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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: (The Horrors of) Educational Discipline I woke up this morning and realized that I still wasn't completely finished with my ideas about (and I must say) disgust with our educational system. After yesterday's blog, No Child Left, I got several emails from people ranging from confused to annoyed to "right on". One pointed out to me a paper that David Miller (truly a brilliant teacher) gave at the 1998 Conference on Values in Higher Education Stewardship and Opportunism: The Moral Roots of Accountability, entitled: "Nothing to Teach! No Way to Teach It! Together with the Obligation to Teach!" Dilemmas in the Rhetoric of Assessment and Accountability . In that paper, David talks about his experiences at Syracuse University as universities increasingly moved to a capitalistic model in which students becoming consumers or customers and universities establish ac-count-ability to ensure that the students get what they pay for in a now economic system. How does one ensure ac-count-ability. Why by counting, measuring, standardizing, evaluating, of course. Thankfully, I don't have an academic career and I suppose I'm not anticipating one. I spent 25 years in corporate America dealing with such big companies as Xerox, Chase Manhattan Bank, and IBM. I understand what ac-count-ability is about in a capitalistic system. It is about reorganizing the ac-counting books to ensure the results look good to the stockholders, regardless of any real measures of success or any ideas of innovation, growth, creativity. So, I've pretty much decided that I'm just going to be this lone voice in the wilderness of the Bush years in which I pretty much argue against the flow. Miller's essay on ac-countability reminded me of Wolfgang Giegerich's essay, The Opposition of 'Individual' and 'Collective' Psychology's Basic Fault: Reflections On Today's Magnum Opus of the Soul in which Giegerich writes: The economy is no longer there for the well-being of humans, but humans are there for the well-being of the production process and count only to the extent that they are needed for the advancement of production. It is expected of people that they accommodate to what the production process demands; they have to display the highest degree of mobility and readiness to retrain for new jobs. In this way it is brought out into the open that from now on humans, as a maneuverable mass or as transit material, have to be subservient to the objective needs of the production process, which is the only thing that really has a raison d'être because it is authorized by, and of course in turn subservient to, the supreme value of today, that of maximizing profit in the context of global competition. I would add that the school systems are not there for the well-being of the children, but rather to ensure that children become part of the advancement of production. They are transit material for the production process. Of course if anyone is interested in this entire discussion, they should read Michel Foucault's book, Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, in which Foucault brilliant defines the notion of "docile bodies", that is bodies that are disciplined, supervised and standardized. A docile body according to Foucault, is a body "that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved" (136). How does one create a docile body? Easy - through discipline and organization of the educational space so that it functions like an economically organized learning machine (147). Foucault's idea is that such organized spaces allow for the exhaustive use of the confined body so that the body becomes "manipulated by authority, rather than imbued with animal spirits" (155). The point of all this discipline is normalization, according to Foucault. He writes: ...normalization becomes one of the great instruments of power at the end of the classical age. For the marks that once indicated status, privilege and affiliation were increasingly replaced - or at least supplemented - by a whole range of degrees of normality indication membership of a homogeneous social body but also playing a part in classification, hierarchization and the distribution of rank. In a sense, the power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialties and to render the differences useful by fitting them onto to another. (184) See this where I really get annoyed. Educational systems are less and less about learning and more about normalization, that is making all children homogenous and standardized and good consumer-citizens, i.e. transit material. They will then get used to the idea that life is about working a job where one is immaterial and eminently replaceable. By eliminating differences there is always this vague notion that one sets up equality. But there is nothing further from the truth. Insisting on meeting standards, educators set up a system of implicit biases against those children who can't be forced into the standardized means of measurement. Those children are increasingly drugged and/or stigmatized because they simply don't fit into the notion of the *norm*. I suppose I should stop here because I'm just getting angrier. The Department of Education is not concerned with children being left behind. They are concerned with measuring and standardizing the educational process so that it is economically efficient and productive in creating transit material for the economy. All children in the system must fit into the idea of the norm and education is no longer about teaching children to think and reason, to create and innovate, but rather to adapt and adhere to somebody's idea of a standard. Now what does all this have to do with myth? Well kids, all you have to do is read Plato and Aristotle to understand that normalizing the citizens of Athens was a major concern in Classical thought. Citizens (which are male) must be orderly to be citizens. Of course, I'm also preaching to the choir here. I doubt that most people who read these blogs agree with the ideals of "No Child Left Behind". It disturbs me some days that I don't get more people coming in here calling me a few names. But by opting out of the system and setting up my own means to publish via the web, I don't have to play anyone's game of standardization. I'm never going to be a "good little girl" and just shut up.
Poster Comment: When I was in school, especially in jr. high, I had this vague notion the purpose of the whole place was to kill me.
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#3. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
More and more people are opting OUT of the public school system. That is a good sign that not everyone is asleep.
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