docile and capable bodies” (Foucault 1491) sanctioned by the
process of normalization may just have negative consequences, as we see in Garland’s
declaration: “the methods of normalizing deviance, constant surveillance, excessive
examination and record keeping of assessing the individual to a desired standard of
conduct…allowing incidents of nonconformity … to be recognized and dealt with”
(Garland 859) eerily echoes George W. Bush’s mostly failed and highly unpopular 2001
No Child Left Behind policy, which stated that by the year 2014, one hundred percent of
all students must be reading and writing at grade level, and if not, then continued
federal funding for both teachers and students would be put in jeopardy.
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This policy, which led to mass teacher upset and the common teaching practices
of “teaching to the test” and resulting common core standards, highlights the question of
whether or not these kinds of processes of standardization within public education can
be seen as a positive measure for either teacher or student. Further, it forces the
question, should be incorporated at all, since doing so raises the distinct possibility of
dampening or even stamping out today’s highly incorporated school mantra of inclusion
and acceptance of all, especially within today’s highly diverse, modern American
student body, intellectually, physically, and ethnically. But acceptance of student
diversity hasn’t always been the historically accepted norm, as both Churchill and Smith
point out in their accounting of an official 1800 US government policy headed by
Richard Pratt, toward Native American children, which sanctioned forcibly abducting
them from their homes at a young age and sending them to boarding schools run by
white Christian denominations, to be assimilated into American culture: “U.S. colonists,
in their attempt to end Native control over their land bases, generally came up with two
policies to address the "Indian problem." Some advocated outright physical
extermination… meanwhile, the "friends" of the Indians, such as Pratt, advocated
cultural rather than physical genocide” (Smith 100). Like Pratt, Pancoast, a Philadelphia
lawyer, advocated a similar policy: "We must either butcher them or civilize them”
(Smith 100). Pratt modeled Carlisle, the most well known of these schools on the
mantra, “"Kill the Indian in order to save the Man" which became the governments
official policy on the matter, and is documented in Annie Smith’s YouTube video, “Kill
the Indian, Save the Man”(Smith YouTube). Alternatively, as Pratt put it, “transfer the
savage-born infant to the surroundings of civilization, and he will grow to possess a
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civilized language and habit," said Pratt (1973).
Unfortunately, Smith tells us, that because the economic rationale for these
schools was that it was cheaper to assimilate them than to kill them off, or as Carl
Schurz put it, “it would cost a million dollars to kill an Indian in warfare, whereas it cost
only $1,200 to school an Indian child for eight years” the consequence of this policy was
to assimilate them into the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder of the larger society”
(Smith 90). In addition, as Churchill accounts, the resulting attempts to, as Foucault
might have put it, “normalize” them into “docile and capable bodies” (1491) resulted in
an entire population that was emotionally scarred, with high rates of alcoholism, suicide
and cultural disintegration (Churchill). Most of these schools today are closed, but a few
remain, and as Smith tells us, “these school policies clearly violate a number of human
rights and legal standards, including The Draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and The Convention on the
Rights of the Child” (Smith 94). In order to make more comparisons to the negative
effects of Foucault’s observations of the penal system’s process of normalization in
regards to children’s humane and legal rights being violated we now turn now to both
Wolosky and Helfenbein’s articles, which both give examples from Judith Rowling’s
popular Harry Potter series, most specifically the fifth installment, The Order of the
Phoenix.
In Helfenbein’s “Conjuring Curriculum” her critiques against current moves
toward standardization, high-stakes accountability, and curriculum control can be seen
through Rowling’s characters actions when faced with the prospect of being expelled by
Umbridge, the Defense of the Dark arts minister, for “participating in a secret class
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taught by Harry, and Hermione encourages him to lead the class saying,
"We need a teacher, a proper one, who can show us how to use the
spells and correct us if we're going wrong" (Rowling, p. 326).
Twenty-eight students sign an agreement to keep their
participation… a secret… allying Harry at this point now with risks
serious consequences. .. by Umbridge.” (Helfenbein 506).
