Discipline and Punish is a book by Michel Foucault where he goes through the history of punishment, from torture to modern prison. There's a lot of topics covered in the book but my main focus is presenting the ideas that are related to Education and some thoughts, questioning how far have we come.
After 1762, education changed. Instead of having a group of individuals, society started to promote homogeneity among students, giving birth to “the class”, a new group identity.
Having lost their identity as individuals, students had gained a new one, totally immersed in this new concept of “the class”. You were no longer “João”, you were “Number 17” and so, in the 19th century, the idea of ranks was implemented as a form of distribution in the educational order
The students moved constantly over a series of "compartments" or categories. Some of those were the "ideal", meaning that the students on this rank would comply the most and present better results, marking them as the top of a hierarchy of knowledge. The rest would be categorized into lower ranks.
This has a tremendous impact on the educational space.
Monastic communities came up with the idea of a timetable and this eventually spread into schools and workshops. School had to be productive, and so the 3 great methods imposed by the timetable started to dictate the educational approach: establishing rhythms, impose particular occupations and regulate the cycles of repetition.
This made "the educational space function like a learning machine, but also as a machine for supervising, hierarchizing and rewarding", punishing the ones who wouldn't follow the rules either physically or psychologically.
At the beginning of the book, while still focusing on prisons and criminals, Foucault says:
(...) the ‘pain at the heart of punishment is not the actual sensation of pain, but the idea of pain, displeasure, inconvenience – the ‘pain’ of the idea of ‘pain’. Punishment has to make use not of the body, but of representation.
This same principle was applied to education. After being punished for not following the strict instructions, the idea of pain grew in student’s hearts, making them comply with the system.
With this new environment marked by compliance and a new power dynamic, some scholars started to create rules to “order” the system.
One example was Conduite des écoles chrétiennes [Conduct of Christians Schools,] a book by Jean-Baptiste de La Salle where he presented rules that students should follow in schools. In it, he presented ideas such as the "correct position of the body" and proper punishment for students who disturbed the classes: applying the ferule.
A ferule was a wooden instrument, traditionally with 5 holes in it, used to smack the hands or buttocks of students. As a teacher, the procedure was simple:
Hit once if they comply, twice if they resist. Afterward, send them to their seats. If at any moment the student cries, call him again and repeat the process.
Another example was the military school.
A complex system of honorary classification was developed and was visible to all in the form of slight variations in the uniform. The lowest the rank, the higher the suffering. Merit and behavior would define the rank you had, so you could always rise in the rankings by being "better". If, however, you ended up at the "bad" or "shameful" ranks, you would be "subjected to all the punishments used in the Hôtel or all those that are thought necessary, even solitary confinement in a dark dungeon."
This model "exercised over them a constant pressure to conform to the same model, so that they might all be subjected to subordination, docility, attention in studies and exercises".
Why?
So that they might all be like one another.
Promoting the death of individuality was necessary to give birth to disciplined pupils and compliant workers and believers. That's a tenet in our current system as well and it’s something that Foucault tried to warn us.
Have we failed to listen?
Closing (personal) Thoughts
I never thought about the relationship between punishment and education because, in my mind, they were completely different things. However, once Foucault presented the idea, I can't unseen it. In fact, it's at the core of what our schooling system defends: Compliance through punishment.
Yes, we've come far, we don’t punish kids with ferules and rods anymore.
But should we maintain a system that has its roots in pain?
Social change is upon us. We, as a society are examining aspects of our lives and questioning his fundamental principles, bringing social change with it.
It's time we do the same with education. Because, even though we evolved, we're still playing a game that's fundamentally rigged.
Our current system still focuses on killing individuality and promoting bigger compliance.
Fortunately, there are exceptions.
Some people inside the system are trying to change it and then we have those who decided to play a different game altogether, starting different projects. And to those, I wish nothing but the best!
However, we cannot, as a society, keep depending on outliers to promote a better educational system.
It’s time to change.