On the (counter-)normative spectrum of everyday school life: an analysis of the disciplinary events of a public school

Abstracts

O artigo ambiciona colocar em causa a proliferação discursiva contemporânea em torno das condutas do alunado tidas como indisciplinadas, situando-a, em diálogo com a conceituação foucaultiana, no interior de um quadro socio-histórico e institucional atravessado por demandas multiformes de governamento dos sujeitos escolares. Para tanto, o texto oferece primeiramente uma configuração preliminar da produção acadêmica brasileira sobre a temática disciplinar nas últimas três décadas, bem como problematiza os nortes teórico-metodológicos da investigação voltada ao âmbito (contra)normativo do cotidiano escolar. Em seguida, apresenta os resultados de uma investigação baseada nos registros das ocorrências disciplinares que tomaram lugar no ensino médio de uma escola pública na cidade de São Paulo, num intervalo de cinco anos (2003-2007). Por fim, opera algumas aproximações analíticas do problema, apontando que se as queixas disciplinares parecem ser, num primeiro momento, solidárias a uma espécie de esgarçadura do modus operandi escolar clássico, num segundo momento, elas passam a apontar para a irrupção de modos sutis de controle das condutas não apenas discentes, mas também dos profissionais, de modo consoante aos processos de governamentalização em ação na contemporaneidade.

disciplina; escolas públicas; regulamentação escolar

OTHERS ISSUES

On the (counter-)normative spectrum of everyday school life: an analysis of the disciplinary events of a public school

Julio Groppa Aquino; translated by Robert Dinham

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to question the present day proliferation of discourses related to undisciplined conduct of pupils in schools. Such propagation will be situated, within a foucaultian framework, against the backdrop of complex institutional and socio-historic realities constituted by multiple demands of government of the school subjects. It starts out with a preliminary overview of brazilian academic production concerning the disciplinary theme, and spanning over the last three decades. This leads to a problematization of the theoretical and methodological orientations of research regarding the (counter-)normative in everyday school life. Consequently, the results of a thorough investigation on disciplinary events occurring within a five year period (2003-2007) at a Sao Paulo public high school provide the empirical framework. Finally, the article proposes some analytical approaches to the problem at hand. Most notably, insisting on the fact that if the disciplinary complaints seem, at first, sympathetic to a kind of erosion of the classical modus operandi of schools, upon a second glance it becomes clear that they tend to constitute surfaces of emergence of subtle modes of control of both the teacher and student conducts, in tune with governmentalization processes acting in contemporary society.

Keywords: discipline; public schools; school rules

In Brazilian educational studies it was only during the 1990s that school discipline/indiscipline gained the status of a specific research theme. It should not be imagined, however, that disciplining did not engage the teaching imagination before then; see, for example, some of the historical references: Moraes (1922), Arbousse-Bastide (1944), Faria (1945), or Lima (1976). But it was at the end of the 1980s that Brazilian publications specifically devoted to it began circulating in a sporadic way.

With three surveys of the national bibliographic production (attached) available in books, articles in periodicals and dissertations/theses in the first case the inaugural work was the selection organized by Arlette D´Antola in 1989, entitled Disciplina na escola: autoridade versus autoritarismo [Discipline in school: authority vs. authoritarianism]. As for articles in periodicals, the main reference in the period dates from 1982 and was written by Carlos Eduardo Guimarães in the journal Didática, under the title "A disciplina no processo ensino-aprendizagem" [Discipline in the teaching-learning process]. With regard to dissertations the first work, defended at the Pontifical Catholic University (PUC) in Rio de Janeiro in 1979, is by Carlos Vasconcelos Farias, its title being Indisciplina escolar: conceitos e preconceitos [School indiscipline: concepts and prejudices].

