The following is an abridged version of my last essay as an
undergraduate student. It was written for my modern political philosophy
class and required that I use the ideas of one philosopher whom we had covered for the purpose of engaging a present-day problem. I
chose education.
Some of the
essay, especially the theoretical stuff, may seem unintelligible or even crazy. To an extent this is
intentional; the essay is supposed to be argumentative and engage
education in a way that most people do not commonly think of it today. So while
this piece is serious, it does address the issue with perhaps too broad of
strokes at times. Unfortunately, I fear that I may be more right than wrong
on this issue, at least as is articulated in this post.
Some advice. If you do not like political
theory then just skim the big third and fourth paragraphs (section two).
The rest of it is more straightforward and practical; it should read fairly
smoothly even without much attention to section
two.
So here it is,
my last essay as an undergraduate student. For the sake of posterity and
stepping on people's toes...
How are we to understand this
unprecedented development? Contrary to popular belief, the proposed tuition
raise is indicative of something deeper than the obvious issues of economics,
student representation and administrative venality. Rather, it is indicative of
a series of power dynamics which are deeply rooted in modern conceptions of
education. Drawing from the philosophy of Michel Foucault, this essay seeks to
provide a small glimpse of these power dynamics at work, taking a deeper look at the
recent tuition raise in order to show that it is but the latest episode in a
process of control and disempowerment that occurs within educational institutions. What becomes clear is the fact
that institutions of education almost universally fall short of their mission
statements which speak of fostering critical thought and a love of learning.
And this is intentional.
________
Foucault writes that modernity is
characterized and, indeed made possible, by the exercise of a peculiar form of
power which he terms disciplinary power. Its historical genesis is best
observed in the European penal system’s transformation from one of stunning
violence and rule by fiat to a system which prides itself for its apparently
humane punitions and legal uniformity. This astounding development, Foucault
suggests, did not arise out of thin air but, rather, was championed by specific
interests and made possible by discernible socioeconomic developments. More
specifically, “the economy of illegalities,” which had so incensed bourgeois
interests with its competing courts and seemingly arbitrary character, was “restructured
with the development of capitalist society” to suit the interests of the
ascendant bourgeois class (Foucault 87). This exchange of a “bad economy of
power” for a more rational one entailed a dramatic restructuring of the penal
system (79). Consequently, a “double process” occurred in which the graphic
“spectacle” of royal power was abandoned, followed by the “elimination of
[conspicuous] pain” from the legal process (11). What arose in its place was a
set of judicial norms which sought to assess “something other than crimes,”
namely “the ‘soul’ of the criminal” (19). To put this differently, the penal
system became an instrument through which the normality of an offender was
measured and, consequently, this measurement functioned as “a technical prescription”
for the “possible normalization” of the offender (20).
But why, one might ask, was there
sudden preoccupation with normality? As the locus of power shifted from the
monarchy to the bourgeoisie, young capitalist societies required a new type of
subject if the emerging economic paradigm was to function smoothly. Thus the
king's subject was molded into the industrialist's rational citizen, a denatured and interchangeable
cog within a monochrome social order. In the legal realm this meant that the
“expiation that once rained down upon the body” was replaced by one which “acts
in depth on the heart, the thoughts, the will, the inclinations,” ever testing
the limits of humankind’s malleability in order to produce a more perfect
citizen. Foucault asserts that this obsession with uniformity, precision and,
perhaps most notably, productivity has left an indelible mark on modern
society, shaping all its facets through a diffuse “micro-physics of power”
(26). This all-encompassing system of “indefinite discipline” is “exercised
rather than possessed,” and based on the idea that the “body becomes a
useful force only if it is both a productive body and a subjected body” (227;
26). Modern society is suffused with methods of discipline, ill-perceived but
powerfully coercive means of conditioning our actions, thoughts and values for
the purpose of maintaining economic productivity and existing social
hierarchies.
