Foucault and Education:

Power, Pedagogy, and

Panopticon
by Harold Chad Hillier, Ph.D., Lecturer in Contemporary Studies,
Wilfrid Laurier University and Cathlene E. Hillier, M.A.

Introduction
While the French philosopher and radical critic of West-
era society Michel Foucault never wrote an extended state-
ment on education, some educational and social theorists
have gleaned unique concepts and arguments from his vari-
ous writings and interviews that examine power and domi-
nation in schooling (Deacon, 2002; Deacon, 2006a;
Popkewitz and Brennan, 1997).1In his book Discipline and
Punish (1977) much of Foucault’s discussion of education is
intermixed with his analysis of the disciplinary techniques
used in prisons, viewing the school and the prison as insti-
tutions of surveillance and control (Young, 2009). The aim
of this essay is to explore Foucault’s theoretical contribution
to educational theory and power relations through his no-
tions of discipline and punishment found in social
institutions like prisons and schools.
According to Hugh Cunningham, the concept of “child-
hood” was invented during the 17th and 18th centuries.
This concept, nevertheless, evolved through centuries of
stages; from antiquity where children had no legal or public
status in society, through to the medieval period where the
practice of infant baptism and establishment of church
schools granted the beginnings of distinctive recognition, to
the early modern era where new notions of “family” and
“child-rearing” emerged through the social-political applica-
tion of the Protestant Reformation’s principles of individual-
ity and soul-care (deMause, 1976; cf. Deacon, 2006b). In
each of these eras, the education of children reflected the
position that they had in society; from merely apprentice-
ships to formal education as a parental responsibility
1 The authors wish to thank the editor and reviewer for their helpful
comments and suggestions.

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 49

(Bowles and Gintis, 1976). It was during the Industrial Rev-
olution, however, that economic forces saw children again
being employed by factories or being sold into physical or
sexual labour. Children needed protection from their par-
ents, and certain segments within society (e.g. Evangelical
Christians) began to call for universal standards of children
health, welfare and education. A social shift occurred, where
“childhood” became sanctified and education became the ve-
hiele both for affecting these new social values and instilling
particular social-political-moral values into the next
generation (Deacon, 2006b).
With this came the reformation of school curriculum and
the institutional school itself. What Bowles and Gintis refer
to this time as the “new frontier” for education (1976, p.3).
The institutional school was transformed into a more
home-like environment, the stern school m asters were re-
placed with school mistresses, teachers were expected to
provide more maternal and moral caregiving, and the school
became increasingly relied upon to transm it skills and so-
cialization (Deacon, 2006b). Discipline started to move away
from the visible form of corporal punishment and was re-
placed by humiliation (i.e., dunce cap) (deMause, 1976).
Also, with the onset of the industrial revolution, there came
a need for greater training for these new technological skills
and jobs. Families became less and less the training ground
for young children.
Due to this reconceptualization of childhood, mass
schooling became the norm and students emerged as a new
social category. The purpose of education was to prepare the
child learn self-discipline and be useful to society
(Popkewitz, 1991). As such, children became a population
in need of management and “childhood became a problem of
survival to adulthood, not merely at birth” (Deacon, 2006a,
p. 182). In the 17th Century the first education acts were es-
tablished in Europe, guaranteeing compulsory education for
children in nations like Scotland, Austria and Prussia.
Throughout the 19th Century, series of new education acts
were established throughout Western countries that were far
more extensive. For example, the 1870 Elementary Educa-
tion Act in England provided the state with an unpredicted
amount of control, which allowed it to ensure an efficient ed-
ucational institution in producing “responsible, moral and
useful population” (Ball, 1990, p.68). Since the Education

