Education provides a mechanism by which people are produced as docile subjects: the presence of self-surveillance and the manipulative arena of control(TM)

University Degree Historical and Philosophical studies

Education provides a mechanism by which people are produced as docile subjects: the presence of self-surveillance and the ‘manipulative arena of control’.

Introduction

Following the argument that education is intended to produce docile subjects, I intend to analyse two of the ways in which it has been suggested that this is being implemented. In the early 20th century, policy makers were considerably more open about their reasons for centralizing the structuralizing and management of education. In 1905, the future Dean of Education at Stanford wrote in a dissertation for the Columbia Teachers College that;

‘Schools should be factories “in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products...manufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."’

(Kick, 2003)

I suggest that this discourse has become culturally embedded in the governance of industrialised nations to such an extent that it still forms the purpose of educational policy today. If this purpose were not understood by those inheriting it, then perhaps it would form part of what Bottery (2000) calls the ‘forgotten arena of control’, whereby policy makers are unaware of the intentions of policies they adopt from a previous era or culture.

However, as Bottery himself recalls, there is a very fine line between the forgotten and the manipulative arena’s of power and I adopt the latter as my first area of analysis. The ‘manipulative arena’, includes policies that were understood not just by their creators, such as that of the future Dean in 1905 (above), but by those inheriting them. They can be created, extended or refined but underlying each one is a hidden agenda which creators do not want the public to see or recognize, for a variety of reasons that I will discuss.

I suggest that the second means of control; self-surveillance, has increased within developed nations largely due to the new policy ensembles developed as outcomes of legislation such as the Education Reform Act of 1988 in the UK. I will examine the National Curriculum and standardised testing, the development of OFSTED, and self-management systems encouraged by the decentralisation of control. The removal of responsibility from government as a centralised body to the managers of these branches of power is seen by Lawson and Harrison (1999) as central to the establishment of self-surveillance.

I attempt to discuss these notions with the philosophies of Plato, Marx and Foucault in mind; all for which the topics of hierarchies of power, control and knowledge of ‘truth’ were pertinent.

Societies’ requirement for docile subjects

Upon questioning the aims of education, Harris (In. Standish, 2006) recognises the ‘changing, contextual…historically and politically constructed’ concepts that affect ones notion of ‘what education is’.

These concepts, encapsulating centuries of war, capitalism, industrialisation and the growth of economic prosperity, scientific inventions and advances in technology have changed education over time. Education moulds to fit the society in which we live due to the policies being shaped to fit the needs of present society.

Standish (2006) reason that as the state provides education that requires huge expenditure, its prosperity depends on equipping learners with the skills the modern economy needs. On this basis then, perhaps creating docile bodies is a necessity for any society that wishes to develop or retain a strong economic status.

The emergence of Capitalism around the time of the 18th century could be argued as the reason for the unprecedented level of surveillance of the individual amongst society. By creating a class-divided system, there was the potential for conflict and the need for surveillance of those that might resist this process. Capitalism also created authoritative figures, with more power and the ability to ‘punish’ those who resisted. As industrialisation developed in the West, largely through Capitalism, the use of machinery and a directed workforce, bureaucratic surveillance was a rational response, in order to control the activity of workers. As the nation developed further, more organisations within a particular industry created competition, which also required surveillance. In relationship to education, this introduction is necessary to understand why we arguably have produced a system of docile bodies. The class system that capitalism created is similar to the hierarchy of power situated within education policy.

Marxist theorists viewed the role of bureaucracy in the capitalist system as a suspicious entity. According to Marx, the functions of bureaucracy, that is, the structure in place by the government to control the activities of the country’s citizens are two-fold;

Firstly, to “impose upon society the kind of order which perpetuates its domination” concealing this domination through complicated legislation documents, ‘form-filling’ and surveillance (Bottery, 2000). Secondly and in addition, this creates a situation whereby the citizens do not understand the economic exploitation of the majority that is taking place. This Marx believed, was how industrial capitalism created ...