________
This genealogy of disciplinary power
provides a useful theoretical framework for understanding education in the
modern world. Apparent diversity in classes, programs and institutional
philosophies mask the role of several coercive principles which are universally
shared by academic institutions. Contrary to wispy statements about the
value of critical thinking, schools are above all meant to achieve one goal:
the subordination of all creative instinct and total integration of young
people into prevailing social and economic norms. Foucault directly
engages this reality when he writes about the Lancaster method of schooling,
the quintessential model of industrial education. Styling itself as a “machine
for learning,” the Lancaster method prepared children for the highly regimented
world of the factory by instilling obedience as well as an unquestioning work
ethic (165). A deep and profound respect for authority is inscribed on the
souls of the students, and, as in the workplace, students are divided along the
lines of rank and performance. There is a time for everything as, indeed, every
moment of the school day is rigidly accounted for. There is time to read,
write, count – everything except for time to freely think. In short, the
Lancaster student is taught all that they need to know, that is, if they are to
be a cog within the industrial order.
While the inscription of
obedience and industrial discipline on the souls of the Lancaster students may
seem hardly analogous to the inner workings of present-day academic
institutions, the two fulfill much the same function. One must remember that
the Lancaster students were all drawn from the lower-classes and, consequently,
the type of obedience instilled in them was meant to suite their particular
position in the social hierarchy. While students who attend universities are
generally from higher social strata, their education is nevertheless meant to
instill a type of obedience to the existing economic order appropriate to their
prescribed role. And though the manner in which university students are
impressed into this order is different, it is no less insidious. In any case,
it is certainly no less ruthless.
The University of Oregon’s six percent
tuition increase for the next academic year provides an illustrative example of
how students are rendered docile and obedient to the status quo. In a nation of
debtors, student debt has become one of the most outstanding financial burdens
imposed on Americans – and essentially financially illiterate youth, at that. Yes, we can smirk while reading about the plainly authoritarian character of
the Lancaster method, but one should not forget that today’s students are in their
own way hammered into the preexisting socioeconomic order -- a hierarchal system
which grips them by a chain of debt about five to six figures long. For the
Lancaster students, there was never this degree of material leverage so they
had to be controlled by immersion in a more palpably authoritarian environment
if they were to remain docile. In striking contrast, the average university
student today is animated by an additional mode of discipline: a form of
debt-bondage whose combination of psychological violence and less refined forms
of coercion grip them while employing the most questionable legal/economic
rationale. It is a type of control which lies at the crossroads between Foucault’s
conception of disciplinary power and power’s more vividly coercive modes.
And as in the courts and industrial
schools of the nineteenth century, institutions of education today are
eminently concerned with questions of normality. That is to say, schools in a
very real way function as laboratories in which the productive capacity,
mechanical endowment and obedience of the student is measured for the purpose of
crafting the ideal citizen. Today the measurements or “technical prescription[s]”
for the “normalization” of the student are so obvious as to be unnoticed (20).
Within the laboratory of the classroom the student is administered ‘tests’ as
if they were a chemical solution within a ‘test’-tube. Any impurities are duly
noted and a ‘grade’ which categorizes, classifies and ranks the quality of the
student is assigned, much like determining the ‘grade’ of industrial steel. As
Foucault explains, the “educational space” is not merely a “learning machine”
but also “a machine for supervising, hierarchizing, [and] rewarding” (147). If
the ‘grade’ is low then there may be hope of salvaging the material while it is
still young; however, there is always the danger that the corrupted material
will contaminate others. Thus at one point it may become necessary to quarantine
the abnormal ones, especially if they will not stay confined to the cell of
their desk, corrupting other impressionable material. Such students are sent to
‘detention,’ an auxiliary laboratory of sorts where pathologies are assessed as
well as the prospect of the aberrant student’s reintegration into the ‘student
body.’
It is also worth noting that the regime
of power that schools embody is, as Foucault suggests, linked to the creation
of knowledge and its dissemination. Just like prisoners, students are reduced
to “objects of knowledge,” a preoccupation of scientific fields; and it is
important to note that the exercise of power and production of knowledge
“directly imply one another” (27). In fact, the complex interplay of power and
knowledge is manifested most obviously at the level of the school. Not only are
students assayed with the intellectual tools and technologies of discipline,
but they themselves are simultaneously taught these same scientific powers with
the intention that they will eventually take part in the maintenance of
disciplinary power. To state this differently, even while the students are
judged they are trained to become “subsidiary judges,” or people who perpetuate the system of coercive controls, especially those who are at
institutions of higher education (21).