50 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

Act aimed at providing universal education, especially in
underserviced areas of the country, the implementation of
state schooling would furthermore allow for moral instruc-
tion to be carried out on the lower classes (Deacon, 2006b).
While churches had directed moral and religious education
with voluntary schools, before this act the level of
government involvement in any institutionalized schooling
had been minimal.
It is in the context of this changing vision of Europe and
America where Foucault’s notions of discipline and school-
ing apply well. Schooling in the 19th and 20th centuries was
to function in ‘neutralizing disorder’ and this was later ac-
companied by more positive ‘socially productive’ and ‘per-
sonally corrective’ behavior and with this emphasis came
the formation of new teaching methods (Deacon, 2005a,
pp.86-87). As a result, there was a necessity for the disci-
plinary mechanisms of hierarchy, surveillance, examination
and normalization (Foucault, 1977, p. 170). For Foucault,
the development and training of the person and the use of
schooling as a mechanism in that formation are both part of
the historical establishment of mass education of children
(Hunter, 1996).
In looking at the power relations in education, this essay
connects the Foucaultian ideas of children as a social group
needing control, with the nature of institutionalized educa-
tion as being a process of discipline through training the
body to become docile through various non-physical acts of
power; creating docile subjects appropriate for production
within our societies. Connections to contemporary educa-
tional practices and policies within current North American
schools will be made to assess Foucault’s view of education
as another institutionalized social system that normalizes
acceptable behavior within its subjects through disciplinary
power.
The Discipline and Training of the Body
In an interview with J. K. Simon, Foucault (1971) ex-
plains the purpose of his examination of power relations:
“What I am trying to do is grasp the implicit systems which
determine our most familiar behavior without our knowing
it. I am trying to find their origin, to show their formation,
the constraint they impose upon us; I am therefore trying to

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 51

place myself at a distance from them and to show how one
could escape” (p.201). It is with this in mind that the follow-
ing analysis of Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power will
concentrate on the implicit results that come from power re-
lations in education that are often enforced without the sub-
ject’s knowledge. For Foucault, in both the prison and the
school, power is impressed on the bodies of subjects to pro-
duce a particular type of subject and to produce knowledge
about those subjects.
Foucault’s (1977) Discipline and Punish begins with a
stark contrast between two models of imprisonment in Eu-
ropean history: the torture and quartering of a prisoner vs.
the establishment of an elaborate timetable of what prison-
ers are to be doing each day. For Foucault these two exam-
pies, separated by less than a century, displayed two very
distinct notions of punishment. The old model of imprison-
ment was centered in the notion that “the body as the major
target of penal repression”, while the new model (as evi-
denced by the practice of the ‘timetable’) saw the transfor-
mation of a system to a focus on ‘discipline’ and the
formation o f‘docile bodies’ (Foucault, 1977, p.8). In this
new idea, the human body is understood as being suscepti-
ble to manipulation for purposes determined by others, and
with this Foucault looks at the development of different
forms of discipline that involve every small aspect of the hu-
man body. For Foucault, exerting control over the body
through discipline is a new formula for social-political
power. Modern institutions now use disciplinary power to
‘train’ bodies specifically for the tasks the bodies are ex-
pected to perform, rather than ‘select or levy’ the body for
these tasks (1977, p. 170). The aim of discipline, in these
institutions, is to contain and control the body by a
regulation of its actions during governed periods of time.
One of the notable examples of this new form of disciplin-
ary power Foucault gives is the example of the ‘timetable’; an
agenda designed to “establish rhythms, impose particular
occupations, [and] regulate the cycles of repetition” (1977, p.
149). The devotion of the body to particular assigned and
time-limited tasks allows the scheduler to increasingly dom-
inate the subordinate body. Timetables are standard prac-
tice in contemporary education, as schools dictate, control
and regulate activity by: indicating which subject will be
taught at certain times of the day, the duration of time that

