This project uses a Foucauldian framework to identify and explore how neo-liberal systems of governance operate in a specific educational program. Although neo-liberal operations demonstrate the simultaneous totalizing and individualizing potentials of modern forms of power they also demonstrate the limits of societal control. The contradictions, tensions, and ambiguities stemming from the operations of power identified in this project engender individual resistance and bricolage. Although these expressions of resistance tend to be “contained” by the fantasy of well-regulated society of autonomous individuals, they do point to foundational tensions in neo-liberal governance and suggest potential avenues for further critical analyses and resistance.
Key Words : Neo-liberalism, Education, Governmentality
Hourly, the students make their way to the carpeted corner of the linoleum classroom and sit down criss-cross-applesauce. The teacher addresses each student with the query, “How many points did you earn this hour? Did you do what was expected? Did you interfere with the learning of another?” Students report their self-assessed score on a scale of one to ten and then pause, waiting for any of their peers to raise a CONCERN that they interfered with another’s learning. Following this brief pause, the teacher may either move on to the next student or take a moment to linger on the previous one. She might query, “Are you taking responsibility?” after which the apparently offending student, eyes-downcast might re-evaluate their points downward. “Double-whammy!” says the teacher as she docks additional points from the student for failure to “take responsibility” for sincere self-evaluation. At the end of the day, after five sessions of points’ evaluations, students who lose seven or more points receive a note informing their parents that they failed to “make their day.”
The scenario described above happens daily in a suburban school in Maricopa County ( Arizona, US), one of many schools in the county that implement the MYD (MYD) program, a “positive behavioral intervention program” designed to increase student compliance and responsibility. Although the MYD program exemplifies many such formalized programs in the U.S., its specific features make it particularly noteworthy. In particular, this program invokes strategies of power associated with what Michel Foucault has described as “neo-liberal forms of governance” (Lemke, 2001).i According to Foucault and other critical observers, neo-liberal forms of governance transform conceptions of the self and its relationship to society in ways that unravel classical liberal distinctions between public and private spheres of existence and refigure relationships between economic and cultural spheres of social life (Barry, Osborne, & Rose, 1996; Bratich, Packer and McCarthy; 2003 Burchell, Gordon, & Miller, 1991; Dean, 1999; Rose, 1993). In particular, neo-liberal regimes of governance extend invasive systems of societal control over realms of life formerly regarded as private in the name of state security, risk reduction, and societal health. The MYD program’s implementation of neo-liberal strategies of power is therefore significant because the program provides a concrete illustration of the micro-practices that contribute to the emergence of new and ubiquitous forms of social control, self-surveillance, and societal governance.
Accordingly, this project introduces the MYD program, explores its assumptions and applications, and then moves to discuss how technologies of power implemented by the program normalize individuals while, simultaneously, generating resistance as students deflect and/or appropriate MYD control strategies. The significance of student resistance will be explored in relation to contradictions that beset the application of neo-liberal forms of governance. Contradictions that emerge between the aims and effects of “neo-liberal” systems of governance impinge against the achievement of idealized neo-liberal models of personhood. Children’s implicit and explicit awareness of contradictions between the stated intent and experienced effects of the MYD program contribute to resistance, providing the rationale for more invasive and disciplinary responses by school authorities. Consequently, rather than teaching empowerment and self-responsibility, the program may cultivate (at least for some students) indecision and alienation from formalized systems of [purportedly] self-governance. In effect, the MYD program may actually undermine, and/or demonstrate the problems inherent in, the creation of the neo-liberal model of personhood that underpins the assumptions and practices of neo-liberal forms of governance. However, although the program may generate resistance among students, the neo-liberal fantasy of a well-regulated society of self-governing, autonomous individuals leads school authorities to marginalize and trivialize parental expressions of concerns about the program’s inadvertent effects. Instead of addressing problems and contradictions stemming from neo-liberal educational techniques, educators are inclined to pathologize resistant children as medically, psychologically, or socially deviant.
Foucault’s works on neo-liberalism were primarily presented in his lectures on the genealogy of the modern state while Foucault held the Chair of ‘History of Systems of Thought’ at the Collège de France from 1970-1984. Given that the lectures’ content is not available in English, this essay draws upon Lemke’s (2001) and Dean’s (2002) interpretations of Foucault’s work on neo-liberalism in addition to Foucault’s published work on governmentality (1991) and bio-politics (1990, 1983).
The impetus for this study came in the form of the author’s observations of her son’s second grade classroom. After hours of classroom observation, the author began discussing the MYD program with school personnel and parents. Further discussion with college students formerly enrolled in the program (or who had children enrolled in the program) prompted more systematical evaluation, particularly given an almost universally expressed negative attitude toward the program.
The MYD parent web site (http://www.makeyourdayparents.com) and the printed training manual serve as the primary textual evidence of the program’s philosophy and formalized techniques for implementation. Additional data about the program’s rationale were generated in an informal phone conversation with the program’s founder and through email correspondence with the founder’s business partner.
The program has never been systematically evaluated so no empirical assessments were available in published educational formats such as ERIC and Education Full Text. A (anonymous) school district (in another state) shared with the author an unpublished review of the program conducted by a paid educational consultant immediately after the program’s district-wide implementation. That district subsequently dropped the points evaluation component of the program in response to parental criticism.
The empirical data cited in this research study were generated from in-class observations in three different classrooms. This obviously limited data pool was supplemented with experiential accounts of the program provided through informal and formal interviews with three school principals, a school psychologist, school resource counselor, and through many conversations with parents and students formerly enrolled in the program.
The methodology used in this study is primarily critical textual analysis (see Jessop, 2004). Difficulty in accessing elementary school classrooms precluded more ethnographic inquiry. However, the primary research strategy of textual analysis is adequate for addressing the project’s more central focus, the social discourses and material strategies used to produce the subjects of liberal democratic states.
The MYD program is merely one program among many that purports to produce the kind of subjects presupposed by, and critical for the implementation of, the liberal democratic state. As will be discussed presently, the critical social philosopher Michel Foucault suggests that the emergence of the modern democratic state necessitated the development of new forms of governance that were simultaneously “totalizing and individualizing” (Foucault, 1983: 216). As shall be explained presently, the role of educational institutions in producing such citizens was critical for ensuring the stability and extension of modern systems of governance (Rose, 1999). Thus, this research project extends beyond empirical evaluation of the MYD program’s successes and contradictions, although such effects are worth addressing and exploring as they illustrate various operations and effects of power. Before moving to address these more encompassing issues discussion turns to introduce the MYD program.