On the whole, such surveys provide evidence, at the outset, of exponential growth in interest in the theme. In the case of the books (Appendix 1), 31 works were published between 1989 and 2009, 22 of them by Brazilian authors and 7 translations. The Portuguese production of the theme also has to be emphasized, which, although not included here, is sometimes referred to in national studies, particularly the work of Maria Teresa Estrela (1992). Among the books selected there is also production that is not strictly speaking considered to be academic, but that, because of its dissemination(having been referred to a few times) was included in our survey; such is the case of Tiba (1996), Antunes (2002) and Werneck (2005).

With regard to the profile of the works they can be generically subdivided between the majority that are practical and prescriptive in nature, a few that are analytical and a third hybrid tendency that aims to bring together the two previous types. There is also the case of some dissertations and theses that have been converted into books: Laterman (2000), Freller (2001), Rebelo (2002), Oliveira (2005), Ratto (2007) and Souza (2008).

Another distinctive characteristic of Brazilian bibliographic production is the absence of any conceptual approximation or of a more attuned dialogue between works. Multiplicity and dispersion are, therefore, the main marks of the approach to the theme, albeit with some occasional recurrences. The same can also be undoubtedly said about the articles, theses and dissertations.

Among the articles published in periodicals in the educational area (Appendix 2) 13 scattered references were recorded in the 1982 to 2009 period. Comparing this amount to the volume of books and theses/dissertations produced in the same period, what is very apparent is the low frequency of the theme in the academic literature that was examined. A different situation, however, is seen in the production of graduate work in Brazil between 1979 and 2006.

Preliminary analysis of the material in question reveals a broadening of the boundaries in the approach to the theme. Despite studies being concentrated on the educational perimeter (85 pieces of work out of 102); the theme became the center of attention in other fields of knowledge, such as psychology (9 pieces of work), linguistics (4), sociology (2), history (1), nursing (1) and social services (1).

As for the chronology, there were 26 pieces of work in two decades (1979-1999), while in the subsequent 7 years, between 2000 and 2006, there were 76 new studies, which represent three quarters of the total production. It was also in 2000 that the first two PhD theses on the theme were defended, both in the University of São Paulo, by Luiza M. Y. Camacho at the School of Education, and Cintia C. Freller at the Institute of Psychology.

With regard to the 38 institutions that were home to the research production, almost two thirds are public universities (24, in total), responsible for 70% of the overall production, the most prominent being the Paulista State University (Unesp) (12 pieces of work), the University of São Paulo (USP) (9) and Unicamp (5). Together, the three institutions accounted for a quarter of all the research. If we add to this amount the 11 theses defended at PUC-SP, the State of São Paulo is responsible for more than a third of the investigations.

Also, it is not part of our objectives to carry out a meta-analysis of previous studies, as Luiz Carlos Faria da Silva (1998) intends doing when he proposes classifying and producing a critique of the explanatory framework used in what he identifies (arbitrarily, it has to be said, according to all sorts of disparate textualities) as being the two groups to be found in investigations into the topic until then: studies of a psychological nature (especially those associated with the theoreticians of the movement known as The New School

For our part, we chose to look at the emergence of studies on the theme of discipline within a social, historical and institutional framework that is permeated by multiform demands for "governing", as Alfredo Veiga-Neto (2005) understands it, school existence, in such a way that these demands may be given new meaning, to the point where they become the occasion of interpellation of the very teaching tasks that incite them and never an expression of the theoretical and conceptual over determinations that are exogenous to them.

In order for it to be possible to operate a certain denaturalization of the normative spectrum in contemporary school practice, our working hypothesis, therefore, deals more with problematizing the discursive proliferation of student (in)discipline than recounting it. This is because this multiplying movement seems not just to reiterate, but also consecrate a strong demand for disciplining school lives that, from our point of view, is highly questionable.

In similar fashion to the conclusions arrived at by Ana Lúcia Silva Ratto, who carried out an extensive piece of investigative, Foucault-inspired work into the narratives in incident registers of the initial grades in a primary school, it is necessary to reiterate the ethical and political premiss that:

...if we assume the perspective that discipline and indiscipline are daily occurrences produced by the school, from the specific configurations acquired by power relations and by the type of logic that in each context institutes both, it is possible to denaturalize them and remove them from an inevitability dimension (2007, p. 256).