52 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

students will work on that subject, and periods when the
body can change activity or rest from activity. In this way,
time is not wasted but always allocated to specific learning
tasks. The timetable affects power at different levels of insti-
tutional educational organization, from the government to
the school board to the classroom itself. For instance, while
they are likewise subject to timetable expectations instilled
by their schools and state’s expectations, the timetable also
assists the teacher in monitoring their students’ movements
within each classroom to ensure all are ‘on-task’ and not
deviating from classroom expectations.
Institutions, such as the school, become mechanisms or
‘machinery of power’ to enforce disciplinary power to correct
deviance (Foucault, 1977, pp. 138). Foucault’s discussion on
the prison institution and its purpose to make individuals
‘docile and useful’ is useful to an analysis of schooling as a
mechanism of power (1977, p.231). As Foucault notes, the
prison’s activity on the individual prisoner is an “unceasing
discipline” that includes various strategies such as isolation
and/or a strict schedule of work, sleep, mealtime, and
prayer (1977, p.236). This kind of discipline works with
careful observation of the subject in two ways: surveillance
and knowledge of each inmate and both of these techniques
culminated in the examination. It is within these tech-
niques, that the discipline and training of the body in order
to create ’docile bodies’ will be examined in education.
Surveillance and the Panopticon: The Teacher’s
Gaze and the Use of Architecture and
Placement in School Buildings
Foucault begins his discussion of panopticism (‘every-
thing in view at once’) with a description of how society was
managed during the plague of the seventeenth century. Over
the course of a plague, cities would be closed off and
well-guarded, people sequestered and quarantined, systems
for delivery of rations and provisions would be created, peri-
odic forced cleansings, ceaseless inspections, and very care-
ful records would be kept by every authority within the city.
Within this, Foucault writes, “enclosed, segmented space,
observed at every point, in which the individuals are in-
serted in a fixed place, in which the slightest movements are
supervised, in which all events recorded... in which each in­

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 53

dividual is constantly located, examined and distributed...
constitutes a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism”
(1977, p. 197). This is because, with the corresponding rise
of observation came the corresponding punishments for fail-
ure to comply. The social policy governing the
plague-stricken town was the result of full-penetration of
disciplinary power into society. It is the creation of a disci-
plined society that maintained social regulation of its popu-
lation through a new fo rm of power and technique fo r
correction, which Foucault’s identifies as the “Panopticon”.
The Panopticon, envisioned by Jerem y Bentham in his
1785 writing of the same name, was a design of an ultimate
disciplinary institution. As a round building, with a central
observation tower, and hallways designed in particular ways
(right angle intersection of walls with hallways and zig-zag
entryways between different quarters) allowed for constant
observation of the prisoner while denying the ability of pris-
oners to see their observers (Bentham, 1995, Letter II). In
this light, Bentham’s design would ensure that discipline
would be ‘visible’ and ‘unverifiable’; visible in that the pris-
oner would always see the ominous observation tower, but
unverifiable in the fact that he/she would never know if they
are being watched at any moment (Bentham, 1995, Letter I;
Foucault, 1977, p. 201). The unverifiable nature of the Pan-
opticon is what gives it so much power, for the possibility
that one is being constantly watched ensures docility and
compliance. For Bentham, the Panopticon was the ultimate
design to allow for constant surveillance or the feeling of
constant surveillance to be enforced (Foucault, 1977,
p.201 ). He described the design himself as “a new mode of
obtaining power of mind over mind” (Bentham, 1995, Letter
I, II).
Foucault notes that panopticon moves beyond mere ob-
servation to become a “laboratory of power" for the alter-
ation, training and development of the observed; whether in
medical treatments or initiating new behavioral experiments
upon subjects (Foucault, 1977, p.203-204). Discipline is a
power, not an institution or apparatus. It is a science used
by institutions for various purposes, wherein we are both
subjects and parts in the mechanisms of panoptic power
(Foucault, 1977, pp.216-217). The difference between the
old and new forms of power is the transformation of an op-
pressive, visible and violent amount of the external exercise