The MYD program web page and training manual begin with overviews of the program’s guiding philosophy. The following excerpts from the MYD parents’ webpage illustrate the program’s commitment toward developing children’s “inner locus of control” by emphasizing each student’s “free will and choice”:
MYD is based on a philosophy that promotes development of an internal locus of control in students. The basic tenets of this philosophy are built on human dignity and responsibility. Students understand that their actions result in fair, logical, and predictable consequences that are enforced in a manner that preserves their dignity. When one internalizes the philosophy inherent in MYD; the structure and how to utilize it become obvious. There is no need for a “cookbook” that covers all possible actions and reactions within the school environment. Free will and choice are important components of MYD that enhance the students’ ability to develop an internal locus of control. However, understanding this concept can be the most difficult transition for school staff who would like to “help” students make “correct” decisions. Allowing students to make choices provides them with opportunities to learn through their successes and failures. MYD affords students the opportunity to assess their academic and behavioral performance frequently so that there is time for error and recovery. The MYD philosophy supports each student’s right to succeed or fail. Students who choose to take part in the learning environment put forth a distinctly higher level of effort. Those students who choose to “opt out” are given the opportunity to do it in a way that does not effect the learning of others.
By emphasizing an internal locus of control, student free will, and student directed-consequences, the program promises a therapeutic protocol for student self-development.
Practical implementation of the program involves two sets of disciplinary/self-development procedures. The first set of procedures is referred to as “steps.” Students are assigned to steps based on their violation of classroom rules, which the training manual suggests should be developed collaboratively with students to include rules of “learning,” “safety,” and “well-being” (MYD Training Manual: 24). Students who violate classroom rules, particularly when they “interfere” with the learning of others “choose” steps. The steps are incrementally increasing “time out” sessions that ultimately culminate in being sent to the principal’s office. Students who are put in step by the teacher must formally acknowledge the behavioral “choice” that resulted in the step before they are allowed to return to the classroom. Steps are represented as “consequences” rather than “punishments” and the manual encourages teachers to enable the students to “take ownership” in the development and administration of steps (25 Whereas “steps” illustrate the more overt disciplinary component of the program, “points” illustrate the program’s “positive behavioral support” technique. The training manual alerts readers to the importance of points with the following remark, printed in bold capital letters: “NOW LET’S REALLY TALK ABOUT THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE MYD PROGRAM AND HOW YOU CAN MYD. THIS PROGRAM IS DESIGNED TO PROTECT EVERYONE’S RIGHTS SO THAT EACH OF YOU CAN MYD.” The procedures for implementing points appear to be unique to MYD and serve to differentiate the program from other positive behavioral support programs. In effect, the points are the program’s “selling point.”
Points are afforded on the basis of each student’s compliance or non-compliance with classroom expectation (MYD Training Manual: 27-28). The MYD webpage encourages teachers to have students evaluate their points publicly and hourly. In principle, the guidelines that dictate whether a behavioral violation results in a loss of points or a step or both are clear. Points are lost for “non-compliance” such as “messy work, not working, not having the appropriate materials, inappropriate attire” (28). Points are also lost when the student “chose” step. In practice, the teacher exercises considerable discretion in the determination of whether a behavior results in step or is viewed merely as non-compliance, and thus subject only to a points penalty.
Students’ self-reported points are subject to evaluation by peers and by the classroom teacher. Students are encouraged to voice “concerns” about their peers when those peers’ behaviors “interfered with their learning or safety” (30). The rationale for this peer evaluation is stated clearly in the manual: “In order to take advantage of the powerful effect the peer group has on changing behavior, students are allowed to describe concisely to another student how one of that student’s behaviors has affected their right to learn or to be safe” (4). The teacher is supposed to adjudicate concerns and ensure that peer concerns are motivated out of a desire to “help a fellow student” (30) rather than to tattle. The teacher ultimately decides whether or not to accept students’ self-evaluation. Technically a student can challenge the teacher’s decision about points, at which point a “median score” between the student’s and teacher’s assessment becomes the assigned score. Although students “are not expected to earn every point,” the loss of a pre-determined number of points daily results in a letter sent home to parents. Such letters inform parents that their child failed to “make their day” so that parents can discuss and evaluate the causes of their children’s lapses.
The manual implicitly acknowledges the potential difficulties teachers face when arbitrating peer concerns. The manual specifies that “Students must not become enamored with the opportunity to affect another students Points and seek out opportunities for Concerns” and states that students who do seek out such opportunities may lose the ability to voice concerns.
However, the even-handed, judicious wisdom and personal reflexivity required on the part of all parties—teachers, students, parents—may be elusive. Potential difficulties are actually explicitly listed on the MYD webpage link by a school administrator, who lists potential criticisms of the program in order to dismiss them. Concerns about tattling are met with the assertion that the MYD program provides students a “safe, constructive format” for airing grievances. Concerns about student deception and extortion are met with the role of the teacher as an “active listener” who omnisciently and impartially arbitrates justice. Concerns about the pressure to “MYD” are met with the assertion that students are “never, never, never” told that they must be “perfect to make their day” and that students “can make mistakes and still make their day.” Concerns about student embarrassment over steps are met with the claim that step is a “place” for the student to go when interrupting others’ learning. The posting suggests that unlike conventional discipline programs that simply address misbehavior, the MYD program rewards good behavior.
The MYD program’s emphases of internal motivation and normative pressure, particularly through its emphasis on the points component of the program, illustrate many of the principles and practices of the forms of governance Michel Foucault has described as specific to western, liberalism. The next section explores Foucault’s ideas about governance, which will ultimately serve as the analytical frame for studying the effects and contradictions of the MYD program.
What are the characteristic features of governance associated with the modern, liberal state? And how has the more recent emergence of “neo-liberalism” accentuated and transformed “modern” forms of governance. Michel Foucault addressed these questions when developing his conception of “governmentality”—a concept that has achieved interdisciplinary theoretical significance and is quite useful for understanding the social and political significance of various pedagogical practices, particularly the MYD program. In what follows, I provide an overview of governmentality, stressing those concepts that will be most useful for exploring the social significance of the MYD program.
According to Foucault, the emergence of the modern state depended upon the institution of more diffuse, but ultimately more pervasive forms of governance that slowly replaced the centralized, authoritarian power of the feudal sovereign. Foucault states that in the pre-modern era—prior to the development of the modern state—power was largely centralized in the corporeal body of the sovereign monarch, who exercised his/her or will absolutely. Geographical and logistical constraints limited the sovereign’s power but social control was also executed through the pastoral power of the religious order. As I shall explain, the transformation of “pastoral” power by the institutions of the modern state played an important role in legitimizing and extending “modern” forms of social control.
