Observing and Normalizing: Foucault, Discipline, and Inequality in Schooling

My purpose in this article is to show how Michel Foucault's notion of disciplinary technology can be employed to illuminate the production of inequalities in school. Toward this end, I review Foucault's notion of discipline, describe what he means by panopticism, and illustrate how the rudiments of the organization of schooling, many aspects of which people simply take for granted, play a part in the production of inequalities.