54 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

of power into its exact opposite of passive, invisible and psy-
chological effect of power (1997, p.208). The effect of this
new kind of power, according to Foucault, has been the de-
velopment of panoptic mechanism of discipline has evolved
from particular disciplinary institutions towards a
“disciplinary society” (1977, p. 209).
Foucault uses the idea of the panopticon as an example
of how architecture can be used as a method of power, con-
trol and discipline. While Bentham did not receive the op-
portunity to actually manifest his vision, the core ideas of
the panopticon could be found in architecture by the time of
Foucault’s writing; very more in the development of the con-
temporary surveillance-society. In regards to architecture it-
self, the concept of panopticism can be used for any group
of people that need to be kept under observation such as
prisoners, students, hospital/asylum patients, or workers.
By placing those being observed in a position of constant
visibility, the effectiveness of the institution can be
increased.
While most schools are not constructed like the Panopti-
con, the idea of ‘hierarchical observation’ and control of
space and movement in the pursuit of correct discipline is a
consideration in their architecture (Foucault, 1977, p. 170).
It is the way the buildings of these institutions are created
that aid the careful observance of their subjects. For exam-
pie, the location of the principal’s office is often located cen-
trally where administration can survey the teachers’ and
students’ activities. As was noted above, buildings are a
mechanism for training (Foucault, 1977, p. 172). However,
the concept of the panopticon can be used in more than just
the school building itself, but the placement of desks — both
teacher’s desk and the students’ desks. Like the central ob-
servatory tower within Bentham panoptic prison, whether it
is the location of the teacher/supervisor’s desk at the front of
the room or on a raised platform, the architecture of a
building or the placement of people in those buildings
become a mechanism of power to confine and discipline.
In Bentham’s design, the Panopticon was a tangible
building. However, for Foucault, the Panopticon was more
than just a ‘dream building’ but a metaphor for the way that
disciplinary societies operate (1977, p.205). For example,
with the rise of school violence and school shootings over
the past two decades, schools across North America (espe­

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 55

cially in the United States) have been installing video surveil-
lance cameras to monitor student activity (Piro, 2008). Piro
(2008) examines this increase of surveillance in schools in
light of a Foucauldian analysis. He states that due to unfor-
túnate events that have happened in the United States, the
creation of a “surveillance curriculum” has occurred; sur-
veillance cameras are incorporated into the architecture of
the school and “the watching becomes built into the struc-
ture” (p.42). Piro (2008) refers to this as a “high-tech
version of Bentham’s Panopticon” (p.42).
Panoptic concepts do not simply influence the architec-
ture of a building, but also the way in which classrooms are
set up. Monahan (2005) observes computer classrooms in
various high schools in Los Angeles. In these schools,
Monahan (2005) surveys the layout of the classrooms and
how the classrooms are managed by the teacher(s). One
classroom Monahan (2005) observed had two male teachers
situated on risers in the ‘front’ of the classroom; the stu-
dents sat with their backs to the instructors so that the com-
puter monitors could be observed at all times (p. 57). This
classroom layout serves to help the instructors know which
students need assistance on their tasks, however, it also
aims to monitor, control and direct. “This built pedagogy of
surveillance reinforces an ethic of self-discipline and undis-
tracted labor while simultaneously developing subject posi-
tions that embrace monitoring and control” (Monahan,
2005, p.59). “Built pedagogy” is a term Monahan (2002)
uses to describe how spaces teach individuals proper con-
duct through affordances that control certain movements,
activities, or behaviors over others. For example, the config-
uration of the classroom with the desks in neat rows en-
forces pedagogy of discipline and conformity. Further, the
teacher can easily move between rows to observe student
work and conduct.
Surveillance by teachers, or even by students who are
designated as monitors or assistants, is an integral part of
the process of schooling. Teachers cannot be everywhere at
once and the students help in monitoring each other. In this
way, students are never sure if they are being watched and
this minimizes deviance within the classroom such as cheat-
ing, talking, or wasting time. It is important to note, how-
ever, that power relations are seldom one-sided (Deacon,
2005b, 2006a). Teachers are being observed under the criti-