The purported goal of pastoral power in the pre-modern era was to “assure individual salvation” through paternalistic guidance (Foucault, 1983: 214). Thus, pastoral power addressed both the community and each individual, throughout the entirety of his/her life. It was exercised by through tools such as the “confessional” that revealed the “insides of people’s minds,” “their souls”: thus pastoral power implied “a knowledge of the conscience and an ability to direct it” (214). Pastoral power was “salvation oriented,” “oblative,” “individualizing” and “linked with a production of truth—the truth of the individual himself” (214).
According to Foucault, the “function” of pastoral power spread in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries beyond religious institutionalization as it was incorporated in the forms of governance associated with the modern liberal state. However, the expansion and institutionalization of the modern state subtly transformed the practices of pastoral power as its objective was re-oriented toward ensuring salvation in this world, rather than the next one. Likewise, the meaning of salvation transmuted to encompass “health, well-being (that is, sufficient wealth, standard of living), security, protection against accidents” etc. (Foucault, 1983: 215). The officials of pastoral power came to include the populations of public institutions such as the police, schools, and welfare societies, as well as private benefactors. These officials engaged in practices of knowledge production and application that simultaneously legitimated the end of the modern state—to ensure social welfare—and extended its realm of application into the intimacies of everyday life.
Therefore, the expansions of public institutions of governance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were accompanied by new forms of knowledge—knowledge formations that aided, abetted, and legitimated the new forms of governance that came to constitute the modern liberal state. Bio-politics was the term used by Foucault to describe the development and subsequent operations of this knowledge about human populations. Whereas the newly emerging social sciences—economics, sociology, psychology--divided populations along objective measures, the analytical of the individual was employed as this bio-political knowledge was applied and extended by those experts—psychiatrists, social workers, teachers, physicians, among others—who sought to understand and engineer the individual in his/her individuality.
Efforts to understand and engineer the individual (the analytical of the individual) gave rise to bodies of knowledge, practices, and experts Foucault described in terms of their specific operations—in terms of “techniques” of the self (Foucault, 1997: 88). Techniques of the self incorporated the telos of pastoral power as expressed by the liberal state but transformed the agency of operation such that each individual ultimately sought to engage actively in their own self-cultivation. Accordingly, Foucault explained that the techniques of the self aimed at “the government of the self by oneself in its articulation with relations with others (such as one finds in pedagogy, behavior counseling, spiritual direction, the prescription for living, and so forth)” (Foucault, 1997: 88). The disciplines and practices of psychology, social work, and psychoanalysis among others were employed as the tools and techniques of self-cultivation (see Rose, 1999).
As explored by Foucault, the schools were a site for the development of technologies of the self aimed at producing self-regulating citizens. In Discipline and Punish and in his essay, “Truth and Juridicial Forms,” Foucault traces the development of pastoral forms of power in the school that slowly supplemented the brutal disciplinary force of the sovereign teacher. Rather than exercising bodily force upon student bodies, the teacher as pastoral authority sought to cultivate student minds. In effect, discipline turned inward, although more overt and direct forms of control remained available for particularly recalcitrant students. Moral training, physical and mental hygiene, and a host of other such programs all sought to cultivate technologies of the self that would align the student more closely to the objectives of pedagogy specifically and the imperatives of liberal democracy more generally (see Deacon 2005; Popkewitz 1998; Rose, 1999).
The “techniques of the self” implicated in the development of liberal personhood became increasingly important across the twentieth century as the state attempted to shift more risk and responsibility to individuals. This “scaling” back of the state has been described as “neo-liberalism.” Neo-liberalism, as a body of knowledge, strategies and practices of governance—seeks to divest the state of paternalistic responsibility by shifting social, political and economic “responsibility” to privatized institutions and economically rationalized “self-governing” individuals. Lemke’s description illustrates how the state attempts to divest itself of “responsibility” for its citizens by recasting them as rational, self-responsible/choosing agents:
The neo-liberal forms of government feature not only direct intervention by means of empowered and specialized state apparatuses, but also characteristically develop indirect techniques for leading and controlling individuals without at the same time being responsible for them. The strategy of rendering individual subjects “responsible” (and also collectives, such as families, associations, etc.) entails shifting the responsibility for social risks such as illness, unemployment, poverty, etc. and for life in society into the domain for which the individual is responsible and transforming it into a problem of “self-care.” The key feature of the neo-liberal rationality is the congruence it endeavors to achieve between a responsible and moral individual and an economic-rational individual. (Lemke, 2001: 201)
By stressing “self-care” the neo-liberal state divulges paternalistic responsibility for its subjects but simultaneously, holds its subjects responsible for self-governance. As Nikolas Rose (1993) explains, the neo-liberal state does not seek to “govern through ‘society,’ but through the regulated choices of individual citizens” (285). Further: “All aspects of social behaviour are reconceptualized along economic lines – as calculative actions undertaken through the universal human faculty of choice,” and choice is itself articulated with a rational calculus of costs and benefits (Rose, 1999: 141).
Thus, the neo-liberal regime refigures individual “choice” within an economic context of meaning. This frame and its attendant “entrepreneurial” ethic lead to the dissolution of the older, “classical” liberal distinction between the private and economic spheres of life. In sum, the neo-liberal regime casts individuals as rational actors who strategically maximize their interests while the social realm in its entirety is itself recast in relation to economic rationality, including risk and calculative costs.
The operations of pastoral power take on new expressions within neo-liberal regimes of governance. Rose (1993, 1999), Burchell, Gordon and Miller (1991), and Barbara Cruikshank (1999) among others, provide compelling accounts of neo-liberal operations—including the transformation of fiscal regimes, the privatization of the governmental institutions of pastoral power, and the relocation of governmental “experts within a market governed by the rationalities of competition, accountability and consumer demand” (Rose, 1993: 285).
Prominent techniques associated with the neo-liberal regime—budget disciplines, accountancy, and audit—point to the logic for the relocation of expertise away from the former centers of governmental authority (Rose, 1993: 295). These techniques distance experts from political apparatuses and invoke “marketization” as the impartial jurist of value: “In its ideal form, this imagines a ‘free market’ in expertise, where the relations between citizens and experts are not organized and regulated through compulsion but through acts of choice” (Rose, 1993: 296-297).