If the intention is to examine school normativity and its analytical complexity it will be necessary to bear in mind that the eagerness of the period in disciplining students, not only promotes an anticipated discredit in relation to childhood and youth, but also obliterates the principle that the pedagogical work may well put aside crushing the attitudes of the newest students in favor of the cultivating their intellectual skills. As a result, we refrain ourselves from assuming that one would be a sine qua non condition of the other's existence. Instead, it is possible to conceive that between the normative and the intellectual dimensions, there isn't a relationship neither of interdependence nor of over-determination. We examine this issue by way of an example.

The results of an expressive study carried out by Carnoy, Gove & Marshall (2003),

Sometimes Brazilian classrooms were fairly chaotic, particularly when compared with the groups in Chilean private schools and Cuban schools. Brazilian classrooms were also characterized as having a large degree of student freedom, which was evident in the way in which students approached the teacher physically, or even interrupted her to ask questions (Carnoy, Gove, Marshall, 2003, p. 18).

In order to examine possible reasons for this discrepancy with the other two countries, during the study the researchers raise some suppositions, but without managing to prove them, this not being among the foremost objectives of the investigation. Discipline levels might be related to teaching performance, to the cultural background of the student, to the size of the class, to the age band of the students, to family support, to nutritional quality or finally, to permissiveness in daily teaching relationships. At the end of the text the authors reveal the criteria they used for evaluating the aforementioned level of discipline in the classroom. An observation instrument was used that varied according to the following categories:

Low (lots of children talking out of turn, not keeping quiet when asked to by the teacher, getting up and walking around the classroom and playing around generally, with the teacher repeatedly asking them to go back to their places and to keep quiet, etc.).

Moderate (some children talking out of turn or walking around the classroom, with the teacher not always being immediately obeyed).

Good (few cases of children talking, playing, walking around the classroom, and quickly obeying the teacher when she asks them to stop).

High (children are very quiet, or discussions are disciplined and the teacher does not need to ask for silence etc.). (p 31, in italics, our emphasis)

As can be immediately deduced the notion of discipline used in the study agrees entirely with a canonical understanding of school uses and customs. School discipline refers to a virtuous harmony between teacher and student steps, resulting in temperance, concord and obedience; in short, order. It is therefore assumed that every practice that deviates from such a pattern would tend to be interpreted as something to be combatted or suppressed.

As far as concerns judging teaching duties (which is inherent to any type of investigation into a certain "reality", regardless of the hype of interpretation of the more or less "scientific" content of the events under examination) the study of Carnoy, Gove & Marshall seems to reiterate a type of school doxa that is as generalist as it is reductionist, according to which the quality of school work, allied to the idea of progress, is directly proportional to a strict ordering of behavior in the classroom. Discipline, therefore, means a competence to be cultivated by professionals, which in the case of the Cubans is already in a well-developed state, in the case of the Chileans, under development, depending on the case, and for Brazilians is incipient.

Now, beyond the significant differences that exist between disparate realties (certainly predictable, even if one is dealing with school units in the same country), research of the scope of that of Carnoy, Gove & Marshall (2003) seems to remain prisoner of an argument trap, when what is really in discussion is the (contra)normative spectrum of daily school life: its results manage to describe general scenarios but fail to grasp its generative movements, much less problematize them.

This gives rise to the fact that any analytical comparison of the disciplinary spectrum of a particular school practice demands an approach that is directed at the specifics in play, without which a fertile terrain appears, which José Mário Pires Azanha accurately calls "pedagogic abstractionism", i. e., the

...fickleness of describing, explaining or understanding real educational situations, ignoring the specific determinations of their concreteness, to stick only to general "principles" or "laws" that in their abstract scope are apparently sufficient to take account of the situations focused upon (1992, p. 46).

