The strict rows of desks, requiring one to sit for an extended period of time; the consistent bell schedule, demanding the movement from one area to another at a certain time everyday; the labor a student is required to complete to earn a grade, all these practices of a School brings to mind not a place of intellectual flourishment, but a prison. The spatial, physical School demonstrates itself under critical analysis as a prison with a facade of “education”.
Previous theorists have already argued the School as a prison, as a concentration of discipline with a collective of practices designed to subjugate. But these analyses have all fallen short with the Modern School.
The Modern School has more freedom than the Schools of the past, presumably due to the previous critiques of the prison-like school system, but the School, despite retaining some of the practices of the historical academy, such as the bell system and the desks, have become more free in other ways. The benevolent teacher allows the abolishment of stringent practices, the corporal punishment system has been eradicated, various regulations on dress have been alleviated. The School has developed itself into a different place than what was previously analyzed by sociological theorists.
But if that is the case, then why don’t we feel free? In fact, why do we feel confined and restricted if the School as an institution has become liberalized?
School has wormed its way into every single crevasse of our lives. It has manifested as Schoolloop in our phones, it appears in our email inboxes, our friends and family discuss School at home. The School has no longer become a fixed place we can escape. Even when the bell to our final class rings and we go home after a long, six-hour School day, our role as students doesn’t end.
The homework we have is piled on top of multiple opportunities to further our education, the internships, the volunteer hours, the extracurriculars. All of these amass upon the student to impose an obligation upon them, even when they have left the spatial “School”.
However, one can argue that the student can choose to simply not participate in these and to “take a break”. But can a student really stop striving? The incentive of High School manifests itself in the college admission process, where students compete against each other in an attempt to top each other, a competition with only a select few winners.
So how can a student stop doing the extracurriculars and the extra-credit work and the extraneous studying when the other student has done twice the extracurriculars, twice the studying, twice the work? Yet, the student must strive for that same spot in the college admissions--a spot that is only determined in the final year of their high school education. In a sense, a type of guilt is imposed upon the student. A guilt where it seems they have not done enough, but this guilt only exists because there is never a set “enough”. Why would one take three AP courses when they can take five and increase their chances of success?
There is no end in sight for these students, besides the final letter from the admissions office they all get at the end of three and a half years of constant anxiety over college admissions.
This is why, even if the teachers themselves have become more lenient, more accepting, the system itself will continue to function in much the same way. The limitless incentive will manifest itself regardless of whether or not the teacher is nice. The means to escape or reform such an invasive and lingering system, such as “School”, is not through a practice of individual educators, but through an overall critique of not only the power relations that compose the “School” but the power relations that compose the incentive system, the prioritization of values, and various other cultural and economic relations that culminate in the spiderwebs of social constructs we inhabit.
Previous theorists have already argued the School as a prison, as a concentration of discipline with a collective of practices designed to subjugate. But these analyses have all fallen short with the Modern School.
The Modern School has more freedom than the Schools of the past, presumably due to the previous critiques of the prison-like school system, but the School, despite retaining some of the practices of the historical academy, such as the bell system and the desks, have become more free in other ways. The benevolent teacher allows the abolishment of stringent practices, the corporal punishment system has been eradicated, various regulations on dress have been alleviated. The School has developed itself into a different place than what was previously analyzed by sociological theorists.
But if that is the case, then why don’t we feel free? In fact, why do we feel confined and restricted if the School as an institution has become liberalized?
School has wormed its way into every single crevasse of our lives. It has manifested as Schoolloop in our phones, it appears in our email inboxes, our friends and family discuss School at home. The School has no longer become a fixed place we can escape. Even when the bell to our final class rings and we go home after a long, six-hour School day, our role as students doesn’t end.
The homework we have is piled on top of multiple opportunities to further our education, the internships, the volunteer hours, the extracurriculars. All of these amass upon the student to impose an obligation upon them, even when they have left the spatial “School”.
However, one can argue that the student can choose to simply not participate in these and to “take a break”. But can a student really stop striving? The incentive of High School manifests itself in the college admission process, where students compete against each other in an attempt to top each other, a competition with only a select few winners.
So how can a student stop doing the extracurriculars and the extra-credit work and the extraneous studying when the other student has done twice the extracurriculars, twice the studying, twice the work? Yet, the student must strive for that same spot in the college admissions--a spot that is only determined in the final year of their high school education. In a sense, a type of guilt is imposed upon the student. A guilt where it seems they have not done enough, but this guilt only exists because there is never a set “enough”. Why would one take three AP courses when they can take five and increase their chances of success?
There is no end in sight for these students, besides the final letter from the admissions office they all get at the end of three and a half years of constant anxiety over college admissions.
This is why, even if the teachers themselves have become more lenient, more accepting, the system itself will continue to function in much the same way. The limitless incentive will manifest itself regardless of whether or not the teacher is nice. The means to escape or reform such an invasive and lingering system, such as “School”, is not through a practice of individual educators, but through an overall critique of not only the power relations that compose the “School” but the power relations that compose the incentive system, the prioritization of values, and various other cultural and economic relations that culminate in the spiderwebs of social constructs we inhabit.