From: "danceswithcarp" <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Re: Mass paranoia?
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2000 18:14:23 -0500



From: "Kelly Innes" <rain_yr_hand-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Mass paranoia?


> In Discipline and Punish, Foucault talks about how prisons and schools
(and
> factories) were all constructed from the same theoretical basis....  thus
> the similarity in end result.

True, but then Jeremy Bentham proposed his "reforms" for prisons and then
they got to be a better place...

Okay, that was a joke.  This isn't: I teach school in a U$ middle school and
two years ago I taught for a year in a maximum/medium-maximum/and
super-maximum security prison (There were actually 4 levels of security, I
forgot the minimum security, but I didn't teach  there).   There is a WIRLD
of difference between prisons and schools.   True, schools can and do have
repressive mechanisms, but they simply don't compare even to the methods of
a minimum security prison.  And the repression of the schools isn't the
fault of the teachers/administrators, but rather comes from the abdication
of responsibility by parents.

Who demands industrial education?  The teachers?  The principals?  The
custodial staff?  No, parents do, or else everyone would be home schooled.
So this is where to start the chain of reason.

And who demands the repression inherent in industrial education?  Parents.
"My GOD I heard there was going to be a gun at school today so what are you
doing about it I don't care whose toes you step on or whose rights are
violated I just want my loving little intelligent [insert gender of brat] to
come home safe and while you're at it how come my [insert brat's name] can't
understand what you're doing in your class it must be those other kids just
make them learn make them learn make them learn..."

Plus, it is an industry so a certain level of _repressive_ organization is
necessary;  It is simply impossible for a teacher to teach an industrial
school classroom without using Foucault and Bentham's methods.   I run a
fairly laidback classroom.  However my job is to teach social studies, not
run a day care facility for eMpTyVee-addled teen-agers, so I really don't
see the benefit in having students who aren't interested in learning up out
of their seats and wandering about the classroom.   We do a lot of
activities that allow this, but there are also times when it is not part of
the program.   If kids do not have to be in a certain place at a certain
time to do something simple like take roll, then it can not happen.

And let me guarantee you taking roll has very little to do with a teacher
wanting to make sure some dick-head teenager isn't skipping class.  Hell,
I'd *prefer* the dickheads skip my class.  However, if you want to see a
display of idiocy, watch a parent who comes for their kid unexpectedly and
that kid isn't in the class where they are supposed to be and the teacher
didn't notice:  People *sue* because of these things.

Same-same trench, or long coats and bookbags.  I've been to bat against our
administration on both counts and lost to the attorneys.  I could give a
crap what a kid wears but now that the school system knows Bad Things have
happened once with these items, to NOT act against them opens up an unending
possibilities of scenarios where the school loses.

So if you have a porblem with public education, take it up with your
parents.  If they *have* to wirk (WIRK?) out of economic necessity then take
it up with capitalism.   But to blame the schools for doing a bad job of
parenting because they have to use methods better suited for cattle-herding
is simply stupid.

Now while I'm on a role, Foucault, as I read him, simply *observed* the
principles he saw used in both the classroom and prison.  His observation
was that both used similar techniques and not that they had common ancestry.
Consider this, in capitalist society until the  mid-1800s childhood did not
exist nor did urban public schools on a large scale.  It was with the advent
of liberal reforms that children were first removed from the wirkplace and
allowed a childhood.  After this removal from the wirkplace--not completed
until the early 1900s--it then became evident there was nothing for children
to do; they were essentially undsupervised in the cities; orphaned in a
manner of speaking, for 110-12 hours a day.  Public schools were the answer
to the porblem and they are modeled more after the orphanages of the era
than any connection to incarceration.

As we know, orphanages were operated under ther principle of  "en loci
parentis" or some such latin wirdz I have long forgotten ("In absence of
parents.") whereby the state assumed the role of the parent.  Parents have
adapted to this system quite well and as I have already noted, now THEY are
the driving mechanism behind the continued "structuring" of schools with
repressive measure.

On the other hand, prisons have a common ancestor with Poor Houses or Work
Houses as in the Bridewell House operations of 17th century England.    At
one time the punishment for "crime" or perceived anti-social acts was found
in a fairly simple list:  Banishment, flogging, public humiliation, and
death.  Then around the end of the mercantile era and at the beginning of
the proto-capitalist stage with its "Tragedy of the Commons" and massive
migration to the cities, Elizabethan thinkers came to the conclusion there
were people who were legitimately poor, and others who were slackers, or the
"worthy" and "unworthy" poor.   People who were legitimately poor were put
into the "Bridewell"-modeled "poor" or "wirk house" in order that they might
labor for their keep; labor to whatever extent they could.   People who
simply could not labor were involuntarily committed into the offshoot
"asylums."

On the other hand there were the seemingly able-bodied "non-legitimate poor"
and people who had failed (debtors) at maintaining themselves or their
families in the new economic structure and these people were _sentenced_ to
the wirkhouses; the same wirkhouses that housed the legitimate poor.
Someone noticed that both legitimate and non-legitimate poor were both
afforded the same fate and the system then bifurcated into two institutions:
the Poor House, and the "Debtors" or "Paupers House (Prison.)"   Then and
only then did society realize they had created an alternative to punishments
for "criminal" or anti-social behaviors and thusly the penal system of today
was born out of a perception that there were first economic class crimes.
The wird that best exemplifies this common ancestry and hystery of poverty,
criminality and prison is the wird "rehabilitate."  Look it up, it means
first and foremost:  "To make ready for employment."

Essentially this system is still in effect today in the U$ and in Europe the
pendulum swings to the liberalization of these policies and then to the
conservative approach.  You can see it in welfare policies, immigration
policies, and in class propagation/perpetuation policies:  We still
criminalize poverty, mental illness and non-productivity.

But back to my original point:  There is a wirld of difference between
prisons and schools and they do not have common ancestors, only *some*
common themes.

Any questions?   There will be a test on this material.


carp