The concrete dimension of school duties needs to be paid attention to if one wants to achieve a more realistic and perhaps less uniform view of the practices and relationships that occur and that, strictly speaking, are always unique and idiosyncratic. Having outlined this theoretical and methodological direction we now present the results of an exploratory study we carried out into the disciplinary fabric of a specific school institution, with the express intention of scrutinizing what was empirically produced when students actions understood as being undisciplined were placed on the agenda.

ABOUT THE (CONTRA) NORMATIVE SPECTRUM OF DAILY SCHOOL LIFE

The institutional context investigated is that of a public secondary school located in a middle class district in São Paulo (city), which has a stable organizational profile: an appropriate infrastructure, a well-defined policy and teaching project and an active teaching staff and professional team. There are six secondary school student groups a year (two for each grade), each of which has on average 185students, divided equally as to their gender. The typical clientele of a Brazilian public school is marked by social, economic and cultural diversity.

As for the choice of secondary education as the field of investigation, this is the school niche that had the highest rate of disciplinary occurrences: those actions considered to be dysfunctional and/or destructive of the regular functioning of the classrooms or of the school establishment itself, which requited that those involved be sent to the technical authorities (especially for educational guidance). Therefore, as the object of our analysis we chose the registers of occasions involving transgressions of school order over a five-year period: 2003 to 2007.

The reason for carrying out a longitudinal study was due to the wish to understand the development of happenings from a broader perspective of time than those usually employed in similar investigations, which are generally limited to compact periods of time. The initial work of the study was, therefore, to convert scant information (there was no supporting occurrence register, but records were kept by the educational guidance area) into a common format and, subsequently, the ordering of the data in accordance with three theme categories: frequency, those involved and type of occurrence.

As far as concerns the number of events there is a slight variation in the volume of occurrences in the first four years, while in the final year they almost tripled. Whatever the reasons for such, the swing in occurrences over the five years analyzed, stands out. It cannot be concluded, therefore, that there is an upswing in disruptive acts, but merely a variation, given that over the time there are alternating decreases and increases in the number of occurrences.

Specifying the occurrences by grade (Table 1), yet again we have an unstable scenario, principally as far as concerns the first two grades, the comparison of which is similar in 2003, dominant in the first grade in 2004 and 2005, and balanced over the last two years. The third grade is initially the same as the other two, but in subsequent years it accounts for considerably fewer incidents. It may be supposed that this is an institutionalization effect regarding a certain self-consented appeasement of students' behaviors.

Another data set, also relating to the frequency of disciplinary occurrences, refers to the dates of the occurrences (Table 2). Overall, the first school semester seems to be more turbulent, despite the fact that over the last three years there was a significant variation between the two semesters. Nevertheless, in 2003 and 2004 there was a balance. Yet again nothing definite can be concluded here.

An intriguing set of reflections can be taken from the data relating to those involved in disciplinary events, whether the as authors of the same, or the targets of complaints.

As for the authors (table 3), we can see that he complaints originated both from teachers as well as the school's administrative staff (guidance, management, inspectors, secretaries and canteen), proportionally. Here we have an indication that many of the disciplinary setbacks did not necessarily occur during lesson-time, since a large number of them were reported by the administrative staff that are responsible for managing areas outside the classroom. There are still marked disparities as to how transgressing students are dealt with. While some teachers were the authors of dozens of complaints several of them made no complaint at all.

Another significant fact indicates that it is not only school agents who are responsible for complaints, but also the students themselves, particularly in 2003 and 2005. They can ask for steps to be taken not only against school colleagues, but also against certain teachers. This is perhaps a sample of a sort of demand of an ample disciplining which is based on determined teachers' actions that are considered unfair or unreasonable.

Here it might be deduced that there is a growing (contra) normative regulation in daily life that is also occasioned by those who are the constant object of complaints.

As for the targets of the occurrences (Tables 4 and 5), striking evidence emerges: in half the cases, on average, the complaints pointed to a specific student, but could equally be extended to a group of students, generally two or three, but sometimes more. One particular deed, in fact, involved all students in the class.

