The Freedom of Education - Essay Example

The Freedom of Education The desire to create an ideal society with a perfect socio-politico-legal system, one in which people would always love and respect each other, has existed since the beginning of the time. Even today we still dream about the world where people would live in harmony with each other; there would be no place for jealousy and violence between people; where society is stable, and in which goods are plentiful and everyone is happy. According to Michel Foucault, in order to build such a “perfect” society, our mentality and way of thinking have to be changed to a certain level of consciousness. Foucault calls this concept of mental change “panopticism”. The main key of this concept is to build a mechanism which would be able to suppress and control people’s minds and thoughts in order to make all us feel happy. As a result of this concept, social institutions, such as schools, prisons, and hospitals, were created. In an essay called “The “Banking” Concept of Education” by Paulo Freire, the idea of “panopticism” is intruding into an educational process, where children are treated and educated as “robots”, where independent way of thinking is totally prohibited. In an ancient world, people were always thinking about the perfectly governed city which they called Utopia. This city of state could be primitive and simple, but at the same time one of perfect happiness and fulfillment. Today a perception of a perfect governed city was slightly changed. Michel Foucault, who was one of the world’s leading intellectuals, gives us his own point of view regarding a definition of Utopia. In order to make this world more positive and decent, “some bunch of people” should build a machine that would control and even change people’s ways of thinking, and once this creation is built, the evolution of thoughts completely depend on it (Foucault, M 210-213). According to Bentham’s point of view, that machine would be a perfect key in manipulating the educational training of people. He calls this creature Panopticon, which is the architectural figure, the purpose of which is to observe and control people from the side (Bentham 213-214). The main point of this structure is that the inmate must never know whether he is being looked at during any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so (Foucault 215). This perfect concept of control gives the opportunity to create a society where there are no crimes, violence, or child abuse; where all people are happy and love each other. The educational institution is one of the main fields of Panopticism. The film Brave New World by Peter Gallagher is one of the great examples that show the influence of the Panopticism and its negative consequences on the educational process. The idea of the film is very similar to Foucault’s and Bentham’s points of view. First of all, the action takes place in the future, in which a civilization is run by a small group of controllers, and where humans are genetically engineered and subdivided on classes, such as Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Gamma. In order to eliminate stress, all citizens are consuming the drug Soma (BNW, TV). The evolution of thought is the main key of this film. In this society, natural reproduction is prohibited and children are decanted and raised in Hatcheries and Conditioning Centers. In order to keep the Civilization idealized, all members of society are conditioned during childhood. There is no family, no mother or father, no stress, no feelings; all people are happy because they were hypnotized during early childhood. They are not afraid to die; the love does not exist because they consider it as selfishness. They cannot love each other and have kids, because everyone belongs to everyone. The educational institution in the film is one of the reasons why the society is stable and is perfectly controlled by just a small group of “Controllers”. At the very first step, the children are conditioned under a specific program that completely belongs to the “Controllers”. They have the ability to determine whether a child is smart, sick, or normal. One of the interesting facts is that books are prohibited by the law of the State (BNW TV). According to Michel Foucault, by hypnosis or conditioning, “anyone could learn anything; one would follow “the genealogy of every observable idea”; one could bring up different children according to different systems of thoughts, making certain children believe that two and two do not make four or that the moon is a cheese…” (Foucault, M. 219). Now, it becomes obvious that the Controllers have the ability to cultivate every single human being in the way they want him/her to be, because new citizens must be programmed as to fit tightly into rigidly defined social roles. In the book Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, the author explains to us the deep influence of brainwashing on the society. He insists that every individual has his breaking point, that if the central nervous system of dogs can be broken down, so can the central nervous system of political prisoners (Huxley 60-61). In the film, the conditioning of children is one of the processes that have the ability to force children to obey instructions or to make them believe things that are not true. The inception of this conditioning involved putting children into a hypnotic sleep and apprising them of a certain situation; once they awoke they would believe it, regardless of the validity. As a result, a much different population of people was able to be raised. The influence of the panopticism, according to Michel Foucault, can be applied into any of the socio-politico-legal institutions, such as prisons, schools, and hospitals. Paulo Freire, who was one of the most influential radical educators of our world, insists that our educational institution is under attack. He stands against propaganda of Panopticism in our educational institutions. In his essay “The “Banking” Concept of Education” he shows us the whole importance of “free education”. The main idea of Panopticism is to control people’s minds; Freire instead insists that the freedom of learning is one of the most important concepts of education that has the ability to make our society healthier and more human. Both “The “Banking” Concept” and “Panopticism” are