Tina Bell
English 5870
21 April 2009
Commentary 7

I do not really understand what Michel Foucault is saying. Well, this is not exactly true. I think I understand a substantial portion of what he is saying, but I am not sure how this relates to our class. I will admit that I was desperately waiting for other students to post their commentaries. Contemplating others opinions might have helped me gleen a connection. But, to my dismay, it is 7:30 P.M. and no one has posted. Since this plan is not an option, I will attempt to explain what I think I know.

In part three of Michel Foucault’s book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault describes the measures taken during the seventeenth century to control the plague. He definitely highlights the supervisory process. Everyone was watched, all movements were monitored, identities were registered and people were catalogued. I suppose since the plague is ultimate disorder, it gave rise to a strict method of supervision or discipline. “It called for multiple separations, individualizing distributions, and organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and ramification of power” (3). It was a way to control society and separate the dangerous or abnormal. When Foucault says that this power is centered around the abnormal individual, “to brand him and alter him” (3), it brought to my mind the remedial writer. I wondered if our attempts to brand and alter these writers is a connection to Foucault’s demonstration of these powers.

Foucault continues on to show how this supervision became incorporated into the Panopticion. The Panopticion was not only used for observation, but also as a laboratory. “It could be used as a machine to carry out experiments, to alter behavior, to train or correct individuals” (5). Through the course of time Foucault believes that most (if not all) organizations including education have become a panopticion. Education could be considered a machine to experiment with varying methods of instruction. It definitely attempts to train individuals to the goal set forth by the institution. It, through it teaching methods, school and classroom organization, and disciplinary rules tries to alter behavior and change individuals. Throughout part three of Foucault’s work, I was unable to discern a tone. I am not clear as to whether he believes this is a positive or negative aspect. But, in the last line of this chapter, Foucault states that schools resemble prisons. I may be reading my own preconceptions into this line, but the word prison has a very negative connotation for me. Even as I see in my own mind connections between schools and prison, even though I believe the entire system of education needs an overhaul, I still find Foucault’s comparison frightening. I need to ponder this comparison more and anticipate hearing the views and interpretations of my colleagues.