If we take into account the universe of 185 students, on average, we see that four in every ten were involved in disciplinary episodes in 2003 and 2004. The number rose to 60% in 2005, returned to the previous level in 2006 and finally increased to 70% in 2007. Can one suppose this is an escalation? Right at the outset it has to be clarified that the vast majority of these students were the subject of just one or two occurrences. The record holders for being sent for disciplining were four students in 2003, six in 2004, six in 2005, eight in 2006 and twelve in 2007 (in the latter case, perhaps because of the expressive increase in occurrences in this particular year).

So far we have dedicated ourselves to describing the flow of disciplinary actions in a general way, i.e., without discriminating the happenings involved. As it will be shown, the events can cover a wide range of activities spread out from daily life maintaining little resemblance to each other. This set of behaviors that is considered to be punishable were here categorized in the following way: 1. Rule violation; 2. Improper attitudes; 3. Conflicts between students; 4. Conflicts between student(s) and teacher(s) or administrative staff; and 5. Damaging property.

It is obvious that the last three items refer to situations involving violent acts. The category "Improper attitudes" covers actions that, broadly speaking, affect the general field of incivility, while rule violation describes making a mockery of current school rules.

A precaution as far as concerns the type of occurrences immediately implies differentiating between notions of incivility, indiscipline and violence. This is because the three words are frequently amalgamated under the same semantic and pragmatic mantle of disciplinary problems. Over and above being a linguistic ambiguity or formal defect, the three words seem to be frequently understood as having a similar causal root, or as if one were dealing with a progressive succession: from indiscipline to incivility and from the latter to violence. There is no reason for it to be so in our opinion.

According to Bernard Charlot (2002), incivility refers to precisely the conduct that is opposed to the social rules of peaceful coexistence (of civility, generally speaking). That is why it would not necessarily constitute an affront to operational norms (understand, working rules) in a particular school context, since these are changeable, are isolated and unstable. For example, an execrable action in a certain context may be tolerated or even encouraged in another. Incivility and indiscipline, therefore, point to different contra-normative levels of school relationships.

A similar demand for conceptual distinction occurs with notions of violence and indiscipline. In the words of Marília Pontes Sposito, the former could be synthesized as "every act that implies the breaking of a social nexus by the use of force" (1998, p.60). Despite the recurrent apprehension that these are connected or interdependent phenomena it cannot be assumed that violence and indiscipline have similar features and neither do they have a common causality, since disciplinary setbacks are defined not by the use of force, but only by conduct that is deemed to reverse the normative conventions in use.

Once the distinctions between the three concepts are reminded, the notion of indiscipline would be restricted to be regulated by the regimental order in a given institutional framework or, at worst, as its invalidation. More specifically, undisciplined acts mostly rely on violating the operational and coexistence rules that are used as guidelines, whether because of their excessive obscurity or rigidity, or because of their implausibility, or even their ineffectiveness (Aquino, 2003, 2007).

In a way that is contrary to a major part of the bibliographic production that defines school indiscipline in the light of a certain isolated, theoretical meaning, we here adopt a concrete and, in our opinion, sufficiently elucidatory definition: it is a set of micro-practices that transgress school protocols (without counting the reasonableness, or otherwise, of the latter), whose effects are immediately felt in the teacher-student relationship.

A careful look at the type of occurrences within the context surveyed allows us to draw some relevant conclusions (Table 6). The most evident conclusion refers (yet again) to the impossibility of defining a stable and regular scenario of the disciplinary occurrences that took place there. On the contrary, a type of continuous variation seems to set the cadence of the normative march of daily life, by means of which acts of indiscipline, violence and incivility alternate day by day, with disparate incidence and intensity.

Most of the events are divided into rule violation and improper attitudes, particularly in 2003, 2006 and 2007, the years in which violent incidents were less frequent. Among the rule violations the most frequent, by order of appearance in the registers, are: truancy; absence of work material; being late for school, going into class or returning to it; not doing homework; leaving the class without authorization. Among the improper attitudes, on the other hand, are: the refusal to comply with a request or order of the teacher; an embarrassing, unreasonable or aggressive prank; talking while the teacher is talking; creating an obstacle to activities; abstaining from activities.