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We now live in a society that has been industrialised and as such is rich and consumer-orientated. Mass education provided by the state has for a long time been the way in which citizens are moulded.

Since the Education Reform Act

In England, the Education Reform Act of 1988 marked the start of the reformed education system that is being instilled in generations of children in schools today.

Changes are made to policies continuously, almost always brought in by the government on a national level but more recently, a focus on Local Education Authorities and the decentralising of education has somewhat changed this trend. In contrast, globalisation is seeing too that some policies are centralised on a much grander scale.

A significant Foucauldian precept in relation to education is that there is no domain of knowledge removed from relations of power (Issitt, 2007). Today, decisions about

educational policy favour and empower organisations such as that of OFSTED and the Teacher Training Agency (which could have been another of the main bodies identified as increasing the trend of self-surveillance). Foucault also saw power as something which people not only ‘own’ but also as controlling the systems of ideas that construct the rules through which intent and purpose are organised (Foucault, 1977); The National Curriculum and increased standardised testing has set benchmarks for what it means to be an ‘excellent’ or ‘failing’ school, teacher or student. The work of Stanley Milgram (1974) in his ‘electric shock’ experiments suggested that rules put in place by authoritative figures are obeyed due to an over conformity in society that stems from social conditioning. In education, social conditioning, and the application of disciplinary techniques produce an over conformity that, in education, dispels reason to question these benchmarks.

The National Curriculum and Standardised Testing

The National Curriculum put into practise after the ERA (1988) offers standards, which means that teaching and learning are easier to manage, structure, and measure.

Its website suggests we should treasure the National Curriculum;

“…the learning that the nation has decided to set before it’s young.”

Waters, Director of Curriculum, QCA

In the unlikely event that this discourse was challenged, it would be unlikely to change policy. Suggesting, also, that what is to be learned must be decided by an authoritative body, in the position of power, rather than by the subject deciding for themselves what knowledge is worthy of acquiring is in itself a method of producing a docile mass of learners rather than educated individuals. The notion of the autonomous individual and the idea of independent, free-thinking

student were for Rouseau and Neill, the epitome of human excellence. For Plato, active, not docile learning was the only way one could discover ‘the truth’. Today parents are led to believe that only policy and structure will enable the next generation to become ‘educated’.

However, it is to the student in compulsory schooling that the disciplinary effects of the National Curriculum are most potent. It validates, as the above statement concurs, only certain branches of knowledge. It labels these branches with subject titles so that each is a separate entity Balls (1994). In some schools today, this is changing due to pressure from teachers. In one of the secondary schools in which I did work experience * the separate entities are beginning to merge, due to pressure from teachers and parents to teach children how to learn as well as what to learn. These, however are only Pilot Schemes, and whilst they do not change the National Curriculum, they provide a higher level of contentment within society which it has been suggested by Hatcher (2005) is an important aspect of manipulative control, creating the illusion of empowerment amongst the majority with minor changes that do not alter the policies or outcomes of education. In this case, whilst one hour in the week may be set aside for open discussion and the collaboration of subjects amongst children, assessment and curriculum teaching is still in the form of separate and highly individualised core subjects, whereby other areas of knowledge go undetected.

* Birley Community College, Sheffield

Ofsted

Bottery (2000) quotes Lukes’ argument that power many be described in three different ways;

“as the ability to impose one’s wishes upon another”
“as the ability to exclude other interests from deliberation”
And “as the ability to prevent individuals from recognizing that their real interests are threatened”.

I suggest that Ofsted (now the Office of Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, 2008) enables manipulative control of the state via each of at least the latter two notions. Since 1992, Ofsted has inspected schools on a four and six yearly basis. Since 2007, Ofsted has broadened the inspections it carries out to the extent of child-care providers i.e. child minders and education providers to learners of all ages. The document summary for 2007-2008 states that; “At least one person in three in England has made use of the services [Ofsted] inspect and regulate”. The creation of more surveillance in Education of all domains, including that of further education and adult

education colleges creates a more powerful governing body as thus, more authority and reinforcement of policy.

