Defacing Power
As you're reading the book, feel free to ask questions and comment here. I'll post a couple of questions to get us started, but add your own. Remember, participating at least occasionally in these discussions is part of your grade.How does Hayward define power? Does this offer an improvement over Foucault's approach?
What does she hope to accomplish with her observations of 4th grade classrooms?
Is this a good method to better understand power? Why/why not?
What is Hayward's critique of "critical pedagogical theory"? Do you agree?
Does Hayward's book shed any new light on how to understand the relationship between freedom on the one hand and power on the other?
posted by djw @ 5:00 PM
18 Comments:
Hayward provides a more nuanced view of power than Foucault. Hayward basically finds herself in agreement with Foucault, but she does feel that his view constraining. Hayward’s treatment of her break with Foucault on pages 6 and 7 is somewhat confusing, but the basic idea seems to be that Foucault does not fully acknowledge the possibility of enabling power. Foucault sees social relations and ordering as having cost, constraining choice. Hayward argues that power expressed in these social relations and orderings may actually enable people to change these boundaries. This view is certainly more positive, and seems to allow for a more complex analysis of power than Foucault.
just a quick comment, I find it interesting that soo many social circumstances, such as parents, location of school, resources, background of teachers play sucha huge part in the issue of power! Hayward talks about "street values" and how the students at North End are taught these street values that influence their conduct and the values that they teach them at school..it influences the power dynamic! Makes me thinka bout my own elementary school, even though it was ages ago, and the teaching techniques that were more effective than others! Just wonder how the fair view teacher, monica segal, would do teaching at North End, and how would her teaching style change and would it be as effective?
I think by examining the different classroom enviroments and the enviroments outside the schools Hayward is trying to say that power comes in many different forms and one is not necessarily better then the other. At North End power is shown directly to the kids. For example, the teacher yelling at the kids to be quiet. The kids know exactly what they are supposed to do and the consequences if they don't do it. On the other hand, Fairview, the kids believe they are giving a choice and have the freedom to choose whether or not to be quiet. The kids still quiet down when the teacher asks, so it is still power, but the power is much more hidden. Hayward argues that this is a different type of power then at North End and it creates a different kind of person. Neither one is better then the other.
For me Hayward shed new light on Power and Freedom going hand in hand. By that I mean the more freedom you have the more power you have, and vis versa. For example the president of the United States has more power than I do giving him more power to do as he pleases. Where I as just a normal citizen cannot do everything I please. In the case of North End and Fairview this is evident as well. The fact that Fairview children experiance more freedom in choice and expression gives them more power not only in the class room setting, but in the outside world as well. At an early age they learn skills for key jobs in society and can understand themselves as well as their community and the world around them. Fairview children are learning skills for the world of different possibilities that await them while North End children are preparing for their environment in which they live in a sence to obey higher forms of power like the children from fairview.
While reading Hayward, I noticed the relationship between power and freedom. She observed two different classrooms with different views of power and freedom. At Fairview, the children have the freedom to choose and express their ideas. Power is not openly expressed in the classroom as it is in North End. In North End, the teacher shows power by yelling at the children to be quiet. The North End students also have less freedom of choice and expression compared to the Fairview kids.
I was quite interested in the way Hayward discussed the visible differences in power and freedom. I think that for her, power is ever prevalent and freedom is never fully realized by the students of the 4th grade classrooms. Also, I would argue that her critique of these classrooms is quite Foucauldian because of the way she sees students in the particular classrooms adhering to a system that is so entrenched that the students begin to police themselves. For Foucault, this is his main theory. He believes that the individual is created by society and that power will be internalized as is established by that particular society. So, he would argue that since the students frequently reprimand others for misbehaving, they are in fact internalizing the power of the system because this power has become so prevalent and omniprescent that they internalize it without even knowing they are doing so. And, they internalize the power because society has established norms by which certain behaviors are acceptable, which in turn limits freedoms since even though the students theoretically could act in any given way, they will choose to act in conformity because they have internalized the power of the correct social norm.