We therefore have a fairly reliable picture of those common actions that are reputed as being responsible for upsetting school activities to the point of them becoming reason for being sent for punishment. This is a fairly trivial set of actions that, on the one hand, circumstantially reject operational rules in the strict sense of the word and, on the other, harm the expectations of a type of predetermined coexistence within the classroom. It has to be said, however, that by means of such actions students exercise the same old spoofs and refusals that have been known for so many years: spoofs and refusals that certainly form part of school ritual and that, in the final instance, constitute the prerogatives of the student place, bearing in mind that every norm presupposes some level of refusal or indisposition. Why, then, do they persist as expedients to be avoided, or more drastically, punished?

A situation not very different occurred with episodes that involved some modality of violence. Although they reached expressive levels in 2005 and 2006, accounting for almost a third of all annual registers, 2007 (the year with the largest number of occurrences) had the lowest level in the entire five years: 5%.

By order of frequency in the registers, these violent acts are distributed irregularly and refer for the most part to conflicts between students themselves (especially physical and verbal aggression and threats), followed by cases of damage to property (14 occurrences in the 5 years surveyed), and finally some rare episodes involving conflicts between student(s) and teacher(s), or administrative staff. In this latter item, during the whole period no more than a dozen occurrences were registered, which were restricted to verbal aggression, involving affronts to and the insulting and humiliation of the agents.

Having configured the data we can initially conclude that daily life in the school surveyed is, to a certain extent, a successful model of classic disciplinary order. They are a set of relatively trivial actions that, on one hand, rejects circumstantially the stricto sensu, and on the other hand breaks the expectations of having a specific type of social interaction in the classroom. In short, nothing of insurgency or disruptiveness appears to have happened under the school sun we investigated, to the point that we are witness to some type of deterioration of the practices or relationships there established.

ANAYTICAL APPPROACHES TO DISCIPLINARY COMPLAINTS

In discourses on contemporary education there is unquestionably a direct association between prevalent images related to school clientele and the image of indiscipline and/or of violence. This is an association according to which certain dissonant habits on the part of students have been gaining a position of centrality in the difficulties of the teaching profession.

In the twenty years since the first collection (D'Antola, 1989) and the last work published on the subject (Vasconcellos, 2009), the allegation has been reiterated that one of the main marks of contemporary school life is of an infinite number of disciplinary violations, the administration of which has become the keynote of the work of teaching and, by extension, one of the central reasons for the much acclaimed occupational ‘wear and tear' of the teaching profession, most frequently by education professionals linked to elementary and secondary school teaching, but also by infant school and higher education teachers.

It is, therefore, certain that the complaints of professionals seem to echo the equally recurrent allegation that new generations find themselves prejudiced, or even incapable of facing up to their civilizing task, which, according to such complaints, is inherent not to the intellectual foundation of school activity, but above all to conserving its centuries-old habits that are embedded in the demand for obedience, respect, decorum, etc.

While, on the one hand, our investigative journey in no way allows us to conclude that the relationship between the school context and its young protagonists is marked by harmony, extension and concert, on the other hand, it has to be also admitted that we are faced with a clearly prosaic situation, when compared with the frequently catastrophic images of student behavior today. In the school-field surveyed students seem to act in a very much more orderly and calm manner than they are normally vaunted as behaving. In short, between the rhetoric of attack and the concrete and practical reality there is a considerable distance.

This said, the results of our investigation revealed themselves to be unusual given that they indicated an institutional daily life dotted with (and never over-determined) a set of small offenses that little resemble the hyperbolic image one has of schools that are sometimes hostile and sometimes disruptive. No trace of the degradation of institutional practices and of the relationships that support them was witnessed.

It might be counter-argued that this conclusion clashes with the customary allegations of the school agents themselves, if we take into account, for example, the exponential expansion of the disciplinary occurrences in the final year of the school investigated. How can one put into perspective such an argumentative discrepancy when we look back at the path we have traveled thus far?