Eventually their class is exposed, but the good Dumbledore intervenes claiming
responsibility, rather than letting Harry take the fall and be expelled. Rowland’s point
here is that students, rather than totally being opposed to the necessary preparation for
the O.W.L. exams, they need Harry’s guidance to learn the spells, potions, and curses
required by the curriculum, but:
“They do protest the ways in which this curriculum is delivered and
what gets lost along the way. They desire more authentic
experiences…and take significant risks to create them…in a sense,
their own notions of accountability drive their conceptions of a
good teacher and, when this is denied them, they ultimately place
Harry in that role” (Helfenbein 507).
In their own way, they are protesting what Dolores Umbridge stands for in terms
of curriculum control and normalized-standardization for all when she says especially
when she says:“ Let us move forward, then into a new era of openness, effectiveness,
and accountability, intent on preserving what ought to be preserved, perfecting what
needs to be perfected, and pruning wherever we find practices that ought to be
prohibited. (Rowling 214; Helfenbein 508).
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Rowland here paints Umbridge in a totally negative light, and as the students
come to realize they are not being taught what they need to develop into fully capable
functioning adults, her critique of Foucault’s noted observations on the penal system’s
modes of control and discipline as means of administration are easily translated into the
students inauthentic learning experiences and amount to the “unintended
consequences of high stakes learning accountability” (Helfenbein 509). In agreement,
Wolosky acknowledges, “Umbridge’s regime is explicitly instituted in the name of
discipline…and is itself an architecture of Foucauldian principles… a drill in submission
before authority” (289-290). Like Foucault’s Panopticon model where all prisoners know
that they could be under surveillance at any time, but are never quite sure if they are,
Umbridges classroom “establishes external coercion towards inculcating a subservience
to authority... to compel Harry into internalizing submission as a psychological state”
(Wolosky 289). In addition, to further liken the two realms, Wolosky points out that her
domineering style reflects
“The Ministry of Magic’s strategies of control, which penetrate, in
true Foucauldian fashion, across…a range of institutional networks:
the school, the press, the judiciary and penal systems…
communication and transportation (the Flue network, Portkeys,
Apparition) which are all under surveillance” (Wolosky 289).
But Wolosky also points out that in Rowling’s work, we see the flip side of the
coin from Umbridge’s negative embodiment to the solemn and wise, good natured
Dumbledore, Harry’s mentor and personal teacher who “embodies a number of positive
principles from educational theory” (Wolosky 294). As Wolosky states, Dumbledore is “a
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role model, a personal paradigm for ethics, values and goals, and indeed for learning
and thinking itself. He shows his pupils ways of ‘wondering, querying, and making
inferences … (as Anne Brown puts it, 1997, p. 407) Dumbledore’s tutorials fulfill the
pedagogical principles of discovery and collaboration (Wolosky 294). All of which seem
the exact opposite of Umbridges stifling oppressive, Foucauldian-like nature, as Harry
himself tells us in The Sorcerer’s Stone, “Dumbledore…had a pretty good idea we were
going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help”(Rowling 302;
Wolosky 293). And to confirm that opinion he tells us in The Deathly Hallows
“Dumbledore usually lets me find out stuff for myself. He let me try my strength, take
risks”(Rowling 433; Wolosky 293).
Both Helfenbein and Wolosky’s articles suggests that Rowling’s implication is
that “contemporary efforts at standardization of curriculum…might be diverting the
nation 's attention away from the real needs of U.S. school children…and “can be
“employed pedagogically to explore and challenge …views on the everyday practice of
schooling and the implications of school reform” (511). Helfenbein essentially uses
Rowland’s work to highlight the work he feels needs to done in order to “resist the
deadening influence of standardization on the relationships between teachers and
students”(Helfenbein 512), while Wolosky illuminates both sides of the educational
puzzle, with the positively self-fulfilling, active self-agency examples of Dumbledore’s
style shown to be key to overcoming the drone-like and potentially damaging
atmosphere of Umbridges examinations, which “far from testing knowledge or
competence…are exercises of pure terrorizing control, intimidating and
humiliating”(Wolosky 290).