Hayward stated that power ought to be thought of as a more diffuse quality and like Foucault, she mentioned that power establesh the normal for us. Hayward's study of two schools, she is showing the way in which freedom for all students is restricted by authority figures and thus we can all see that the effects of power are everywhere.
Hayward's criticism of critical pedagogical theory is that this set of techniques purports to give more freedom to the students of Fair View than the "intellectual hegemon" approach applied to the classrooms at North End. Hayward argues that the ways the Fair View teachers shape the discussion topics and answers is exercising power on the way students think, without giving students the impression that they are being controlled or manipulated in some way. Thus, critical pedagogical theory is not as "free" as proponents of the teaching style suggest.
Hayward provides a perfect example for Foucault's version of power as a creative force and a suppressive force. The fourth grade classes exemplified the relation of power through creating and restricting freedoms. Fairview used a creative/constructive power that forced the students to create their own rules thus making them accountable to them. The rules would also have input from the teacher so the students would not have complete control however but overall the students thought they had the power. In this case allowing access to power was a way of maintaining control with less effort. North End on the other hand used a restrictive power on the students. The students then did not have the power to shape their own rules and thus had more reason to criticise their teachers and staff. Since no power was provided the students do not have a reason to maintain the current structure of power and as a result rebelled against the system.
I think that Hayward provides us with a great understanding of her view of how power is at work both covertly and overtly in the two schools. The most interesting part to me of this is how the Fairview school appears to be so free, yet at the same time is perhaps less so free for its students than the Northend one. The teachers in both schools simply use different power techniques to shape the borders of the childrens behavior, with/without their knowledge. I think that this is a very powerful persepective, considering that the entire United States is built upon these types of power dynamics, ones where power and freedom are perceived and yet are controlled.
When reading the two cases of teaching in Fairview and North End, Hayward does an excellent job in differentiating how power can be used differently. Power can be external, as displayed within the North End school by the teachers exerting power directly over the students, or power can be more internal, as displayed through the Fariview school where the students are internally deciding how to behave in accordance to the demands of the school. Though the exercises of poewr between the two schools are different, neither one can be siad to be better than the other due to the fact that both are forms of power, just one being that form of repression and the other being that of prductivity (in which could be described b Foucault).
It is also interesting to point out the fact that though the students of Fairview may be perceived as having more power because they have more say and inflence within the system, they are not as free as one may think because the teachers have a certain design for their agenda and they implement their agenda in a way that make the students think that they are making their own decisions, when in fact their decsions are maniplated by the teachers to be a certain type of behavior, in order to be in accordance to the teachers rules and procedures.
I think that Hayward has an interesting view in regards to pedagogy although i do not agree with her. She believes that the children at north end are better equipped than the children at Fairview to identify and reject power. I think that the children at Fairview are given more skills to identify power and are given more opportunities to analyze and refute power. Because they are not able to fully identify the subtle power relations between the teacher and student does not mean that they will not be able to further develop and later in life be able to identify similar power relations. They are in the fourth grade and yet they have a substantial amount of opportunity, and encouragement to discredit forms of power. If this is looked at as an isolated learning experience than I would agree with Hayward that they would be unsuited to identify manipulative and coercive forms of power, however, as the children develop and come into contact with various forms of power they will be able to recognize power in its various "faces" and they will be able to comply, reject or compromise the power relations using the tools they learned in elementary school.
