MICHEL FOUCAULT Foucault’s major work analyses the emergence of modern institutions (asylums, hospitals, prisons) and the forms of governance associated with them. However, instead of stories of continuity, he focuses on discontinuities – for instance, the move from violent torture and execution to imprisonment as a form of punishment. According to Foucault this is not a question of new discovered humanity since power is still present in changing forms. Humanism does not remove power but reinscribes it.Since education developed alongside democratic institutions, modern forms of governance and social discipline are secured through education; in an important sense, they work through educating.
Liberal humanism accustom us to see knowledge and power as distinct from each other. Power is associated with repression, distorted knowledge and falsehood, while knowledge is seen as faithful and gives a truthful view of the ‘real’ world. Knowledge is a means of liberating oneself and others from power.However, for Foucault, power and knowledge are inseparable, they are found together in ‘regimes of truth’ (knowledge practices through which power is exercised).
Democratic freedom is closely related to procedures of control and constraints, and schools and teachers are responsible for embedding these procedures into children. Education is not simply that which goes on in school but is an essential part of governmentality. Power does not operate through repression but through ‘knowledgeable’ practices, which measure, categorise and regulate.To this regard school organise learning spaces to establish these norms and procedures so that divergences can be observed and recorded. Foucault’s analysis is highly suggestive as to the ways power can be said to operate at the heart of human subject and subjectivity.
Power-knowledge formations produce subjects who are subject to regulation. Foucault associates this to the notion of ‘discipline’. Teachers are both agents of and subject to the disciplinary process; they become subjects to the very discipline to which they subject the learner.As knowledge develops so do the parallel practices of controlling the outcomes of behaviour (Marshall, 1989). Teachers try to discipline children even through simple measures, like positioning of seating, lining up, toilet breaks and speaking in turn. Discipline operate ‘where power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives’ (Foucault, 1980).
Example of this are the routines adopted in class which children follow automatically without needing reminding or instructions thus guaranteeing submission to the system rules. Persons become subjects by being classified in terms of their capacity to meet the norms. It is through these capacities or lack of them that they become objects of surveillance and regulation. When a child is seen as falling behind, the teacher refers him/her for some form of external support.Assessment has a double effect insofar as it is a process of objectification, of persons becoming objects to be classified and measured and of subjectification where they become subjects who ‘learn’ the truth about themselves. With exam results children realise if they are smart or not.
Through streaming, class groupings, and teacher interactions, children know where they stand in the educational system. The chief function of disciplinary power is to ‘train’ (Foucault, 1979). Disciplinary power functions through the practice of surveillance.As the need to regulate increase, so does the need to know more about individuals. Surveillance becomes ever more pervasive and intrusive yet without appearing to be oppressive.
Teachers are encouraged to continuously assess pupils in a variety of ways. Examples of these are core competencies check lists, assessments, evaluations and records of achievement. As Foucault points out ‘A relation of surveillance, defined and regulated, is inscribed at the heart of the practice of teaching, not as an additional or adjacent part, but as a mechanism that is inherent to it and which increases its efficiency (Foucault, 1979).The current scene is characterised by student-centered learning where power appears to be equally shared and ‘authoritarian’ relationships discarded. Another example of ‘shared authority’ is group work, where although children are not under the direct scrutiny of the teacher they are still under the immediate surveillance of their peers. The whole point of Foucault’s analysis is that power has moved from direct repression to more humane forms.
The current changes of teaching and learning do not represent an abandonment of power but it is more subtle, more humane, and involves less violence, however it may be more dangerous because of its insidious silence (Marshall, 1989). Increased surveillance does not necessarily mean the direct gaze of the teacher. Surveillance is inscribed in the very list of competences and performance criteria that are put before the learners as the desirable goal of the learning process; it is implicit in those criteria and made manifest when assessment takes place.Learners know what they have to demonstrate and can assess themselves as they move towards that goal. In operating within a discourse of competence, learners are able to sit in judgement upon themselves. In the discourse and practices of competence-based qualifications they are disciplined through self-discipline.
Competence to perform a work role also involves a form of discipline. Education and training practices are part of the disciplinary framework in modern social formations, measuring, defining, quantifying, regulating individuals. Competence is not just a matter of performance, but of surveillance and control over the learner.There is no space for independence of thought or action along the way if one wishes to achieve competence and find a space in the workforce.
Schools and teachers do not produce autonomous, rational, freethinking individuals but teachers shape pupils to make the right choices from a limited number of options. Discourses of competence are another dimension of this disciplinary process. People are ‘empowered’ to ‘disempower’ themselves. In taking on one set of power strategies, they relinquish others. This is where the closure offered by statements of competence is highly significant.Student centered learning gives space to alternative views, knowledge and practices, and so does differentiated teaching.
With competence, there is closure, all learners are tied to predefined learning goals which are demonstrated in a specified way. This homogeneity may seem inconsistent with the free market, laissez faire attitudes of conservative governments. However, the deregulation of the market and its impact on social and economic life results in the need for greater regulation elsewhere and one way to manage this is through education and training of children who are the future to every society.