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To further delve into Umbridge’s style of control, we look to Holgan’s and
Reigart’s notations on pedagogical reform in New England in the early 1800’s and their
descriptions of the Lancasterian school models, organized by Thomas Eddy and friends
in the US. These schools, which were based on strict adherence to authority and
control, similar to today’s military schools, remained popular into the 1820’s at West
Point Academy, as well as in traditional Sunday schools. According to Reigart, the
“Lancastrian system’s chief virtue was “submission to authority. The method employed
was that of military organization in the hands of the pupils themselves. Apart from
obedience, order and cleanliness, the moral influence…was neutral or negative” (101).
And Hogan tells us that the “Apostles of New England Pedagogy” (Hogan 3), like
Horace Mann,
“challenged this Lancasterian model of traditional hierarchy of
authority and “rather than rely on either corporal punishment or
impersonal bureaucratic authority…advocated a far more Lockean
system of ‘affectionate authority’…urging school teachers to
cultivate the student’s sense of obligation to study, but mostly
recommended that learning be made interesting and
pleasurable”(Hogan 4).
As Hogan goes on to tell us, “Mann was not opposed to corporal
punishment…but he insisted that it was a ‘very great evil’ because… it ignored the
power of conscience and the love of knowledge to cultivate self-discipline (Mann 1845,
p. 155). School discipline should be based on kindness and sympathy, not terror. Mann
pressed home the potential of a disciplinary regime based on kindness and
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sympathy”(Hogan 7).
In Reigart’s model, he tells us that in the Lancasterian school system, “every boy
must conform to the average motion of the school. In short, the system has all the
excellences…of the military discipline. It produces habits of attention, order, and
subordination- most valuable qualities to the class of society whose interests it has in
view.” Which sounds an awful lot like Foucault’s examples of the panopticon and
carceral system’s methods of administering both discipline and punishment. And was
most likely not an educationally inspiring or motivationally fun environment for the
students to learn in.
In closing I would like to briefly offer up the alternative method mentioned early
on to the harsher traditionally oriented Lancasterian military-oriented school types, and
those oppressive natured classrooms like Dolores Umbridges in the Rowland’s work,
and that is the Fairhaven school in Maryland. The school is based on the Sudbury-type
model, and is highlighted in the YouTube clip by Luba Vangelova, entitled “How
Students lead the learning experience at Democratic Schools.” It shows how the goals
of the schools are to help students develop two core traits: agency and autonomy, and
to develop those traits with a mixture of ample freedom and responsibility to become
their own autonomous, and independent thinkers, and ultimately learn how to be
responsible, caring, adults who structure life on their own terms based on their own
goals and aptitudes. It is an infesting experience, and one where parents and students
learn how to navigate the childhood experience away from the constraints of the more
traditional and sometimes harshly oriented academic world, so focused on rules,
regulations, and standardizations of what society dictates the norm should be for all
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students. It is a model to aspire to, and to look toward the future to help build positive
student self-agency instead of a Foucauldian-like normalized; one size fits all, kind of
education.
Works Cited
Churchill, Ward. Kill the Indian, Save the Man the Genocidal Impact of American Indian
Residential Schools. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2004. Print. From
around 1880 to 1980, Native American children in the United States and Canada
were forcibly taken from their families and relocated to residential schools under
a U.S. government program with the mantra, "kill the Indian to save the man."
Half did not survive, and those who did were left emotionally scarred, and the
resulting alcoholism, suicide, and emotional trauma led to a social disintegration,
even a cultural genocide. I will use Churchill’s chronicle to show the link between
Foucault’s Carceral system and process of “normalization” in the pursuit of
“docile and capable bodies” and point out how this type of a process can have
devastatingly negative potential as it did for Native Americans, and future
generations of their children, still yet to come.
Churchill, ward. “Kill the Indian, Save the Man: American Indian Residential Schools.”