Neo-liberal efforts toward de-centralization and marketization do not imply an abeyance of governance but rather a transformation of focus: conceived within the neo-liberal regime, governance is thus primarily concerned with “shaping the powers and wills of autonomous entities” (Rose, 1993: 297). As Dean observes: “this is a subject whose freedom is a condition of subjection” (1999: 165). That is, the subject is produced as a particular kind of subject whose legitimate expressions of freedom are fundamentally produced by, and constrained within, the technologies and knowledges of neo-liberal governance. Of course, regimes of government do not fully “determine” forms of subjectivity—rather they “elicit, promote, facilitate, foster and attribute various capacities, qualities and statuses to particular agents” and their success is measured by an individual’s experiences and performances of self in relation to these regimes (Dean, 1999: 32). The extension of neo-liberal governance over more domains of social existence and the attendant surveillance and control over everyday practices and intimacies has the effect of increasing societal control (totalizing) by singling out more and more aspects of private life for inspection and rational administration.
Individuals who fail to take “responsibility” for their self-governance, or whose modes of comportment violate normative standards, are subject to various forms of guidance and discipline exercised by a range of “expert” authorities (see Dean, 2002). Should rehabilitative efforts fail, punitive disciplinary reforms may be availed. Remnants of sovereign power, now disguised in the form of governmental and bio-political authorities, may be exercised to incarcerate or otherwise operate upon maladaptive individuals in the name of public order and security. The complex operations of heterogeneous forms of power—bio-power, pastoral power, and disciplinary power—are all employed forcefully to guide and discipline unruly individuals. And herein lays the paradox of neo-liberalism: while it purports to govern through individual freedom, it simultaneously employs diverse and heterogeneous forms of power to establish and preserve “a comprehensive normalization of social, economic and cultural existence” (Dean, 2002: 129, my italics). In many instances concerns for “responsibility” and “obligation” outweigh freedom per sec (Dean, 2002: 133).
Thus, the primary problem with neo-liberal governance is that it presupposes an impossibility—the equitable and totalizing production of rational, self-governing neo-liberal agents who always act in accord with neo-liberal value orientations—and the ruptures that point to the impossibility of the neo-liberal fantasy result in ever more invasive efforts to properly produce, manage, and discipline neo-liberal subjects. Expert knowledge, employed by private and governmental agents, is extended and refined to better represent and act upon recalcitrant populations. Moreover, forceful and disciplinary sovereign authority is called upon to act when the operations of biopower fail. Accordingly, under neo-liberalism United States’ prison incarceration rates have reached the highest level in the world: as of 2003, more than 5.6 million individuals were in prison or had served prison time (Chaddock, 2003). Moreover, the U.S. criminal justice system increasingly turns to incarceration for youthful criminal offenders, particularly for African American and Hispanic children, who apparently are viewed as less capable of mastering the neo-liberal model of self-governing personhood (see Human Rights Watch, 2002). Detained, incarcerated, and marginalized individuals are often medically or socially pathologized in order to avoid confronting the paradoxes and fallacies of neo-liberal governance.
The contradictions associated with neo-liberalism are most obviously illustrated in those social institutions that bear primary responsibility for cultivating the autonomous and rationalized citizens of the neo-liberal state. Accordingly, the family and the school serve as the institutions most directly responsible for the cultivation of responsible, self-governing individuals. “Successful” childrearing is critical to the production of autonomous, but responsible, individuals who “choose” to comport themselves in accordance with the dictates of liberty and enterprise. Thus, in the context of the home and the school, the operations of neo-liberalism simultaneously presuppose and produce particular kinds of subjects (see Nadesan, 2002, 2005). These subjects are simultaneous rendered “visible” and conditioned by the operations of the various forms of power described by Foucault. As I shall soon explain, the contradictions of neo-liberalism are most evident in these institutions because the dictates of neo-liberalism engender ever more intrusive and intensive forms of childrearing that extend the disciplining and guidance of individuals beyond their behavioral comportment to the production of their psyches. Failure to produce that which is presupposed, the neo-liberal agent, results in ever more punitive cycles of intervention and rehabilitation.
At the outset, it is critical to stress that the infusion of neo-liberal regimes of knowledge and practices into public educational institutions has not extinguished the operations of older forms of power. Educational institutions are sites of convergence for the operations of many forms of power including vestiges of sovereign power, as embodied in the authoritarian teacher, corporeal/disciplinary power over student bodies as exercised through administrative control over the distribution of bodies and activities in space, and the “pastoral” power of enforced socialization through pedagogical tutelage. The knowledge and prescriptions of bio-power are employed throughout to define, identify, and normalize individual “pathology.” And educators design therapeutic programmes and interventions to inculcate in students at the most micro-level of their practices a commitment to bodily expressions of self that are commensurate with the needs and operations of the neo-liberal state (i.e., with particular techniques of the self). Success is achieved through students’ self-surveillance and self-disciplining in relation to pedagogical ideals. In contrast, expressions of non-compliance by students, who either resist or are unable to perform the idealized neo-liberal self, result in ever more overt and disciplinary surveillance, remediation, and punishment.
So encompassing are the diverse operations of power within educational institutions that their overall impact is “panoptic” (Foucault, 1979). Accordingly, the panoptic prison design that affords guards the potential for incessant surveillance of their prisoners—leading to the prisoners’ internalization of surveillance—provides an apt illustration of the pervasive and insidious operations of power in educational institutions.
Educational researchers have recently acknowledged the significance of Foucault’s critiques of power for understanding the effects of contemporary educational practices (see Ball, 1990; Deacon, 2005; Marshall, 1996; Peters, 2003; Popkewitz & Brennan, 1998) and governmental analysis has been used to study changing practices for monitoring, evaluating, and remediating children in the context of narrowing standards of health and normality (Nadesan 2005). In particular, several researchers addressed how neo-liberal regimes of educational governance seek to produce children as self-regulating “autonomous chooser” (see Fitzsimons, 2002; Marshall, 1996). While pursuing this line of research, James Marshall (2004) coined the phrase “busno-power” to refer to the specific educational technologies aimed at producing the subjects of neo-liberal governmentality. In producing students as “autonomous choosers” busno-power operates on “the population as a whole” by immersing the enterprise culture into the social ( Marshall, 2004: 3). Although the practices of busno-power (as a particular set of technologies of the self) may converge with other expressions of power, Marshall believes that their specific operations in the educational context warrant distinct identification and explication.
In what follows, The MYD program will be analyzed in relation to the principles and practices of neo-liberal forms of governance. Criticism demonstrates how the program illustrates the “marketization” of pastoral institutions formerly beholden to the liberal state. Further, analysis reveals how the program incorporates technologies of the self—particularly Marshall’s “busno-power”—in the program’s efforts to cultivate enterprising, rationalized self-governing individuals. Discussion also explores the means whereby this process is itself subject to “marketization.” Finally, the contradictions and paradoxes of power intrinsic to the MYD program are thematized, particularly in relation to the inevitable panoptic extension of power necessitated by the program.
