It has long been established that schools serve as a form of social indoctrination for the nation’s youth. Through the use of a hidden curriculum, children are made to maintain the status quo, with the wealthiest children being prepped for executive professional careers and the poorest children being placed in a school-to-prison pipeline. This method of maintained oppression and reproduction of inequalities renders it nearly impossible to break the system. As Foucault discusses in Discipline and Punish, this institutional power has led to self-regulatory behavior. Children in these schools follow the rules and expected behavior to avoid punishment. In our current educational system, however, this is taken one step further.
Teachers in the public school system also follow the status quo and regulate themselves without realizing that they are doing so. They teach students in a way that reproduces inequalities as wealthy children are taught using creativity and critical thinking while poor children are taught using rote memorization. Teachers regulate themselves to avoid the punishment of being laid off so that “less radical” educators may take their place. I believe that one of the only ways of combatting this problem is through using Foucault’s theory of controlling docile bodies and changing the goal from maintaining the status quo to up-ending it completely. Through the teaching of subtle insubordination, children can be taught to undo the harm being done to them, in a manner of speaking.
The teaching of subtle insubordination is as simple as it sounds. While teaching standard material in an ordinary classroom in any public school setting, a teacher would subtly instruct students to question the world around them. Students would be taught to never accept information at face-value; to analyze sources of knowledge and to [politely] question authority. Props can be used--things like a clock that tells the time perfectly but runs backwards or a completely accurate world map that shows the upside-down version of a traditional map. These items show students that there exists more than one worldview and that people can see an object in two completely different ways, concluding two completely different things with both being 100% correct. Teachers can also teach subtle insubordination by having students point out all the parts of a history or social studies book that are more opinion than fact. This would include information on the founding of the United States (genocide vs discovery) or information on other cultures around the world and the wording of these different passages (do Christians pray in churches while other religions observe spiritual rituals in exotic temples?). In this way, students are taught to analyze the discrepancies in pieces of information and absorb knowledge with a critical eye.
In teaching subtle insubordination, teachers can undo the harm done by the already institutionalized hidden curriculum. Students can learn to question the world around them instead of merely accepting the control held over them by the school system. Instead of being used to maintain the status quo, the docile bodies of the classroom may be used to bring about a more just society. On a larger scale, the reproduction of inequality may come to an end through the use of Foucault’s theories of control for societal benefit rather than harm.