C-Span.org. City Lights Publishers, 5, Dec. 2005. Web. 13 Nov. 2014. Live video
clip of a book discussion by ward Churchill, on “Kill the Indian, Save the Man:
American Indian Residential Schools” at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco.
The author talked about the history of government-created American Indian
residential schools and argued that these schools had genocidal aims. Professor
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Churchill said that while the term “genocide” is widely understood to refer only to
the mass killing of an ethnic group, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide defines it in broader terms, which apply to the policies
of the U.S. government towards Native American children throughout much of
the 20th Century. He described the treatment that these children received and
discussed the impact of these schools on Native American society today.
Following his remarks, he held a question and answer session with the audience.
Deacon, Roger. "From Confinement to Attachment: Michel Foucault on the Rise of the
School." The European Legacy 11.2 (2006): 121-38. Web. 02. Nov. 2014. This
author examines a fundamental shift away from a negative to a positive image of
mass schooling by showing how Foucault’s disciplinary methods of exclusion or
confinement of diverse and disorderly groups such as the poor and lower working
classes has gradually been replaced with a modern focus on their inclusion and
development of potential instead with programs such as Bush’s No child Left
Behind act. I will use examples from this article to show how Pre-Foucault, these
groups were marginalized, ostracized, and left out of educational benefits and
reform, and show the shift to modern day educational thinking that is all about
inclusion, diversity and acceptance. I will also suggest how this might be the
opposite of Foucault’s notions to “normalize” the population needing reform, and
how education today instead embraces individual creative diversity.
Foucault, Michel. "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” The Norton Anthology
of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010. 1469-1502.
Print. I will use Foucault’s ideas in this work as the jumping off point for my
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discussion linking his views on discipline and the concepts of normalization of to
modern day educational methods, techniques, and values; acknowledging the
benefits of such ideas, but also pointing out the many downfalls,
disadvantages and disparities of Foucauldian-like methods with regards to
today’s diversity oriented educational settings and models.
Garland, David. "Foucault's "Discipline and Punish"--an Exposition and Critique."
American Bar Foundation Research Journal 11.4 (1986): 847-80. Web. 01, Nov.
2014. For Foucault, discipline is mainly a structural analysis of power and the
modern form of exercising that power. And his work studies the rise of the prison
system and penal history in the early 19th century, and how that discipline was,
and continues to be achieved. It focuses on how violent, repressive techniques
like the execution eventually gave way to the milder reforming techniques of “the
Carceral,” and how these gentler forms of control, inspection, discipline, and
normalization have now become the mainstays of a wider and more modern,
social reform system. I will use this article as a reference to Foucault’s ideas of
control, inspection and the process of normalization as reformative measures.
Helfenbein, Robert J. "Essay Review Conjuring Curriculum." Curriculum Inquiry 38.4
(2008): 499-513. Web. 02. Nov. 2014."Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,
“has been demonized as an attack on traditional values in schooling, and this
article suggests it helps link today’s more modern socio-cultural context and
values to contemporary educational policy issues The series revolves around
the Harry and his friend’s experiences in school, and focuses on issues of
curriculum and the control therein. It is suggested Rowland’s text serves to
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critique current moves toward standardization, high-stakes accountability, and
curriculum control, all things Foucault’s ideas would have seemed to condone in
discipline and punishment. I will use this article to point out the negative
consequences Rowland’s article alludes to, and how Foucault’s ideas directly
contrast with her work’s critiques surrounding these issues.
Hogan, David. "Modes of Discipline: Affective Individualism and Pedagogical Reform in
New England, 1820-1850." American Journal of Education 99.1 (1990): 1-56.