In divulging itself of paternalistic responsibility for its citizens, the neo-liberal state seeks to privatize those public pastoral institutions that formerly held responsibility for shaping and guiding the state’s citizenry. However, the impracticalities associated with privatizing public education have forestalled full-scale abnegation of the states educational responsibilities. Instead, neo-liberal states such as the U.S., Great Britain, and Australia have mandated that public educational institutions adopt the prominent techniques associated with neo-liberal regimes (see Hill, 2001, 2004) including budget disciplines, accountancy, and audits (as identified by Rose, 1993). The push toward standards, standardization, and accountability in public education in the United States can be understood in relation to the neo-liberal desire to maximize more localized institutions responsibility/accountability and impose upon their operations the discourse/practices of economic viability and market competitiveness (see Hursh, 2004). States’ incorporation of high-stakes testing illustrates this trend (see Graham & Neu, 2004: Hursh, 2004).
Media and state school board efforts to publicize school “successes” and “failures,” largely in relation to standardized test scores, increase pressure on local school districts to demonstrate their competence and competitiveness. This increased pressure, coupled with the partial privatization of educational reform, has created an opportunity space for educational entrepreneurs to market all manner of educational services, from testing services, to educational software, to discipline and character education programs. Educational entrepreneurs “market” their services to school districts and administrators select from among the market of programs those that they see has having the most applicability and value in their school districts. Of course, determination of “applicability” and “value” are subject to a wide range of decision making criteria stemming from broader cultural trends to local conditions, including the geographic and socio-economic context and politics within which the school is embedded.
The MYD program is one such privatized, entrepreneurial discipline/character development program that is marketed by its founder and chief operating officer. Although the program has never been formally evaluated, the website legitimizes its program by invoking the specialized jargon familiar to educational administrators. But more importantly, the MYD program language appeals to precisely those values that are privileged by neo-liberal discourses including the twin emphases on “individual choice” and “individual responsibility.” School administrators eager to demonstrate their entrepreneurial spirit and sensitive to the privileged values of the day may therefore find the program very appealing: as a privatized program that purports to cultivate autonomous choosing citizens it fulfills the aims and preferred expressions of neo-liberalism.
Two of the largest school districts in Maricopa County that utilize the MYD program contain large upwardly-mobile populations. These populations tend to be highly sensitized to neo-liberal value orientations and practices as a function of their workplace experiences. Aspiring parents anxious to assure their offspring’s success in the “new Darwinian workplace” may, like school administrators, also be susceptible to programs that purport to develop their children’s internal sense of self-discipline, personal responsibility, and decision-making powers. The unspoken but often held sentiment that private programs are more efficient and productive in achieving desired ends over “government” programs only enhances the appeal of the “entrepreneurial” MYD program.
Once selected, implementation of the MYD program, requires one-to-two days of teacher and para-professional training at an approximate cost of $2000.00 a day, which supplements the approximately $4000.00 per school implementation cost. This relatively low cost is not prohibitively expensive for economically strapped school districts but the requirement for semi-annual “re-training” sessions ensures the MYD program’s founder an ongoing revenue stream. Evaluation of implemented programs is optional. The school district studied in this project does not monitor or evaluate the program, thereby allowing teachers a great deal of discretion in their implementation strategies. The program’s success is verified tautologically by its marketing claims of effectiveness, which--as parents are instructed—can be found on the MYD web-site.
Although implementation of the MYD program varies across the classrooms, the two foundational components--“steps” and “points”—must be implemented in order for administrators and teachers to claim rightfully that they utilize MYD protocols. As I shall demonstrate, the operations of points, in particular, attempt to cultivate neo-liberal models of personhood that privilege responsible choice, within an economic calculus of value.
Marshall (2004) argues that busno-power is directed “at the subjectivity of the person, not through the body but through the mind, through forms of educational practice and pedagogy which, through choices in education, shape the subjectivities of autonomous choosers” (3). Busno-power aims to produce a unique, historically specific subjectivity that entails self-representation in relation to autonomy, responsibility and choice. Busno-power facilitates the integration of the social and the economic by figuring consumption as the primary realm for the expression of individual autonomy and choice. Thus, busno-power operates by collapsing the culture of enterprise into educational practices aimed at cultivation particular constructions of personhood.
Busno-power prioritizes technocratic forms of knowledge and learning, illustrated by fragmented and reductive learning processes emphasizing discrete units and skills requiring continuous, formal assessment ( Marshall, 2004). Rendering these practices unique and warranting their distinct delineation as expressions of busno-power is the attendant importation of “business” enterprise terms and value orientations (e.g., “quality” education measured by test scores and parental “customer satisfaction”). Moreover, both parents and educators argue that curriculum should ideally prepare students directly for workplace needs, undermining philosophical commitments to the “ideals” of a classical “liberal education” ( Marshall, 2004).
Busno-power’s operations as concrete instances of neo-liberal governance are demonstrated through the points component of the MYD program. As stated explicitly in the MYD program’s literature, the points component is designed to foster the student’s sense of personal choice and responsibility. Each student’s self-assessment of points on an hourly basis provides students with a clear outcome measure of his/her behavioral “choices.” Classmates and teacher “concerns” encourage students to take full “responsibility” for their actions. The process of negotiating points between teacher and student in the event of a points dispute resembles an economic transaction, a “bartering” process. Moreover, each student’s points economy is typically made visible for classmates to view. This visibility encourages mutual regard within an economic calculus. Finally, in some classes, students who earn high points at the end of the day are given coupons that can be redeemed for trinkets available in a “prize box” that is often stuffed with parent-donated Happy Meal and other inexpensive toys. The responsible student who chooses wisely is thus afforded a consumer opportunity, further enhancing the symbolic transformation of individual choice into economic value.
The very manner whereby points are assessed also illustrates the technocratic aspects of busno-power’s operations. Careful observation of the students’ points evaluations suggests that students rarely assess their behavioral performance—their choices—holistically. Rather, when students are asked by the teacher to explain their points they tend to rationalize their self-assessment in relation to isolated events. For example, one second grade student lowered his points because he did not complete all of his work in the allocated time. The reason why the student failed to complete his work (e.g., whether because of dawdling or inability) was seen as less important than his willingness to “take responsibility” for his failure. The expression of student “concerns” also tended to focus on isolated instances. One first grade student threatened a peer that they would voice “a concern” because the peer was shoving them in line. This kind of evaluation appears to be the norm because students are rarely if ever trained on how to holistically and thoughtfully evaluate their performance and efforts using a wide range of criteria. Consequently, points seem to be afforded or penalized on the basis of discrete instances of rule conformity or violation irrespective of context.
