Joel Manfredi

Journal Entry “Panopticon”

Dr. De Vries

English 5870

 

 

 

In reading Michel Foucault’s “Panopticism,” I get a strong sense of the type of discipline that most teachers are looking for in their classrooms.  It is, that type of discipline that becomes internal, an imposed sort of governance that the student will be responsible for without the teacher’s influence.  The influence from the teacher would be one that is of the perceived notion of constant observation at the head, or back, of the classroom.

In the classroom, the students will always outnumber the teacher, and therefore have a perceived advantage when it comes to some sort of power relation.  It becomes the job of the teacher to first neutralize that power, in a sense, and harness that power toward the students’ education, rather than as a notion that they will be able to control what happens in the classroom on a behavioral level.  An important aspect of teaching is not to disengage the student from learning, but rather to enhance the idea that learning can be collaborative in process.

The Panopticon model helps to even out the power structure in the classroom when it comes to the students by portraying that the student is always under constant supervision by someone (the teacher) who is judging them.  Foucault says, “It (panopticon) is an important mechanism, for it automatizes and disindividualizes power.”  So this model creates a level field of power between the subjects and again, internalizes their need to produce.  If someone constantly feels like they are being watched, then that person will more than likely behave in a way that does not conflict with what is expected of them.

Foucault goes on to say about this that, “He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power.”  In an educational mode, this takes away time that the teacher would have to deal with discipline problems in the classroom, and creates more time for learning.  Adam talked about this when he said that he sits at the back of the classroom during his quizzes so that he can monitor the students from out of their field of vision.  This gives the students the feeling of being watched without ever knowing if they are being watched or not.  He is implementing the same phenomena of the Panopticon, which is, as Foucault says, “The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.”

The Panopticon seems “easy” as Foucault states, but for such a long time there was no model for it.  He talks about how leper’s were quarantined and thus began the idea of segmenting areas of the population to deal with plagues.  It’s interesting that schools, hospitals, and prisons all resemble the same sort of concept and design when it comes to architecture.  But it makes sense because in all of those institutions, there are people that observe, and people being observed.