56 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

cal gaze as well, by students, other teachers, parents, and
administration. Thus, the idea of panopticism creates a “net-
work of mechanisms that would be everywhere and always
alert, running through society without interruption in space
or in time” (Foucault, 1977, p .209).
What is so effective about this form of power is that it is
so subtle, most people are not even aware of the mechanism
or that they are participating in its existence. Further, disci-
pline becomes self-regulatory; people behave appropriately
because they are never sure whether or not they are being
watched (Downing, 2008). Self-regulation and self-constraint
are exercised within institutions by constant “modulation of
conduct according to certain norms... Control society is one
of constant and never ending modulation where the modula-
tion occurs within the flows and transactions between the
forces and capacities of the human subject and the practices
in which he or she participates” (Rose, 2000). Therefore,
power relations become more effectual the more they perme-
ate into the everyday operations of schooling; the externally
enforced discipline becomes internally monitored and
self-regulated by the student (Deacon, 2002).
The major institutions in society are a part of this disci-
plinary mechanism, therefore, people are socialized into the
proper way of behaving and those who do not adhere to the
norm are considered deviants in the social order of things.
Institutions can infiltrate the ideals of those in power in
such a way that every aspect of society is affected. Foucault
(1977) gives the example that schools are not simply to
‘train docile children’ but also to observe the parents as to
how they are living (p. 211). Those who do not follow social
norms and especially those who are not productive citizens
in a capitalistic society are considered vagabonds, lazy,
and/or degenerate. In this case, the system would then im-
pose a correction to ensure proper way of living by enforcing
confinement (possibly through laws, jail, asylum, school,
and social services).
Contemporary public and private day schools are not pe-
nal, monastic, mental health, or military institutions, in the
sense that they are not total institutions where state-autho-
rized agents control the entire lives of their subjects
(Goffman,1961 ). But in spite of the fact that students are
away from these institutions for the majority of any
twenty-hour period there are many “common characteris­

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 57

tics” to total institutions (e.g. state and legal mandated atten-
dance, timetables, currículums, bureaucracies, teacher
qualifications, grade-level admission standards, and stan-
dardized testing); or using Goffman’s words, “each phase of
the member’s daily activity is carried on in the immediate
company with a large batch of others, all whom are treated
alike and are required to do the same thing together” within
tightly prearranged daily schedule of activities imposed from
above which are designed to fulfill the institution’s perceived
goals (Goffman, 6). With such parallels to total institutions,
Foucault’s analysis of schooling becomes applicable; though
not without some qualification and criticism.
Foucault’s new form of domination exerted control over
the body through discipline in its arrangement and control
over groups of people — it was becoming less about external
punishment and more about internal improvement and reg-
ulation (Deacon, 2005a). This new kind of power is ‘produc-
tive’ in that it brings about a new kind of subject and the
normative behaviors that are shaped by discipline (Taylor,
1986, p.75). Foucault’s (1977) system of disciplinary power
arranged and controlled people through mechanisms of
power such as those suggested in the idea of panopticism.
The governing systems of society make the person a subject
through rules and standards in institutions, defining people
by these ‘universal norms’ where “the disciplines character-
ize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around
a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another
and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate” (Foucault, 1977,
p.223). All of this m ust be maintained under an effective
technique for correction and that is efficiently achieved
through the principle of panopticism in the constant gaze of
society. As Foucault writes, “There is no need for arms,
physical violence, material constraints. J u st a gaze. An in‫־‬
specting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight
will end by interiorizing to the point that he is his own
overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance
over, and against, himself’ (1972, p. 155).
Normalizing Judgment and the Creation of
Knowledge on Subjects
The concept of having knowledge of each inmate was also
integral to careful observation in the prison. In discussing