As shall be explored presently, the effectiveness of the points program in cultivating idealized models of neo-liberal personhood is compromised by the contradictions and paradoxes posed by the processes of self and other evaluation. In practice, I shall argue, the points component may function and be experienced as an extension of authoritarian control rather than as a mediator of autonomous personhood.
Empirical Contradictions and Cognitive Paradoxes
Classroom observation and interview data of the points evaluation process suggests that a number of problems compromise the effectiveness of the process in fostering autonomous personhood. These problems compromise the program’s perceived legitimacy among students and may engender student apathy and/or resistance. Additionally, the program’s implicit ontological assumptions about the nature of self-consciousness and group dynamics may impinge against educators’ willingness to confront the program’s potential problems.
The most pervasively stated concerns about the program focus on peer social dynamics. Parents and students report that the program leads to peer surveillance, “tattle-telling,” peer extortion, and that popular children are disproportionably rewarded as they are rarely cited for peer or teacher concerns. All of these problems undermine student perceptions of the program’s impartiality and legitimacy. Teachers’ abilities to arbitrate fairly among student accounts are limited, particularly when student concerns are expressed about transactions that occurred during unsupervised periods such as recess (recesses are typically supervised by aides). Accordingly, students formerly enrolled in the program reported having others voice fraudulent “concerns” and reported witnessing forms of socially sanctioned “bullying” when students “ganged-up” on hapless peers by deluging them with “concerns.”
Another more subtle dynamic observed in the classroom stemmed from gendered strategies for self-surveillance and self-evaluation. Although these examples are anecdotal they do suggest that distinct communications patterns may exist across boys’ and girls’ self-evaluations. Many boys seemed to view the opportunity for self-evaluation as a bartering process so they would often begin with a very high number. In response to teacher or classmate concerns, the boys would minimally adjust their points downward unless the teacher assigned a specific point value (in violation of the formal policy for negotiating disputed points). In contrast, many girls failed to claim full points but offered no specific rationale for their assessment. My observations suggested that such girls feared being subject to others’ concerns and therefore pre-empted such expressions by “low-balling” their self-evaluation. Subsequent conversations with students formerly subject to the program (now college-aged) lent support to this interpretation of systematic gender biases.
Other problems associated with the points evaluation are caused by teacher apathy, structural time constraints, and paradoxes of pedagogy. The formal protocol suggests that points should be evaluated hourly. However, this time costly process may engender teacher resistance. For instance, in one classroom the teacher appoints a student to walk around the classroom while students work and record points privately on a clipboard. Such a practice resolves the time problem but simultaneously strips the program of its “normative” control mechanism. Finally, students bored by the monotony of “busy work” find losing points an acceptable cost for their illicit socialization.ii
Implicit recognition of the sometimes arbitrary nature of points evaluation eventually leads to student resistance. School administrators report that the points component of the program is rarely applied past sixth grade and that adjustments to the process of points evaluation are typically made by fourth grade. The MYD program founder claimed in a phone conversation that the points component of the program “works best” in second grade. The reason why points are largely abandoned in higher grades is because at a certain age students often “invert” the program to compete for the “lowest” point scores, many students formerly enrolled in the program reported. Such resistance complies on the surface with program guidelines but signifies student dissent. This practice no doubt plays a role in the decision to limit the program primarily to lower grade levels. However, younger students may also exercise resistance, particularly by using “concerns” as weapons against classmates.
Student resistance and unorthodox appropriation of the points evaluation process ultimately engender more authoritarian control by teachers. As explained previously, although neo-liberal regimes of governance stress personal autonomy and individuality (i.e., self-surveillance), they often resort to more overt and punitive forms of control and discipline (Dean, 1999). Thus, it is not surprising that the purportedly “positive” pedagogical tool of points is supplemented with the coercive force of “steps.” Indeed, the “steps” component of the program implies the failure of “points” to alone ensure student compliance and motivation as the step protocol is simply an updated, formalized and standardized “time-out” process. “Steps” point to the teacher’s overt and punitive power. However, expressions of pure force are not limited to steps. Overt and punitive force is sometimes exhibited by the teacher in the process of designating points. Teachers can and do “punish” students by publicly penalizing their points (in violation of the manual’s stated policy for negotiating contested points). Such arbitrary exercises of pedagogical authority ultimately undermine student perceptions of the program’s legitimacy and may therefore foster resistance, engendering the potential for more overt expressions of authoritarian force by the teacher and other educational authorities. In conclusion, the entire process of points evaluation is ridden with contradictions that impinge against the program’s overall capacity to realize its stated intentions of fostering autonomous personhood.
However, even when these contradictions are bracketed and temporarily put aside the question arises as to how effective the points component of the program really is in fostering student autonomy and responsibility in lower grade levels. This answer to this question hinges on the validity of the ontological assumptions that are built into the MYD protocol. Ontological issues address assumptions about human nature, thought, and behavior and implicitly dictate programmatic assumptions about what is “normative”, possible, just, etc. Like all therapeutic programmes, the MYD program presumes a model of human consciousness that shapes perceptions about the nature and form of human judgment, behavior, and social rapport.
Accordingly, at an ontological level, the points component of the MYD program presupposes a transparent and representational model of reflexive consciousness. The points evaluation process assumes that children are capable of (1) re-presencing behaviors and cognitions in order to evaluate retroactively personal compliance and motivation; (2) evaluating how personal behaviors affect the emotional states and behaviors of classroom others; and (3) modifying future behaviors on the basis of these evaluations. And yet, these assumptions raise many questions for although reflexive consciousness is little understood, cognitive psychologists who study this phenomenon suggest that it entails developmental convergence of a wide range of cognitive skills implicating multifaceted forms of memory, representation (e.g., distinct “theory of mind” skills), and self-control (e.g., “executive functions” skills) (Naito, 2003; Zelazo, 2004). Although I have certain reservations about cognitive representational concepts—e.g., executive functions—these concepts can be usefully applied in an “internal critique” of the cognitive model of consciousness undergirding the MYD protocols.