Web. 10. Nov. 2014.The long standing debate between Horace Mann and the
Boston grammar school masters in the 1840s was a pivotal moment in the
making of modern American pedagogy. Recent interpretations view it as a clash
between modernity and traditionalism. This paper argues that, Horace Mann and
other exponents of "the New England pedagogy" were deeply troubled by the
menacing moral consequences of the Jacksonian revolution, and that they
developed a "disciplinary" pedagogy to reflect their faith in the ability of education
to promote the development of the powers of the self and cultivate the capacity
for self-government. I will use this article to highlight the development of the
Lancasterian schools in the early 1800’s and show how their harsher disciplinary
methods differ more modern pupil motivational methods used today.
Hughes, John, Dir. “Breakfast Club Dear Mr. Vernon.” YouTube. Ruben Llama’s
Channel, 5 May 2013. Web. 01. Nov. 2014. A clip from the classic1980’s cult
film, “The Breakfast Club.” Shows Brian the nerd writing the letter Mr. Vernon
requires, telling him why they think they all had to spend the day in detention. But
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as Brian words suggest, we come to realize that these students are all as diverse
and individual as can be, and cannot possibly be contained or lumped into any
one normal or easy to manage category, much as both Vernon and Foucault
might have liked (referencing Foucault’s notion of docile and capable bodies
here). Brian writes: “We think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you
who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms,
in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us
is a brain... and an athlete...and a basket case...a princess...and a
criminal...Does that answer your question?... Sincerely yours, the Breakfast
Club.” This clip highlight the point that perhaps Foucault’s prescribed methods of
reform, discipline, and categorization and normalization, maybe don’t quite fit into
today’s diversity-oriented celebratory model of modern day education.
http://youtu.be/iZuRexFoIek
Reigart, Franklin John. “Lancasterian System in the Schools of New York City.” 1st ed.
New York. Columbia University. 1916. 1-215. Web. 11. Nov. 2014.
“Mission and Vision Statement.” Sudbury Public Schools. Sudbury Public Schools,
2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014. The Mission Statement as shown on the Sudbury
Public School website. Emphasizes “embracing diversity, individual talents and
creativity, and the overall joy of learning.” This philosophy is an alternative to
traditional K-12 public American schools in terms of both philosophy and
application, where the students help decide their own daily activities based
mainly on their personal interests, and have much input in the way the school
runs. http://www.sudbury.k12.ma.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=...
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Sargiacomo, Massimo. "Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the
Prison." Journal of Management & Governance 13.3 (2009): 269-80. Web. 05.
Nov. 2014. “Discipline and Punish: The birth of the Prison” paints the portrait of
the French penal system moving away from the harsh disciplinary punishments it
first conceived, and toward a Carceral-like system of surveillance, constraint,
control, examination and education. It also hints that schools, mental wards,
hospitals, barracks and factories were also institutions where these disciplinary
techniques were applied. Breaks down Foucault’s work into four parts: One:
torture: two: punishment; three: discipline, or docile Bodies and the means of
correct training, and the Panopticon, and four, prisons and the Carceral. I will use
this study to help break down the particulars of Foucault’s ideas, especially the
fourth part, and also show commonalities to modern-day school settings now
similar disciplinary techniques, as well as high security measures, like
Addington’s commentary (above) on post- Columbine measures, as well as
Wilson high school, a local Long Beach example. I will note how these measures
can negatively impede students and staff in terms of routine daily functioning.
Smith, Andrea. "Boarding School Abuses, Human Rights, and Reparations." Social
Justice 31.4 (2004): 89-102. ProQuest. Web. 6 Dec. 2014. This work, like
Churchill’s above, further describes the experiences of American Indian children
who were forcibly abducted from their homes and made to attend Christian and
government-run boarding schools under strict state policy with the official US
mantra, “kill the Indian, to save the man. Students were forced to embrace
Christianity, speak only English, and as Foucault might have put it, “normalize”
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into docile bodies, capable of living in mainstream society. I will use this article in
conjunction with Churchill’s text (see above), to further detail how this type of
Foucauldian process violated many of these children’s humane and legal rights,
albeit under a legally sanctioned program. I will also use it to make connections
back to both Wolosky’s and Helfenbein’s articles (see above and below) on
Rowland’s Harry Potter series, which address how mainstreaming educational
techniques popular today like coercively teaching to the test and school district’s
high stakes accountability policies can actually work to impede student’s creative
and intellectual abilities in favor of creating a manageable “norm” much like
Churchill’s text and Foucault’s ideas describe.