I can't help to think of Hayward’s observation of these two different schools for two different social classes - an urban and suburban school - resembles to Marx's theory. The proletarian are students at North End, while the bourgeois are attending Fairview. Students in Fairview are able to create their environment by establishing their own rules, yet with the teacher inputs. These students are giving the opportunity to feel they have the power; therefore having more freedom. On the other hand, the students in North End do not have the same amount of power and freedom as the student in Fairview. Power over is being exercised over them by the teachers. One would say the student in Fairview does not have complete power because the teacher still has control and its power is hidden, which is true. However, I see the teachers as a government body that is there to govern their students. In a way, the teacher treats their children in Fairview more leniently to the point they are able to create their own set of rules, similar to how the laws can be manipulated into the bourgeois’ interest. The bourgeois may be able to create certain laws that benifits them giving them more freedom and power than the proletarians; however, it doesn't mean they have complete power, just as the children in Fairview. The teacher or the government still have the power. The children in North End are enforce by rules that have been created by their teachers. This is similar to the proletarians being governen by set of rules that have been established by the government. Unlike the bourgeois, their interests are not likely to be considered by the government. Just as Marx says, true social problem is social class. True social power is social class.
i think it is also interesting to note the relationship between the Foucauldian ideals that power is everywhere and that it is not an institution to exemplify the attitudes of the students at both schools. It shows how power does not just come from the governing body of the school, but moreso from the socio-economic factors and life when they are outside of the school that influence their ideals when they are at school. At Fair View, they are from wealthier families where "success" is held at a much higher societal value, thus failure in school brings them down so much more than at North End, where Hayward noticed students were not as disappointed with a bad grade. This is because power can not be just contained within the classroom, but that power is everywhere and network of forces and no situation can completely isolate power.
Foucault in refuting the repressive hypothosis says that power is not something that is always negative and repressive. I think that Hayward demonstrates this in her analysis of the two fourth grade classrooms. Yes, in the Northend classroom it appears that power is repressive and structure in a power over manner, however, we see a contrasting form of power in the Fairview classroom. Here we see that the children are led to believe that they have power when in fact the teacher is in a much greater position of power where she is able to manipulate how they respond and behave while allowing the students to believe they have power. I think that this is a greater form control and power because potentially the children could gain such a respect for the teacher that she could manipulate them into doing something teachers at the Northend would never get away with. In a sense, the Fairview teacher has her children wrapped around her finger.
I also think that this shows a possible lack of freedom in the Fairview school. If you think you have freedom but are still doing what the power structure wants you do do, what freedom do you have. And how do you know you have freedom unless you are able to do something the power does not want you to do.
I think this argument is interesting because in my opinion the Fairview students have less power than the Northend kids. While the Northend kids exist in a "society" where they are told directly what to do, they decide to obey in order to resist needless punishment. On the other hand, the fairview students are manipulated into a system where they believe that they have the most power over their course of action but in fact, the system in which they are placed seems to be meticulously planned so that they are given this misconception. They are doing exactly what the teacher wants, without any exertion of power (visably) by the teacher. The northend kids know that they are under a certain degree of control by the teachers, while the fairview kids do not even realize that they are under control by their teachers. This argument reminds me of The Matrix and the position that the "freed" characters ultimately had to chose.
Hayward defines power as being something that both shapes and limits one's field of action. This definition is similiar to Isaac's because it makes power both a constraint and a resource. This is an improvement on Foucault's definition because with Hayward's defiinition one is able to enable power by navigating successfully through power, while this is not possible with Foucault's view.
Hayward hopes to accomplish a few things with her observations of the fourth grade classroom. First of all she wants to point out that Fairview is not more empowering than North End. Fairview just uses a more subtle technique to accomplish its goals. However, because Hayward also looks at how power enables people, she thinks it is important to look at how power creates some liberty and freedom in the classrooms at Fairview while it does not do that in North End. While the students at Fairview are not completely free, they can learn that they are participants in the system. This is something that does not take place at North End, which is a big difference in between the two schools.
Hayward difine power in a more specific way whereas Foucault's approach seems bit more broader and general. Hayward's observations on 4th grade classroms are more specific and more focused view on power and this gives more diverse views. Critical pedagogical theory asserts how different social settings and contexts shape different power structures, therefore freedom shaped by power structure is evident.
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