Naito (2003) suggests that the developmental converge of skills necessary to reflect “meta-cognitively” upon self and others rarely becomes evident before age six and that skills at age six are incipient and unevenly acquired as they are affected by culture, gender, individual differences (see also Templeton & Wilcox, 2000). Further, many developmental psychologists believe that children and adolescents have difficulty controlling impulsive behavior because neurological mechanisms for self-restraint and/or “state regulation” (often termed “executive functions skills”) are also achieved developmentally, although mediated by individual and cultural differences (Brewis, Schmidt, & Casas, 2003; Mezzacappa, Kindlon, & Earls, 1999). Indeed, one study found that seven and eight year old children exhibited poor state regulation and impulse control (van der Meere & Stemerdink, 1999). Finally, cognitive research suggests that children exhibit significant individual differences in their understandings of, and motivational response to, social evaluation concerns (Banerjee, 2002).
Accordingly, developmental cognitive limitations may impinge against a child’s ability to rationally link cognition with behavior. Consequently, the idea that young children are able to adapt their behavior rationally in relation to reflexive processes of self-evaluation may be developmentally inappropriate. Indeed, everyday life suggests that the transparent, cybernetic model of thought and action implied by the MYD protocol is in fact rarely even exhibited by adults in their routine, everyday practical decision making.
Undergirding the MYD model of consciousness is a cognitive interpretation of mind that emphasizes representational thinking and rational planning. The cognitive paradigm informs much educational theory and practice and yet many of its assumptions pertaining to the rationality of human action are untested. Can people accurately re-presence past behaviors and psychological motivations? Can people accurately model social others’ intentions and internal states? Can people rationally assess alternative models of action before strategically pursuing the most rational courses of action to achieve desired ends? How rationally and tightly are ends and means coupled in human consciousness? Most importantly, can children reliably engage in rational processes? While the answers to these questions remain unclear it is becoming increasingly evident to many philosophers and scientists that much human action and cognition are not “rational” and that emotional forces, conditioned responses, and impulsivity shape much human judgment and action.iii
In effect, the presumptions that adults, let alone children, are capable of rational reflection, assessment, and calculation are problematic at best and certainly warrant serious investigation. Indeed, that an invasive discipline and character program would be widely implemented without testing critical assumptions seems to belie the very rationality of human cognition and planning. However, the practice of implementing untested educational programs appears to be wide, reports the National Research Council in a critical assessment of educational policy because school administrator’s personal ideology and experience typically substitute for systematic empirical evaluation (Begley, 2004).
What are the potential implications and effects of points evaluation if limitations in human judgment and rationality are granted? The answer to this question is not absolutely clear but one implication is that the significance of the “normative” disciplinary aspects of the program increase in salience if the role of individual rationality is de-emphasized. And yet, a program that relies on normative pressure while simultaneously opening up extensive possibilities for public peer surveillance and evaluation has troubling implications. In worst case scenarios one can envision the program’s potential to foster further personal alienation and paranoia among children who are already at risk for social marginalization. Moreover, children who experience biologically-rooted problems with impulse control may be subject to enhanced public ridicule and sanctions, negatively impacting self-esteem. Perhaps most importantly, cognitive research suggests that children in general do not develop sensitivity for others’ self-presentational failures (e.g., “gaffes”) until relatively late in childhood (Bennett & Cormack, 1996) and thus children may be insensitive to how their comments of concern affect the embarrassment and shame of their peers.
However damaging these specific effects, the long-term potential effects of the MYD program extend beyond the psychological harms listed below because the program fundamentally promotes a way of life—a structure of existence—predicated upon unrelenting surveillance of self and other, by self and other. These emphases on personal and other surveillance together illustrate what Foucault described as “panoptic power.” As described previously, the panoptic form of power relies on ubiquitous and unrelenting surveillance to ensure compliance, leading ultimately to the internalization of self-control. And yet the internalization of self-control does not, according to Foucault, “free” the individual. Rather, it constitutes the individual more fully as a subject of the system of discipline. Although some degree of self-control is of course necessary for society to exist, the qualitative nature of that control varies considerably with some systems of discipline encouraging and/or enabling relative freedom of thought and action while others exert more totalitarian forms of control.
And neo-liberal governance is often regarded as one of the most totalitarian expressions of social control (see Dean, 1999; Rimke, 2000). Neo-liberal governance requires the production of subjects whose malleability extends beyond the expressions of corporeal docility favored by more traditional regimes of governance. Malleability is necessary because neo-liberal governance must, to be effective, produce subjects who can eventually assume self-governance commensurate with neo-liberal principles. Thus, the mind, the psyche, the soul together constitute neo-liberal’s ultimate object of intervention and therefore must be subject to continual surveillance and control.
In an essay exploring the psychic life of governmentality, Tie (2004) draws upon Slavoj Žižec’s (1994) work to address the psychological processes implicated in totalitarian control. Following Žižec, Tie suggests that a level of seduction is key to totalitarian control and thus totalitarian regimes by necessity must be underpinned by desirable fantasies whose emotionally attractive forms resonate with the popular unconscious. As Tie points out, the emotional register of totalitarian regimes make them less open to critique: that is, although aspects of the regime might be adjusted in the light of criticism, the regime as a whole remains “relatively impervious to challenge because the fantasies which underpin it are widely experienced as enjoyable an desirable” (Tie, 2004: 163).
Accordingly, in the context of neo-liberal governmentality, the neo-liberal fantasy of a society of autonomous, self-regulating, responsible individuals reduces collective resistance, even in the face failure and contradiction, through its seductive appeal. And as an expression of this neo-liberal fantasy, the MYD program appeals to the fantasy of a well-regulated group of children who, under the guidance of an exemplary teacher/mentor, acquire the level of reflexive rationality and responsibility that together will enable them to develop into autonomous, self-regulating citizen/consumers.
The desirable fantasy that underpins the MYD program no doubt plays a role in parents’ and educators’ readiness to dismiss the occasional concern expressed about the program’s effects. For example, although the MYD program’s emphases on normative control pose relatively obvious potential problems for developmentally vulnerable individuals and social non-conformists, none of the three schools explored in this study have protocols for adapting the program for special needs children, despite concerns expressed by the district psychologist. Perhaps more significantly, the very real contradictions between the program’s stated and experienced effects are rarely addressed by school officials and tend to be dismissed by parent organizations (e.g., “site council” and the school board) when raised by the occasional disgruntled parent. Parents who dislike the program rightly point out that the frequent process of points evaluation coupled with frequent steps in the classroom actually increase overt and authoritarian pedagogical control. That the program actually maximizes social surveillance and punitive control (e.g., through public ridicule and shaming) under the guise of encouraging individual responsibility and choice is not lost on all parents and children. However, even when expressed in the most articulate of terms, parental concerns tend to be dismissed and marginalized. Thus, the desired/desirable fantasy of a programme that produces self-regulating autonomous students short-circuits and/or contains parental resistance.