In our opinion, the profusion of disciplinary complaints seems to be presented as the effect of a subtractive belief on the part of older generations of the alleged growing complexity of the task of educating in the present day, which frequently lapses into a refrain that preaches the existence of a pronounced school crisis caused by conflicts between its protagonists.

If, strictly speaking, the predicated crisis and conflict have become the arbitrational filters (whether empirically or theoretically) of the institutional and civil atmosphere of Brazilian schooling we must point out the imprudence of their indiscriminate use, since the evidence seems to contrast greatly with the usual apprehension of a supposed erosion (particularly within the public context) of the quality of school practice and school relationships caused by disciplinary events.

Notwithstanding the recurrent allegation about the spread of animosity, disrespect or apathy on the part of students, such complaints, when looked at from another angle, paradoxically seem to point to a type of normalizing triumph of contemporary school practices, substantiated by the ambition of a long-lasting management of behavior and the final destinations of the lives in play, through the standardization, not only of gestures but above all of their underlying intentions.

Expanding this analysis perspective, current school life seems to be increasingly governed by prescriptions of a normalizing ilk, which open up a complex of ever more diffuse strategies for controlling the conduct of others, now in its most recondite and abstract dimensions: the "social administration of individuality", according to Thomas Popkewitz (2000, 2001), or "government of the soul" for Nikolas Rose (1998, 2001, 2001a).

As far as concerns the normative spectrum of daily school life, in our view this is to locate it in the register of the governmentalization processes in operation currently (Aquino, Ribeiro, 2009), which are responsible for an increasingly more concentric and widespread march of activities, whose intention starts being the consensual conformation of school populations, covering both the multiplicity and singularity that are characteristic of them.

Governmentality, in Foucault's theoretical diapason, refers to the type of ethical political reality that has been in play in social institutions from the mid-18th century, by means of which, on the one hand, the living conditions of the population are regulated and, on the other, the existence of its individual components is disciplined. Totalization and individualization, therefore, begin responding to a single process (Ó, 2003, 2005, 2006). That is why at this exact point governmentality consists in articulation between "technologies per se" and technologies that have "domination over others", in the words of Michel Foucault (2004). Add to this the fact that, according to Veiga-Neto (2000), school practices fulfill the role of articulating both technologies, like an empirical hinge.

Sa far as concerns the purposes of this article it has to be admitted that disciplinary complaints seem initially to be in solidarity with a type of ripping up of the classic school modus operandi, then later point precisely to an irruption of a subtle means of controlling not only the steps of students, but also of the professionals, both of whom are converted into a population niche like any other, thus responding to a flattening of school specifics in favor of a normalizing turnover that is common to other social spheres.

In this sense classrooms differ little in their ordinary activities from other similar social practices, all united in favor of a common govermentalizing mission: that of constructing a type of individual who, bound up in the performative illusion of self-government on various fronts, proves nothing other than a voluntary yielding to certain power/knowledge regimes in the social space.

As can be deduced without much effort, contemporary daily school life seems to be gradually being converted into a messianic machine for correcting and improving things and people, by activating an infinite number of mechanisms for subjection and the productive control of existences. This is a sophisticated machine that continues operating in strict harmony with the maximum imperative of the modern age: to educate/discipline.

From Saint Augustine to Alain, from Comenius to Makarenko, from Kant to Gramsci, from Durkheim to Dewey,

In the assumption of the French pedagogue therein seems to reside the master-key of modern disciplinary ingenuity, in which constantly keeping students busy is both the starting and finishing point; and not only their bodies, but also their souls, as incarnate in the "desires and possibilities" of each one. Here we are dealing with an individual whose task is to learn and self-govern himself, who will live in the school arena and no longer be a mere student. A similar finding had Veiga-Neto assert that:

well before functioning as an apparatus for teaching content and promoting social reproduction the modern school functioned (and continues functioning) like a great factory that manufactured (and continues manufacturing) new forms of life. To the extent that education molds us precociously and broadly, we start seeing those molds imposed on us as natural ones (2003, p. 108).