58 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

this idea of knowing the inmate, Foucault states that prison
officials should know the delinquent’s crime and cause of
the crime through an understanding of ‘social position and
upbringing* (1977, p.252). The example of the prison also
examines the idea of possessing knowledge of each prisoner
and his/her background. Schools also gather knowledge on
their subjects.
For the school, a vast amount of documentation can be
kept on each student including report cards, test scores and
biographical knowledge and behavioral assessment and/or
judgment by past teachers (assessments by past counselors,
psychologists, doctors, and so on can also be included in
the student’s file). This information can serve to help the
teacher in planning and refining discipline for the individual
student, but it can also help in the “creation of a norm ”
(Devine-Eller, 2004, p. 17). Students can be compared to a
set of standards to ensure that they are meeting these mile-
stones required for each level. For Foucault, the “power of
normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by
making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to
fix specialties and to render the differences useful by fitting
them one to another” (1977, p. 184).
Within his discussion of normalizing judgment, Foucault
notes that all disciplinary systems function with a small pe-
nal mechanism in place (p. 177). For any person to make the
slightest deviation from the correct behaviors established,
they could be subject to a micro-penalty. In the school,
workplace and/or army, the micro-penalty could be enacted
for deviations from “time (lateness, absences, interruptions
of tasks), of activity (inattention, negligence, lack of zeal), of
behavior (impoliteness, disobedience), of speech (idle chat-
ter, insolence), of the body (‘incorrect’ attitudes, irregular
gestures, lack of cleanliness), of sexuality (impurity, inde-
cency)” (p. 178). The punishment for these offences would be
more subtle, such as humiliation or minor deprivation.
In the school, one of the first things that students learn,
and more specifically are trained in, is that certain activities
and behaviors are only appropriate for certain times and
settings. The day is regimented to activities at specific times
and the body has to be trained with detailed responses for
that activity. Kindergarten is an example of this, as the first
month (and even longer sometimes) is spent teaching the
children how to get into proper lines and move from place to

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 59

place collectively and quietly. Students are taught the rules
of the classroom and school. They are instructed in when to
speak, to raise their hands, and to wait their turn. This
training is done repetitively until the students understand
how to behave and the intended result is to create “a body
that is docile and respectful, that shows deference to author-
ity, and that can sit for a full school day on a hard seat”
(Devine-Eller, 2004, p.5).
One example that Foucault gives for the detail in which
training m ust occur is the art of handwriting (p. 152). In or-
der to have acceptable handwriting, students m ust efficiently
learn to maneuver their body to sit properly and hold the
pencil correctly. Making letters on the page and applying the
right amount of pressure to do so, all of this required prac-
tice and drill for students. What then would be the mi-
cro-penalty for incorrect or sloppy handwriting? Perhaps
writing lines and repetitive drilling until the student per-
formed the task correctly would be one response. Another
idea would be the concept of reward — students with excel-
lent handwriting might receive a sticker or verbal praise
from the teacher that would make him/her stand out from
the rest of the class. With this in mind, students can be
ranked according to their skill so if a student was behind
the others in this aspect of schooling, he/she might work
harder to ‘catch-up’ to the others. Therefore discipline,
along with the use of the micro-penalty, “made the educa-
tional space function like a learning machine, but also as a
machine for supervising, hierarchizing, rewarding”
(Foucault, 1977, p. 147).
Established rules and understood norm s are essential to
disciplinary power for they specifically outline what teachers
expect from students and there may be micro-penalties for
deviations from the rules. For Foucault (1977), behavior
falls within a spectrum of positive and negative, “good and
bad marks, good and bad points”, similar to that used in the
penal system (p. 180). As a result, this measure of the posi-
tive and negative aides discipline in hierarchizing skills and
behaviors but also in rewarding and punishing when neces-
sary. Education is essential in teaching students about
norms — norms about behavior, attitudes, and knowledge
(Gore, 1998). Olssen (2006) states that schools, among
other institutions, are essential for maintaining the norm
and even in constructing what it means to be normal —

