Education moved from master/apprentice to “a learning machine, but also a machine for supervising, hierarchizing, rewarding” (147).
Foucault discusses how discipline makes docile bodies; this discipline exists in institutions ranging from the military to schools. Docility “joins the analysable body to the manipulatable body. A body is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved” (136). Docility increases the aptitude of the body while simultaneously increasing the domination over the body (138). The discipline associates the body with four characteristics: “it is cellular (by the play of spatial distribution), it is organic (by the coding of activities), it is genetic (by the accumulation of times), it is combinatory (by the composition of forces)” (167). Discipline encloses and partition bodies; typically, the space is “divided into as many sections as there are bodies or elements to be distributed” (143). Each individualized space becomes functional as each body is given a specific task, and this means the body is easily supervised and assessed. This also means that each body is interchangeable within the space/task (i.e. the specific body is unimportant). Discipline assigns the body to complete specific actions at specific times (each action takes precisely a given amount of time), meaning that gestures are used to their utmost efficiency. The day, then, is broken into specific segments of time (down to the minute or second) and each segment is given an action to be completed. In terms of education, discipline ranks bodies, deciding the kinds of knowledge that it has and places the body in a particular rank. Each chunk of knowledge is set linearly, and bodies progress through the chunks, given examinations at the completion of each chunk. Finally, each body must know its command given only a signal: “This carefully measured combination of forces requires a precise system of command. All the activity of the disciplined individual must be punctuated and sustained by injunctions whose efficacy rests on brevity and clarity; the order does not need to be explained or formulated; it must trigger off the required behaviour and that is enough” (166).
Education moved from master/apprentice to “a learning machine, but also a machine for supervising, hierarchizing, rewarding” (147).
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