Indeed, a large part of the teaching discussion from modernity to the present day seems to have focused on a fundamental aspect: the search for a conformation that is as edifying as it is infallible to the experiences of the very youngest. By removing them from a potentially harmful minority that would destroy them, educating them comes down to the obstinacy of fashioning their future existence, by attributing to them a sense of moving from a supposed condition of vulnerability and insufficiency, of incapability, in fact. From this comes the ultra-reformist ambition of school action today that, as António Nóvoa (2009) points out, is materialized in missions and content "within the framework of an image of school as an institution for regenerating, saving and repairing society" (p. 50-51).

It is undeniable that the last few decades have witnessed an explosion of the attributes of education professionals. New dimensions have been added to their habitual expertise, which is not a substitution of functions but adds to them. From the political and administrative spheres to theoretical scope, via public opinion, a type of diffuse multivalence attributed to education professionals seems to be hovering over them.

Enveloped by a utilitarian spirit, which seems to clothe the task-driven image that is nurtured by what should be practiced in schools, a demand for the extensive teaching of students that is capable of covering everything from the use of the body to the vicissitudes of the senses and the waywardness of conscience is sanctified. From this aspect it would possible to teach or prevent almost everything, if not everything.

School action is seen, therefore, to be imprisoned in a network of multiple projects, with a view to irradiating a healthier, more conscious, more participative and more productive life. This means that in each new decade school practices seem to become more or less hostages of the latest attributes, having their objectives and functions reconfigured in the wake of normalization demands that are constantly conceived in the social fabric.

However, that which at first sight consists in a show of the broadening of the scope of the school institution has been experienced by its agents as a hoax. The more new demands pile up, the less they seem to achieve consistent results in the truly pedagogic plan of things, with the school and its agents remaining with a mixture of opulence of their declared purposes and an insufficiency in their concrete effects.

In this sense the profusion of disciplinary complaints emerges as a type of side effect (or in cascade, perhaps) of the expansionist rhetoric of the contemporary school. In other words, in this "overflowing" (Nóvoa, 2009) there resides in our opinion, the generative epicenter of the multiplication of demands for disciplining and by extension the conversion, not only of students, but also or teachers into the heirs of an impossible debt to be paid off.

By means of this ethical political picture, it remains for us to insist in challenging without let-up the unfettered expansion of normative discourses in the current school environment. A simple question posed by Foucault becomes extremely valuable: "Why, in order to teach someone something, must one punish and reward?" (1996, p. 121). This is a question whose reply should be enough to shake the whole of the normative machinery that has been expanding.

REFERENCES

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¹

Overall, 88 Master's degree dissertations and 14 PhD theses on the theme of school discipline/indiscipline were defended (Appendix 3).

²

) and those with a critique of power, generally inspired in the theories of Foucault.

³

in which teaching practice in Brazil, Chile and Cuba is compared; emerge as sounding board for such a mentality. Basing analysis on the observation of math lessons given to third grade classes in different school units, the researchers compose a painstaking statistical picture of teaching conditions in each country, using multiple variables, which include everything from use of lesson time and detailing the actions undertaken in class to student involvement in activities. One of the incidental variables used is called "degree of discipline". This tells us that "both in private Chilean schools, but particularly in Cuban schools, the level of discipline at some moments was extraordinary, which was clear from the fact that teachers rarely had to ask for silence" (p. 17). In the Brazilian context, the researchers found:

⁴

almost all those who at some time studied the educational task had occasion to comment on the inevitable correlation between education and discipline. One of those who to a certain extent expressed the modern teaching spirit based on the idea of discipline seems to have been Freinet, when he proposes that "there is only disorder when there is a failure in the organization of work, when the child is not kept busy with an activity that responds to his desires and his possibilities" (apud Estrela, 1992, p. 21).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 May 2012
• Date of issue
  Aug 2011