60 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

among other institutions, they observe, diagnose and correct
the abnormal (p.29). Foucault sees normalizing power not
just in the prison, but all institutions: “we are in the society
of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge,
the ‘social-worker’judge; it is on them that the universal
reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wher-
ever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his
gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements”
(1977, p. 304).
The Examination and the Hierarchizing of
Skills
This idea of hierarchizing skills is evident in the notion of
the “examination”, which Foucault discusses in detail. The
examination combines both surveillance and normalizing
judgment for it “establishes over individuals a visibility
through which one differentiates them and judges them”
(Foucault, 1977, p. 184). Traditionally, the idea of the exam-
!nation is the final test for students to display what they
know, what they have learned and that they have learned it
correctly. The power relations in discipline are inherent in
the examination for it requires visibility to record their
knowledge and then it further ranks them according to their
skill. The examination also becomes a part of the student’s
records and increases the institution’s knowledge of the stu-
dent even further. The examination is, therefore, “at the
centre of the procedures that constitute the individual as
effect and object of power, as effect and object of knowledge”
(Foucault, 1977, p. 192).
The examination makes it possible for a teacher to simul-
taneously evaluate each student individually while at the
same time being able to compare them to the rest of the
class — making it “possible both to measure and to judge”
(Foucault, 1977, p. 186). The way that university examina-
tions are conducted is a good example of the information
that is generated in an exam. First, the examination requires
a certain amount of knowledge of the subjects and docu-
mentation prior to the exam. For example, certain students
may need accommodations made for their exam such as ex-
tended time or the use of a computer to type out answers.
Second, when the exam begins student must present their
student identification cards. If a student does not have that

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 61

card ,with him/her, then a form has to be filled out with an
alternate way of identifying the student (i.e. driver’s license).
Also, students m ust sign a form that indicates where they
were sitting during the exam. Third, during the exam if there
is any suspicion of misconduct (i.e., cheating) then a form
must be filled out to report the incident. With this comes the
constant gaze of the professor and the proctors who are
moving up and down the rows ensuring there are no misde‫־‬
meanors. Fourth, the examination itself is the final docu-
ment in the process, and through the instructor’s grading,
students are further differentiated by letter grades (i.e., A, B,
C and so on). Students, therefore, are individual cases that
are constituted “as effect and object of power, as effect and
object of knowledge” (Foucault, 1977, p. 192).
Through the example of the school, one can see that
power relations are evident in Foucault’s discussion of disci-
pline. Disciplinary power is effective when it conducts itself
through training using simple techniques such as hierarchal
observation, normalizing judgment and their combination.
As Foucault states, disciplinary power’s function is to train
rather than to “select and levy; or, no doubt, to train in or-
der to levy and select all the more” as is seen in the idea of
the micro-penalty and the ranking of subjects using exami-
nations (p. 170). Discipline creates ‘docile bodies’, ideal for
the workplace and school classrooms but this discipline co-
mes about without excessive force through careful observa-
tion, and molding of the bodies into the correct for through
this observation. “Discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the
specific technique of a power that regards individuals both
as objects and as instruments of its exercise” (Foucault,
1977, p .170).
The Development of Appropriate Subjects and
the Categorization of those Subjects
In the function of training and disciplining students of
the norms of society, schools transform students into appro-
priate and useful subjects. For Foucault (1994), in Subject
and Power, there are two meanings of the word ‘subject’: (1)
“subject to someone else by control and dependence”; and
(2) “tied to his/her own identity by a conscience/self-knowl-
edge” (p.331). For Foucault (1994), both meanings suggest a
“form of power that subjugates and makes subject to” (p.