The results of Ofsted inspections are publically available and those schools and now other educational practices deemed to be failing can be put into ‘special measures’ or closed. Luke’s “ability to exclude other interests from deliberation” is apposite here; as whether a school is deemed as failing by Ofsted is marked by its attainment in assessments of curriculum subjects and standards of teachers appropriated by strict Government criteria. In the document summary Ofsted describes the ‘lighter touch’ inspections it will provide for successful schools, providing itself with the authority to designate appropriate ‘rewards’ to establish its own benchmark of ‘success’ as the goal for attainment. The introduction of ‘open enrolment’, where-by it is proposed that pupils possess choice as to which to which school to attend, and per-capita funding based on headcount has to some degree, withstood the pressures of ‘post-code lottery’ allegations through the media, whereby parents have had to send there child to schools that are marked as ‘satisfactory’, or worse, ‘failing’ by the Ofsted Inspectors due to where they live. The outcome of this is that the high achieving schools receive the most funding. The ‘post-code lottery’ argument centres on the fact that the most economically mobile families can move to the higher attaining schools ‘catchment areas’ (specified by Local Education Authorities) and thus these schools become highly funded and also predominantly ‘middle-class’, creating inequalities and imbalances in the education system. Marxism theorists argue that this is manipulative bureaucracy; the epitome of capitalism in its hierarchical order.

Decentralising education systems and self-management

A central feature of the globalisation of education is the decentralisation of education system. It is argued by Hargreves in Troman, 1997 that;

“By empowering school managers and teachers and granting them the autonomy to exercise professional judgement in the management of finance, resources, curriculum and pedagogy, then reforms are more likely to pay off in terms of improved teaching and learning”

However, whilst the government may innocently produce new policies that veer towards decentralisation, culturally embedded over compliance has been shown to lead educational institutions to ‘invent’ new instruments and policies for control and surveillance, and through the presumed omnipotent eye of top-down governmental bodies such as Ofsted, whilst not always present, many ‘invented’ policies are in place due to unquestioned assumptions that small diversions of power in ‘pockets’ of the education system will do little to dislodge in a society that is predominantly teaching learners the art of resisting questions and complying to policies. The outcome is in the title: the production

of docile subjects that are manipulated into believing in policy, even when policy is not there to control.

Conclusion

Whilst it is not thought of as an educational aim like numeracy and learning curriculum science are currently perceived, there has been mention, as the 21st century begins, that critical thinking could form part of the curriculum. This must remain a central concern of the government in laying down new educational policies because, as suggested by Bonnett and Cuypers (2003), “if properly conceived, the internal relationship [of student autonomy] with personal significance, interpersonal understanding and education for democratic citizenship…is integral to what it means to be a full human being”. Perhaps then, the next generation of children will have the autonomy to resist authoritarian pressures, with enough moral understanding of what is right and wrong to use the power within which schools operate as an instrument, as Foucault believed it could be used;

“To criticize the working of institutions which appear to be both neutral and independent…”

Rabinow, 1986; p6

This may, in turn, bring to light the ‘manipulative arena’ of control and thus break down the elitism that is favoured and give meaning and truth to the government schemes such as ‘Every Child Matters’ and the new OFSTED.

I suggest that self-management rather than self-surveillance is a pertinent feature within local government and individual schools, where budgets and curricula are worked out in a way that meets the real needs of the school community without punishment being a cause for concern. Without the perceived omnipotent eye watching over the school, education could provide schools with the ability for governors, head teachers, teachers, non-academic staff and pupils to critique one another truthfully and in a useful way. If the developing nations were to see this as a structure by which economic prosperity can also be gained, in the most ideological sense, we could see generations of subjects no longer docile and as far as Plato is concerned, a rather empty cave.

I also suggest that creating autonomous learners would be economically viable for policy makers by transforming learners into “autonomous, intelligent voices” who can

learn new topics and subjects faster than learners who lack such capacities, the demands from students for individual attention will diminish, as those learners can already think critically and for themselves. (Demos. In Issitt, 2007)

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