Neo-liberal forms of governance attempt to divest the state of paternalistic responsibility by constituting individuals as rational independent agents. Economic frameworks of value are promoted as the pre-eminent calculus for assessing the rationality of action and the value of human decisions. Within this social and political framework, educational institutions within Western industrialized countries have sought to “invigorate” public education by incorporating neo-liberal fiscal and cultural regimes. Specifically, although educational institutions within the United States still remain largely public bureaucracies, they increasingly adopt neo-liberal vocabularies and practices in “modernizing” their processes and enhancing their “efficiencies.”
Marshall (2004) coined the concept of “busno-power” to descriptively encapsulate the neo-liberal colonization of educational institutions. The infusion of neo-liberal regimes is marked by educational programs and curriculum that strive to produce a particular, privileged model of subjectivity defined in terms of the “autonomous chooser” (3). Choice within this framework is contextualized within an economic calculus that emphasizes market value and consumption. Finally, the operations of busno-power typically privilege technocratic forms of knowledge and learning orientations as such are seen as “marketable” and are relatively easily subject to standardized processes of assessment and evaluation. The efficaciousness of busno-power and other expressions of neo-liberal governance stem in part from their promulgation of the desirable fantasy of well ordered society constituted by the autonomous and well-regulated choices of rational subjects.
The MYD program demonstrates the cultural infusion of the neo-liberal regime—busno-power--within a public educational apparatus. This program emphasizes the production of autonomous choosing agents who recognize and evaluate their behavior and motivations within an economic calculus of value—i.e., “points.” Ready quantification of student conduct and psychological motivation render abstract and diffuse phenomena amendable to technocratic assessments. Compliance is fostered by social pressure, shaming, and, instances of overt non-compliance, overt authoritarian control. Promotion of a panoptic attitude—by both students and school administrators—extends and facilitates the effectiveness of social conformity pressures. The compliant, socially successful child’s success is articulated in terms “choice” as is the failure of the socially marginal child who is either less inhibited or less successful at escaping critical surveillance.
Although classroom pedagogy has long drawn upon the forces of shaming and surveillance to ensure compliance the current packaging and marketing of these techniques in the MYD program is relatively unique. The privatized “entrepreneurial” ownership of the program is literally part of its marketing appeal. The program founder’s entrepreneurial success and his emphasis on school choice in the selection of a disciplinary program mirror the MYD program’s vaunted values of personal choice and responsibility. Implicitly, the MYD program suggests that its techniques will foster the savvy self-directed entrepreneurial attitude critical for economic success in the new “entrepreneurial” economy fostered by the neo-liberals and neo-conservatives. Student success and failure are represented in terms of individual choices exercised by homogenized individuals. Administrative failures to empirically assess the program indirectly lend support its purported effectiveness. Parental and/or student dissent, when expressed at all, can be deflected by administrators who point to the program’s stated success in promoting individual responsibility. The neo-liberal fantasy—invoked and promulgated by the MYD program—leads to trivialization and marginalization of dissent and the pathologization of resistance.
The broader social significance of this program is that it illustrates come of the problems and contradictions of “entrepreneurial,” neo-liberal systems of governance. In particular, it illustrates the material difficulties in producing autonomous, self-regulating agents who comply and subscribe to preferred value systems. Ironically, efforts to produce such subjects may inadvertently resort to older authoritarian and punitive systems of control in order to ensure individuals’ compliance with preferred behaviors and value orientations. Moreover, efforts to engineer individuals’ psyches often implicate more totalitarian systems of control than required of previous disciplinary systems that focused only on manifest behaviors. As Foucault warned, efforts to shape the psyche often resort to totalizing systems of panoptic surveillance. Surveillance is used to identify and justify more overt forms of control and disciplinary action. More surveillance amplifies resistance and thereby legitimizes ever more nuanced and/or totalitarian control.
Of course, resistance will mark the limits of these control mechanisms but the articulation of such resistance in terms of “choice” fundamentally delineates childhood resistors as deliberate malefactors, thereby eliding the many social and physiological reasons why individuals might fail to conform to societal expectations. Adult resisters, on the other hand, are dismissed as undervaluing children’s abilities to rationally regulate and evaluate their choices. Both adult and childhood expressions of resistance are deliberately marginalized less they problematize the neo-liberal fantasy of autonomous choosing agency.
In conclusion, the shift away from the early nineteenth century model of the “sovereign, disciplinary teacher” achieved first by liberal and then neo-liberal systems of governance has not necessarily resulted in a “freer” student or more democratic classroom. Although contemporary techniques of the self and pastoral authority may veil the degree of operant control in the guise of democratic participation this does not imply an absence of power or even an absence of sovereign authority. Indeed, the disciplines that operate in the contemporary classroom are subtly invasive and insidious in that they aim beyond the production of docile bodies. Contemporary disciplines aim at the mind. When these operations of power meet their limits in recalcitrant bodies and resistant minds, sovereign power is availed and forceful discipline enacted. Although children are not “hit” they are corporeally disciplined and publicly shamed through the series of time-outs and through notes sent home, which may result in older forms of physical discipline. Although one can applaud the lack of physical force against student bodies in the contemporary classroom, one must also attend carefully to the effects of systems of control that hold students psychologically accountable for all transgressions even when stifling classroom conditions or developmental limitations are at issue.
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1Majia Nadesan studied communication theory and philosophy at Purdue University in the U.S. She has taught at Syracuse and Arizona State Universities. She is currently an Associate Professor at Arizona State University West. She is the author of Constructing Autism: (Routledge, 2005). Her current research addresses the political economy of everyday life.
i Foucault’s works on neo-liberalism were primarily presented in his lectures on the genealogy of the modern state while Foucault held the Chair of ‘History of Systems of Thought’ at the Collège de France from 1970-1984. Given that the lectures’ content is not available in English, this essay draws upon Lemke’s (2001) and Dean’s (2002) interpretations of Foucault’s work on neo-liberalism in addition to Foucault’s published work on governmentality (1991) and bio-politics (1990, 1983).
ii The classroom curriculum in two of the classrooms observed consisted primarily of an endless stream of redundant and (seemingly) meaningless work-sheets. In most cases observed, student resistance was a direct outcome of boredom.
iii For example, one study reported recently in the press found that political opinions were heavily weighed by personal bias and that only fifteen percent of the sample population even bothered to consider evidence when forming their opinions (Pitts, 2004).
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