Smith, Annie. “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” YouTube. FreyBread Queen’s channel,
23,. Nov. 2008. Web. 11. Nov. 2014. This video clip historically documents
Carlisle Industrial School, the first native American boarding school, founded by
Richard H. Pratt, and the negative experiences that occurred there, as relayed
through Andrea Smith’s article above, "Boarding School Abuses, Human Rights,
and Reparations,” and Ward Churchill’s book, “Kill the Indian Save the Man.”
http://youtu.be/L6PU7eNrJnE
Vangelova, Luba. “How Students Lead the Learning Experience at Democratic
Schools.” KQED Public Media. For Northern California. NPR. 10, Oct.2014. Web.
08, Nov. 2014. The author explores the Fairhaven School, in Maryland. Which
opened its doors in 1998, has no tests or grades, and no assigned homework. Its
goal is to help students develop two core traits: agency and autonomy. To foster
those traits, the school aims to balance freedom and responsibility. The
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institutional framework — rules and community responsibilities and related
meetings — “provides a sense of order that is vital, but around that, students
have a lot of liberty to shape their day.
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/10/students-lead-the-learnin...
“Voices from the New American Schoolhouse” (trailer). YouTube. Dmydlack’s channel,
19 April. 2006. Web. 12. Nov. 2014. This video clip chronicles life outside the
norm for most school students today. It follows the students at Sudbury Valley
School in Fairhaven, upper Marlboro, MD, which practices an interesting sort
of freedom and democracy that turns mainstream education theory on its head,
allowing students to do, as they want, when they want, and how they want. Lots
of autonomy, yet within a democratic structure that incorporates everyone’s
voices and opinions on everything from what classes they want to take, to
whether or not the staff gets to come back the following year. Filmmaker Danny
Mydlack enjoyed unrestricted access over a two-year period to produce this
candid and encounter with the kids who attend this kid-powered learning
environment. http://youtu.be/rgpuSo-GSfw
Woloskey, Shira. "Foucault at School: Discipline, Education and Agency in Harry
Potter." Children's literature in education 45.4 (2014): 285-97. Web. 03. Nov.
2014. This author suggests Rowland’s Harry Potter series critically attacks
educational disciplinary structures by displaying their negative coercive powers,
but also explores how those powers can be used as a positive resource to not
only dominate, but also strengthen student’s ability for agent selfhood. The
Dursley home, the Ministry, the Press, and Hogwarts are all explored as settings
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where a range of educational practices are used in both manners. Some, like
Umbridges classroom, are more traditional, or “Foucauldian” in discipline and
style, and others, like Dumbledore’s more positive style of educating, as well as
Harry's own student-teacher role foster, develop and inspire individual creative
selfhood, using discipline to both coerce and nurture. I will use this article to point
out how Foucault’s more traditionally coercive thoughts on how to discipline,
while sometimes necessary, can be less effective at inspiring and rewarding
individual creativity and achievements for student’s in today’s social and
creatively oriented school learning environments.
"Good and bad methods of disciplining inappropriate classroom behavior.
YouTube. Jeff Quitney’s channel, 01. March, 2013. Web. 02. Nov. 2014. A very
humorous and yet intriguing look back at an official American school district film
released in 1947 for K-12 teachers. Offers assistance for teachers who need help
with discipline inside the classroom. What’s interesting and ironic is that the
problems teachers faced back then are still essentially the same ones teachers’
grapple with today. And some of the methods shown, with regards to positive
oriented intervention, are still used, although with a modern twist. Either way,
discipline inside the classroom was, and still is, an ever present issue not likely to
go away soon and needs addressing in some fashion, whether with a more
traditionally regimented and categorized Foucault-approach or a more modern
diversified style. http://youtu.be/G7bGv7LPL4Y .
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