A Docile Body
Starting at the precise moment of one’s birth, our bodies become part of a society founded and maintain by a scheme of docile bodies. Mainly focused on the control of the human body, the structure emphasizes in turning the body into an obedient machine that will serve the necessities of a given civilization. This training takes place through our educational experiences. Growing up we learn about the specific schedule one must follow daily. At home, there is a particular time to have breakfast, to brush our teeth, to leave for school, to do homework, to help in house chores, to have dinner and to go to bed. Daily at school a schedule must be followed; in a classroom one sits properly, when the teacher is instructing one stays in silence and looking straight up. Later on, we become the perfect working machines.
Initially it feels rather frustrating for children to do everything when someone else says it, but after a while it happens automatically. In fact, these routines become the daily life of every single child; it happens so natural that there is no longer need to force the individual. After the “training phase”, the body starts to resist its own will; it becomes docile in movement, where to go and at what precise time. Although, I believe education is very important for the development of the human mind, I don’t necessarily find our current education system to be its best. Form my experience, I have learned that getting good grades in exams and having an excellent GPA in college doesn’t mean you actually know the material you’ve been studying. Rather, our grades only reflect how good we are at following the cycle of our education system. How good we are at following instruction and adapting to function at high ...
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...ims are to produce, sell, and acquire money since it is our duty to maintain the economy advancing. Therefore, our educational curriculum is one that forcibly trains individuals to acknowledge the importance in fulfilling the needs of the system. Designed to form children with limited knowledge, which leads their interests to be those in need by our economic system, while creating the illusion of self-value and independence in the individual
Regardless of our individual will, society follows the scheme to create machines that based their life around the making of money. The curriculum limits educators indeed to teach only what is necessary to continue the cycle; nonetheless, I believe that just as good parents, good teachers explore the abilities of pupils and help the development of their intellect as well as their abilities to become independents from the world.
This paper focuses mainly on the sincereity as well as the passion with which we do our job. Human body is a very sophisticated machine created by God himself. It can do all sorts of things but there are a few things at which the human body gets very perfect.And that perfectness comes from practice, devotion,love,sincerity and responsibility towards that particular thing. Let me associate the word "thing" in the previous sentence as working. Working for living. Reason I chose to write on this topic was that the Poem " Singapore" written by author Mary Oliver that I read in the book by John Schilb and John Clifford influenced me alot. The Poem narrates the life of a woman which works on an aeroplane and is cleaning teh restrooms which are very dirty. She visually and physically finds the job dirty. But while cleaning that restrooms she sees it in her own world.She finds her hands working in pleasure as she is wondering the scenes of rivers. She realises the truth of life that she has to work to earn her living.
Juveniles are being taught that in order to have a nice car, branded cloths and the house of their dreams, by getting into an expensive mortgage, they have to be an employee of a huge corporation. In addition, they have to undergo to a prestigious school, study hard, have excellent grades in order to become popular and respectable in the world. However, many people would not become those super leaders, but these majority of people have a great role in the capitalism society of the US. As Gatto says, “We buy televisions, and then we buy the things we see on the television. We buy computers, and then we buy the things we see on the computer. We buy $150 sneakers whether we need them or not, and when they fall apart too soon we buy another pair” (38). Such results are in part of a wrong education that teenagers have received trough many decades. In addition, Gatto highlights that modern educational system has been working in a six basic functions methods that makes the system strong and unbreakable: The adjustable function, indulge students to respect authorities. The integrating function, which builds the personality of the students as similar to each other as possible. The diagnostic and directive function, which allows a school to set permanent scholar grades in order to determinate his or her future role in society. The differentiating function, which gives to the student a good education and after his or her role is diagnosed, they prevent any educational progress. The selective function, function that the system has used to prevent academic growth for the non-selected students. The propaedeutic function, which works in the selection of specific groups of intellectual adults to keep perpetuating the system all over again making it a continuous sequence. (Gatto 34). Gatto’s facts revealed the survival of the educational system for decades,
An educational system should not control its students’ minds; instead, it should be arranged in a way that builds the students’ success with a goal to lead a person to conquer his/her purposes.
