An exploration into the function of socialisation and education with regard to youth development practice

2. Social institutions are often about
the control of deviance (or
difference) and getting individuals to
conform

3. Schools and Prisons ….
How are they the same?
How are they different?

5. Radical thinkers in education
0 Argue that the purpose of education (both formal and
informal) has more to do with the economic needs of
a society than the needs of the individual
0 Talk about education (particularly schools) as a places
of social reproduction and conformity
0 See classrooms as places in which following the rules
is more important than learning to think for yourself

7. Noam Chomsky
0 Is a professor at MIT
0 Has contributed to
psychological theory and to
critical theory
0 Critical of right wing politics
in the USA
0 Critical of the use of mass
media as an institution of
socialisation

8. Noam Chomsky
0 Power and consent
0 Work and freedom
0 Media
0 A tool of propaganda
0 A means to manufacture
consent
0 General critic of US society
(http://www.theblackvault.com/ftopicp-498957.html)

9. Chomsky and Education
0 Schools provide an “ideological” service geared at
conformity and socialization
0 Schools are “institutions of indoctrination” (Macedo,
2000, p.2)
0 This means that what matters in ‘education’ is
discipline not original, or innovative, thought
0 Universities are just another ‘cog’ in the system

10. “If you happen to be a little innovative, or
maybe you forgot to come to school one
day because you were reading a book or
something, that’s a tragedy, that’s a crime –
because you’re not supposed to think,
you’re supposed to obey, and just proceed
through the material in whatever way they
require”
(Chomsky, 2003, p.28)

12. “Actually, I happen to have been very lucky myself
and gone to an experimental-progressive school
[based on Dewey’s ideas] … children were
encouraged to challenge everything … you were
supposed to think things through for yourself … it
was quite a striking change when it ended and I
had to go to the city high school, which was the
pride of the city school system. It was the school
for academically-orientated kids … it was the
dumbest, most ridiculous place I’ve ever been …
For one thing, it was extremely competitive –
because that’s one of the best ways of controlling
people”
(Chomsky, 2003, p.29)

13. “Real education is about getting people
involved in thinking for themselves – and
that’s a tricky business to know how to do
well, but clearly it requires that whatever it
is you’re looking at has to somehow catch
people’s interest and make them want to
think, and make them want to pursue and
explore”
(Chomsky, 2003, p.27, author’s emphasis)

15. It’s no surprise that for some young
people school is like prison ….
But is it really?

16. Foucault – More than Coincidence
0The history of the modern
prison
0Two periods of time and two
forms of power
0Contemporary society is one
of panoptic power
0Pedagogical practices work
as a form of social control

17. 0 Societies can be examined and critiqued across four
dimensions:
1. How the society thinks about deviance or crime
2. How the society thinks about power
3. How the society thinks about the individual
4. How the society thinks about social control
Foucault’s Thesis

18. The Time of Punishment
0Crime was against the
sovereign
0The sovereign
exercised overt (visible
power) over society
0The individual was
subject to the sovereign
0Overt punishment

19. Braveheart – Scottish Hero and The
Hammer Against England
0 William Wallace and King
Edward 1 (Longshanks)
0 Committed the crime of
rebellion against the king
instead of being a passive
subject
0 This rebellion was
conceptualised as an attack
on the King himself
0 After capture Wallace’s body
was cut up into pieces and
sent across Scotland as a
message
http://www.magicdragon.com/Wallace/Brave2.html

20. The Time of Discipline
0 Modern society and
industrialisation
0 Crime is against society
(everyone)
0 This requires people to be
self-disciplined
0 The individual is
autonomous and self
governing
0 Covert/panoptic discipline
(docile bodies)

21. Panoptic Power
0 Power is invisible but everywhere … it flows
0 Because we don’t know when we are in the gaze of
power we are self-disciplined
0 Social institutions (school, prison, hospital, military
etc) are places of socialisation where self discipline is
enforced through architecture, techniques, and
practices

22. (http://www.bloganything.net/funny/funny-pic/low-cost-mobile-phone-camera)

23. Panoptic Power Enforces Self-
Discipline
It is Big Brother … Without a Big
Brother
Panoptic Arrangements Encourage
Self Discipline along with
Psychological and Pedagogical
Techniques

24. Self-Discipline and Docility
Through Practices
0 Enclosure
0 Control of activity
0 Observation
0 Normalizing judgements
0 Examination
0 Panoptic surveillance
0 Informed by psychology
0 Informed pedagogy

28. The Abnormal
The Normal
The Elite

30. The Experiment
0 German Movie/BBC Reality Show
0 Stanford Experiment
0 Guards and prisoners under camera surveillance
0 Looked at overt forms
of power but really
showed psychology as
a covert power
http://education.guardian.co.uk/hi
gher/research/story/0,9865,7149
27,00.html

31. 0 Deviance and crime
0 Are controlled through social institutions, knowledge,
and practices
0 Power
0 Is seen as something that is connected to the control
of crime and engrained in social practices reflective of
the society in which it is embedded
0 Individual
0 Currently defined through psychology and through
ideas of power as self discipline
0 Social control
0 The purpose of institutions, knowledge, and power
Foucault’s Dimensions

32. But is youth work connected to
this???

33. 0 Foucault would point to the
genealogy and argue that the
original purposes has traces
throughout history
0 In general, youth work is always
connected to our definitions of
youth, society, ‘progress’ and ….
Control (especially if it is seen as
needed by all society).
Just think …