It is hence to be expected that
education has a corporatizing element behind it, which is to say that it is
primarily meant to homogenize students for the purpose of maintaining existing
socioeconomic arrangements. The exercise of individual liberty, and indeed the
creation of subjectivity itself, takes place within this homogenizing process.
One then should not be surprised that the most valued intellectual endeavors
are limited to those with immediate economic utility such as finance, economics
and the hard sciences; in school, there is a definite hierarchy of knowledge.
Inversely, discussions of education inevitably engage the issue in terms of
cost-benefit analysis, viewing education as primarily an economic ‘investment.’
What's more, the ‘liberty’ the student
is confronted with may be understood as the choice between what regime of
discipline they shall be subjected to at school depending on their field of
study. And when considering the relationship between school and work – for
education is inevitably understood in terms of its economic function – students
implicitly exercise their ‘liberty’ to choose what regime of discipline they
will be subjected to in the workplace through their field of study. We must
also remember that institutions of higher education have themselves become
profit-driven businesses, legalized cartels which raise tuition costs to ever
dizzying heights even while making the laughable claim that they are ‘public’
institutions. To paraphrase Foucault, it should not be surprising that schools
are like businesses, businesses like prisons and prisons like schools. That
most students remain quiet under the weight of such exploitation is a powerful
indicator of the extent to which disciplinary power has instilled an acceptance
or, at the very least, imposed a resigned obedience to this nasty
process.
________
Lastly, it is worth examining some of
the technologies by which discipline is exercised in the classroom, ones which
students of the Lancaster method would easily recognize. Perhaps the most obvious
similarity between current and past methods is the calculated use of space and
time. Whether desks are assigned to rows or other military-like formations, the
classroom is a space in which education is to be maximized. Space and rigid
class schedules are premised on the goal of “constituting a totally useful
time,” rather than allowing for the exercise of creative power or deviation
from the prescribed lesson (150). And as in earlier forms of religious
schooling, the goal is the “gradual acquisition of knowledge and good behavior”
(161). But how is this “knowledge and good behavior” to be acquired? Since the
rise of industrial education the education model has been premised on the idea
that knowledge is to be inscribed on the student by the teacher, whether by
repetition or dispensation.
The most notable example of this dogma
at the university level is the lecture, the teaching format which has come to
personify the university experience itself. At its basic level, the lecture
assumes that the student will ‘learn’ a subject within a prescribed period by
absorbing the information delivered through the teacher, almost as if the student is
to gain knowledge across an osmotic gradient. The role of the student is
inherently passive: the student sits as the teacher stands; the student listens
as the teacher speaks; and the teacher sets the agenda for learning, not the
student. In short, the student is taught that they are not capable of learning
anything on their own power but, rather, require the help of a divine intermediary –
the teacher. At this stage, however, the disciplinary process has reached a
point of maturity. To most students, the fact that they are to sit quietly
without making a sound, almost as if in a state of prostration, appears to be
the most natural thing. For by this point they have nearly completed their
transformation into the model citizen.
Despite the pervasive power of
disciplinary regimes, it is important to note that these regimes are never
entirely successful. Even while the Lancaster method was in vogue, the
landscape of Europe was punctuated by strikes and contoured by an undercurrent
of dissent, sometimes revolution. And at present, a healthy skepticism
resulting from the United States’ wars in the Middle-East and the Great Recession
has electrified people towards acts of resistance, many of whom would
previously not have thought about challenging the status quo. These
observations remain true for education. Student debt, poor practices and
authoritarian ideas continue to shape education worldwide, especially at the
institutional level. In the face of these pressures, however, there are still
excellent teachers, students who are hungry to learn and classes that encourage
students to think for themselves...
Works Cited:
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977. Print.
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