Scientists agree on the idea that the brain grows in spouts instead of in one line across time. During specific time periods such as three months to ten months, then again from two years old to four years old, then again from six years old to eight years old, then ten years old to twelve up until the child becomes a teenager at thirteen, then again from fourteen years old to seventeen years old. The brain continues to grow throughout a person’s lifetime, but these particular spurts of growth are particularly vital because the brain is more receptive to learning. Only a few of these particular spurts of growth occur when a child is in school, therefore, guardians encouraging the concept of being a lifetime learner is important. The idea that a person should be continuously learning throughout their life
Children are typically put down when they want to be a musician, actor, artist, etc. they are pushed into careers that will ‘further society’s progress’. “...academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence...the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance...the consequence is that many highly-talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not...[due] to the thing they were good at school wasn't valued…” (TED). Student are pushed from their passions and encouraged to attend universities to help industrialize the world. Although industrialization is inherently important, an individual's possible success in other fields are influenced negatively during early academic years. When locked into a state of standardization many students can not succeed and that is when education will fail and get dispirited due to bad grades. “They’re quitting because they’re discouraged and bored...creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy...But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world…”(Bronson). Many students stop paying attention in class, they day dream, draw or write stories; they get disciplined when they don’t pay attention in a classroom setting or if they are too fidgety. This is due to the lack of personalization
As children grow and develop, their actions become more self-directed and less subject to outside regulation by others (Poulsen, et al., 2006, p....
This ties into Dweck’s article “how to raise smart kids” where children will accept the knowledge taught to them, it will naturally correlate to their understanding of things. It all begins with how to properly provide children data to use as they mature. Praise for effort instead of praising for intelligence. Being praised for effort will push the child to take on challenges head-on, as opposed to being praised for intelligence, where they see a difficult problem and give up because it’s “too difficult” (Dweck, 2007).
...e are shown what to do every day of our lives and without instruction on how to complete a task it would be a chaotic. When thinking back from learning how to stand, putting on clothing, tying your shoes, writing the alphabets, and playing ring-around-the- rosy you are actively interacting with your parents, teachers and peers. After getting help you are then left alone to complete the task and to continue to progressively learn new things.
Education should provide young people with skills needed to build competency and wisdom to face the world and lead a harmonious life of coexistence in society. Much of this knowledge is derived from moral education. Moral education comprises of making us informed and reflective on important issues and being virtuous people. It is to be noted that career education is also necessary in our work-driven society. A true education should incorporate all of these aspects. Schooling should integrate moral development as well as economic advancement into school curriculums because interweaving academics and ethics is necessary for our society as a whole. After all, good students make good citizens.
During elementary school, children are not only developing their physical bodies, but there minds as well. They a...
Children around the world are being educated every day but some betters then others. What point in life does one have the incentive to be educated? For many they have the desire to be educated when they are young and in school. Others don’t desire to learn until they are no longer children. The entire purpose of the education system is to obtain knowledge and learn at higher levels. Then why do people not want to learn when they are in school in today’s society? This lack of interest of motivation or emotional support from the teachers, family and School system could be keeping kids from wanting to learn. In his essay “School vs. Education,” Russell Baker seems to believe that our system of education needs great improvement in the way we go about educating are students in today’s society. Schools and parents need more support educating students in each different stage of education throughout their life.
There must also be structure at the home of the student. There needs to be a construct at home to establish effective learning habits. Parents must encourage and build effective study habits. There is a time for work and there is a time for play. This needs to be established in order to create an environment conducive to learning. There should be both positive and negative reinforcement built into this structure in the form of rewards for good performance and consequences for substandard
Our society has become increasingly chaotic in comparison to how it was in my fathers time. With an increase in violence, commercialism, and two working parents, children today don't have the same structure in their lives as they did in earlier times. This lack of structure, viewed as independence, places the child in a role more similar to that of an adult. There is an expectation that our children will function as child and the guardian at the same time. Children arrive home and frequently no one is there to greet them or remind them of their responsibilities as a student. Many parents have little or no involvement at all with their children's education at all. According to Rousseau, not being involved or staying passive until the child wants to learn an idea, is the correct method. I hate to say that we need to force a student to learn, but not everyone is self motivated. A student does need to have some control, but the control needs to be structured. Parents need to be involved. Study habits are not developed just at school, they are also developed at home, with the parent supervising the activity. The parent need to allot time periods where the student, or hopefully the student and the parent can sit down and develop thinking skills and communicate their ideas to one another. By teaching children the value of stimulating their minds all the time, not just at school, they will appreciate the knowledge they have gained and will be more alert when learning new ideas.
Education is a vital part of society. It serves the beneficial purpose of educating our children and getting them ready to be productive adults in today's society. But, the social institution of education is not without its problems. Continual efforts to modify and improve the system need to be made, if we are to reap the highest benefits that education has to offer to our children and our society as a whole.
First of all, there is of course, Descartes. He believes that human body is working like a machine because it obeys the rules of physics. He believes that the human body is like clockwork mechanisms and also he believes that if it is wanted to understand the human body and machine relationship people should take the human body as pieces and study on them. To explain his thoughts, it can be said that, people are like machines even inside of them. Our nature or more correctly our internal system work as a perfect machine. Everything has a place to go, a time that required for its duty or when something is wrong in this system everything falls apart just like a machine. Because, when something wrong in a machine, it would be a disaster and till it is be corrected it couldn’t work properly. Our bodies are just like this and because of this we can say that people are like machines inside, and from their natures.