trying to alter and influence children. The teacher is like a supervisor in a centre of the classroom, one that gives him an opportunity to observe performances without there being any imitations or copying, to map aptitudes, to detect “laziness and stubbornness” among the students ( Foucault. M 218). The students are not permitted to discuss or argue with the teacher. In the “Banking” concept, Freire wants to show us that the practice of teaching is very simple. According to his knowledge, a teacher’s most crucial skill is his or her ability to assist students’ struggles to gain control over the conditions of their lives, and this means helping them not only to know but “to know that they know”. He also insists that the relationship between a narrating subject (the teacher) and listening object (the student) should be as tied as possible (Freire. P 243-245). This relationship can never be found in the banking concept, because there the freedom of thought is prohibited. Under the banking concept, children have been taught that the teacher knows everything and that the students know nothing; the teacher talks and the students listen; the teacher disciplines and the students are disciplined, etc. All these evidences are showing us that the teacher has a total control over the students and that the ideas of panopticism are completely connected into the banking concept. According to Roger Paden, the film Brave New World and our world are very similar to each other. A “Reservation” in the film is very similar to our bad neighborhoods, where the criminal records are much bigger and longer than in the good one (Paden 216-225). In the article, the author also says that the possibility of escapement is also available for the citizens of the “Civilization”. We can see that in the film where Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne both are leaving the civilization in order to have a normal life, where people can cry, love, and feel not like a robot but like a human being. The only way to escape such an imitative world is to refuse the Soma, which makes the citizens an insensible and inhuman. The educational process in the film is so bizarre and primitive. Everyone designed a certain program which allows all people to be happy. At the beginning of the film we can see how babies are growing in bottles and the sleeping process when the children are hypnotized during as they sleep. In the school the students are listening very carefully to what the teacher says. According the film, the opinion of one person is not considered at all. The books are prohibited, so as a result, the students’ IQs are very limited. The only important thing for them is happiness and to have no feelings towards other people. Even today, the ideas of “Brave New World” and “Panopticism” are very common in our society. The “Banking” concept of education was mentioned in this paper as a perfect example of “Panopticism”. The main idea of the “Banking” concept is to hypnotize people and move them away from the truth. The evolution of thoughts is also a very important aspect of this idea. The students have no rights to develop their own thoughts and express them out. Same as in the movie, the students’ obligation and responsibility is to accept all information from the teacher, even if this information is inappropriate or invalid. According to Freire, only through communication can human life hold meaning, which the teacher has no right to think for the students or enforce them to think in the way he wants them to think (Freire 247). The banking concept also shows us that the idea of control is an issue for the education as well. A Board of Education is like a guard who has complete control over the educational process. It helps determine educational policy in a small regional area, such as a city, state, or province. As the “Panopticism”, the Board of Education is a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism. It is like a supervisor who controls all small facilities such as a local schools, colleges, or universities. Like in the film, a small group of World Controllers have the ability to observe and suppress any actions or disorders within society. The Board of Education creates its own rules which can help them to determine how strong or weak the students are. For instance, The Regents Exam has been created in order to see the skills and knowledge of the students; it is like an entrance examination. Every single student must complete a certain amount of regents before the graduation. The students who are not able to pass the exam will not be considered as good students. It is obvious that the idea of “Panopticism” is present in our education and has a negative influence on the students. According to Michel Foucault, the Board of Education can be compared to “Panopticon” because among schoolchildren, it is possible to observe performances without there being any imitation or copying, to observe children development as well (218). The education according to Freire is a freedom of communication between the students and the teacher; without communication there would never be a healthy educational process whose main task is to help the schoolchildren individually but not to force them to think and accept the information in the way the teacher wants them to think. It is wrong to think that the teacher is a person who knows everything and that the students are unknowledgeable. The education must begin with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction where teachers and students have equal power and equal opportunity to express their feelings, thoughts, desires, and knowledge. It is obvious that the teacher has more experience than the students do but the freedom of education is when the students who lack knowledge still has chance to show his point of view on the particular subject. The practice of placing individuals under observation is a key factor which defines the “Panopticism”. The examples of “Panopticism” are surrounding us almost in every social institution. The main target is to control and confuse people’s minds. As a result, this concept is joining our educational systems and trying to take control over the freedom of thought by creating, for instance, regents exams, by placing a grade average, etc. “The “Banking” Concept of Education” is a result of practicing of “Panopticism”. Read More