62 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

331). Consequently, it is through the practice of discipline
that one makes him/herself a subject (Wain, 1996; O’Farrell,
2005). Thus the term power, as O’Farrell (2005) states, “re-
fers to sets of relations that exist between individuals, or
that are strategically deployed by groups of individuals. In-
stitutions and governments are simply the ossification of
highly complex sets of power relations which exist at every
level of the social body” (p.99).
Memorization and rote learning of facts and proper be-
haviors still dominate education and in this way discipline
and training may be an essential outcome of education,
more so than critical thinking, cooperative work, etc. In this
idea, the skills and norms taught in education transfer well
into the attributes needed for an ideal workforce. The con-
cepts of accountability, working within a timetable, obser-
vanee and examination, being rewarded or penalized for
good work, in addition to basic skills such as arithmetic all
carry over into the workplace; as well as society in their
roles as citizens within a democracy.
Within this idea of creating subjects is the necessity of the
categorization of those subjects. Students are sorted based
on their age and their mastery of certain skills. For example,
a student who is five enters kindergarten. Generally, once
that student m asters the skills of kindergarten — at the end
of the year — then he/she gets promoted to grade one. How-
ever, not all students are able to master the skills at the
same time and this is where the subjects are differentiated
and divided further into sections (such as remediation
classes and gifted classes). This differentiation allows for
“closer supervision and more individualized discipline of
each student” (Devine-Eller, 2004, p.9). This individualiza-
tion starts right at the beginning of a child’s education and
continues on throughout their schooling experience.
Foucault (1977) uses the example of the military in his anal-
ysis of differentiation which allows subjects to be arranged
into “divisible segments”, similar to military divisions
(p. 163). Schools, therefore, are instrumental in sorting
students (i.e., the division in high school courses between
higher and lower level classes).
Foucault thus makes us reflect on education as a whole
and that it is not simply pedagogical principals and practice
but also the architecture and organization of the school that
m ust be considered in comprehending the notion of subjec­

Fall 2012 Διδασκαλία 63

tivity (Olssen, 2006). “And rather than representing the
school simply as an agency of reproduction, Foucault sees it
as a form of disciplinary and bureaucratic governance that
both reproduces and constitutes identity” (Olssen, 2006,
p. 184). Students, in this sense, are subjects separated as a
group needing to be managed; they are excluded from the
rest of society for a period in order to “better embroil them
in or ‘attach’ them to relations of power and knowledge”
(Deacon, 2006a, p. 180). In talking about educational institu-
tions, Foucault (1971) states in an interview with J. K. Si-
mon that this exclusion is “underscored by the organization
around the student” (p. 193) and thus is “neutralized by and
for society, rendered safe, ineffective, socially and politically
castrated” (p. 194). Foucault (1971) asserts further that the
goals of education are to put students out of ‘circulation’ and
to further function as an instrum ent of ‘integration’ where
proper modes of behavior and societal values are learned
(p.194).
Conclusion
As educators committed to state sponsored universal ed-
ucation, including an educational curriculum designed to
produce good citizens and democratic values, we admit that
there are significant limitations and criticisms to any
Foucaultian analysis. A Foucaultian analysis of education is
not complete in several ways. First, the sense that Foucault
himself did not give a full account of his analysis of educa-
tion, as stated in the introduction, means that his thoughts
on education are somewhat disconnected and undeveloped.
Secondly, and perhaps because of the first point, one cannot
see any positive assessment of institutionalized education in
his writings and interviews. The issue, however, is not how
students who succeed within an institutionalized system
that is designed to instill the very virtues that the state and
society deem necessary for success within that society actu-
ally become successful, but how institutional education as a
modern bureaucratic organ of the state operates to
normalize its products in particular ways that parallel other
total institutions of the state.
Third, education itself cannot be reduced completely to
discipline. Discipline is simply one approach that one can
take in looking at education (Deacon, 2006b). However, dis-

64 Διδασκαλία Fall 2012

cipline does serve to explain and examine many of the peda-
gogical techniques used in education and the power that is
applied to its subjects, which can include students, teach-
ers, parents, and so on. On the most part, in many ways in-
stitutionalized education does continue to develop in the
way that Foucault discussed — as a disciplinary institution.
While a more significant examination of this Foucauldian
theory in light of sociological field-work on evolving disci-
plinary procedures within current Western schools is
needed, in examining the concepts of surveillance, normaliz-
ing judgment, and the examination, one can see how educa-
tion becomes a mechanism for instilling discipline and
creating ‘docile bodies’ — perfect students, perfect workers
and perfect citizens; it is within the schooling system and
the use of discipline and training that “one is managing
others and teaching them to manage themselves” (Foucault,
1984, p.369)

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