The Eyes Of Power

This dissertation will solve Paulo Freire's unanswered problem--how does theeducational oppression become possible--by forming the research conception, theclass power, and explaining the question how the power puts into effect in the class field. This research adopts the specialized power field, that is, the class as the observant unit, and the power operation as the observant perspective. Firstly the genealogical research to the class power is given to clarify the evolved process of the class discipline. Secondly the ethnographic investigation is shown to present the thick description to the class discipline. Lastly the profoundly extensive sociological consideration is granted to reveal the power strategy of the modern class discipline.In the ancient, the individual suffers the universal punishment, therefore, the manifestation of the education is the absolute repression, penalty as well as enslavement to the person, no matter whether in China or in the West. As the threeteaching methods--the seminar, the laboratory, the class--has made gradualprogress, the physical punishment like lash had faded out of the education by degrees and the new practical methods of education have set up, which mainly focus on three aspects: the examination implemented strictly and regularly, the exam result assessed and registered by marks, the work of writing done continuously(the writing work operated by the students themselves along with those around them). As the three kinds of practical methods integrate with the classroom, the power the modern class discipline the institution turns up.In the light of the ethnographic research, the students are under surveillance incessantly and ubiquitously in the class, the power like the capillary vessel disciplines the individual, and the class discipline produces the disciplined student. The reason why the class discipline can produce such an effect principally attributes to some dominated art: the unity caused by the distribution methods of the classroom space, the organism shaped by the coding of the activity, the creativeness constructedby the accumulation of the time, the conformity exerted by the arrangement of the individual. Through the manipulation of the above mechanisms, different kinds of power begin to compose elaborately and the class disciplining the society comes into being.The emergence of this power effect mainly owes to two discipline means: classified and generalized. The classified is to select the individual so as to enable them to be socialized, including the hierarchical observation, the normalizing judgments and the examination; the generalized is to improve the teaching structure to make the educate being watched without the slightest efforts, the outstanding example of which is the panopticism space of the classroom decoration.The basic idea this paper tries to express is: the class power is permeated into every corner of the classroom, ranging from space to time, and the student, as an educatee, is paid close attention by the normalizing gaze(the eyes of power), in the state of the oppressed and being docile. This oppression is not only from the teacher, but even more from the restriction the punishment and the regulation impose. This restriction causes every student to become the inspected as well as the inspector, which assures the oppression mechanism to function normally.