Caught napping: Images of surveillance, discipline and punishment on the body of the schoolchild

History of Education

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 191-211

  Margolis, Eric ^a   Fram, Sheila ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33847677613     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: 14645130     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600601171401     Document Type: Review

References (95)

1. 'Exemplar' was Kuhn's 'small' sense of the word paradigm, related to but not to be confused with paradigms as grand theories. Kuhn, T. S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1970: 173.
2. Geertz, C. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretative Theory of Culture." In The Interpretation of Cultures; Selected Essays, edited by C. Geertz. New York: Basic Books, 1973: 16.
3. See also Geertz, C., ed. "From the Native's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding." In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1983: 55-70.
4. The notion of pedagogical authority was developed in: Bourdieu, P., and J. C. Passeron. Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990.
5. "School Room Scene: Caught Napping." Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization 10 March 1866: 158.
6. We draw on images from American classrooms between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. No doubt images from other cultures could produce similar but different analyses.
7. Tagg, J. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988: 83-84ff.
8. See also Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
9. See also Margolis, E., and J. Rowe. "Images of Assimilation: Photographs of Indian Schools in Arizona." History of Education 32, no. 6 (2003): 629-60.
10. As the critic and photographer John Berger noted, photos are representations of things in the world, even though their use and understanding is governed by socially established symbolic codes. Berger, J., and J. Mohr. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. Images can help break some of the silences of the classroom.
11. See Grosvenor, I., M. Lawn, and K. Rousmaniere, eds. Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.
12. For problems in the interpretation of images of 'the pain of others', see Sontag, S. On Photography. New York: Dell, 1977.
13. She recanted some of her earlier analysis of photography as desensitizing in Sontag, S. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2003.
14. Barthes, R. Camera Lucida. New York: Hill & Wang, 1981: 22-26.
15. Ibid., 27.
16. Ibid., 45.
17. Ibid., 26. Funding for visual work is no longer particularly important. Images were copied from free sites including the Library of Congress and the National Archives, state libraries and historical societies, as well as from 'fee' sites like Time-Life and Corbis. In addition, some of the most arresting images were purchased at eBay auctions where 'school photographs' can frequently be bought for a few dollars. Full pages from nineteenth-century magazines like 'Caught Napping' are only slightly more expensive, maybe US$40. Currently Margolis has on his hard drive more than 10,000 school images and associated text including caption and provenance. Many software packages facilitate coding and retrieval with key words. Thus images can be studied using the conventional approaches of qualitative research.
18. For a more detailed discussion of methods see Margolis and Rowe, in "Images of Assimilation", and Margolis, E. "Looking at Discipline, Looking at Labor: Photographic Representations of Indian Boarding Schools." Visual Studies 19, no. 1 (2004): 72-96.
19. Peim, N. Introduction: "The Life of Signs in Visual History." In Visual History: Images of Education, edited by U. Mietzner, K. Myers and N. Peim. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2005: 23.
20. Simmel, G. The Stranger: The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by Kurt Wolff. New York: Free Press, 1950: 402.
21. Dreeben, R. On What is Learned in School. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1968: 147.
22. Benito, A. E. "The School in the City: School Architecture as Discourse and Text." Paedagogica Historica 39, nos 1-2 (2003): 53.
23. Sturken, M., and L. Cartwright. Practicing of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001: 246.
24. Foucault, M. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by A. Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books, 1979: 173.
25. Lancaster, J. "The Lancasterian System of Education." Baltimore, MD, 1821[cited 15 April 2006]. Available from http://www. constitution.org/lanc/lan_sys.htm; INTERNET.
26. Detailed drawings of the building plans exist but were not reproduced in the interest of space. See British and Foreign School Society. Manual of the System of Teaching Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Needle-Work: In the Elementary Schools of the British and Foreign School Society. Philadelphia, PA: William Fry, Printed for the Philadelphia Society for the Establishment and Support of Charity Schools, 1817: 3.
27. Pillow, W. "Exposed Methodology: The Body as a Deconstructive Practice." In Working the Ruins: Feminist Poststructural Theory and Methods in Education, edited by E. St. Pierre and W. Pillow. New York: Routledge, 2000: 34.
28. O'Donoghue, D. "Situating Space and Place in the Making of Masculinities in Schools." Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 3, no. 1 (2006): 15-33.
29. Goodland, J. A Place Called School: Prospects for the Future. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984.
30. For an elegant description of school discipline and its ritual aspects see Eggermont, B. "The Choreography of Schooling as Site of Struggle: Belgian Primary Schools, 1880-1940." History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001):129-40.
31. See Dewey, J. The Child and the Curriculum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1900.
32. Also see Dewey, J. The School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956: 31. May 2003.
33. Hafner, K. "Where the Hall Monitor Is a Webcam." New York: New York Times Company, 7 May 2003.
34. Guernsey, L. "Where's Johnny? Smart Cards and Satellites Help Keep Track." New York: New York Times Company, 3 August 2005, at G7.
35. Higgs, E. The Information State in England: The Central Collection of Information on Citizens since 1500. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004:11.
36. Quoted in Grosvenor, I., and K. Myers. "Progressivism, Control and Correction: Local Education Authorities and Educational Policy in Twentieth-Century England." Paedagogica Historica 42, nos 1-2 (2006): 225-47.
37. Peim, N. "The History of the Present: Towards a Contemporary Phenomenology of the School." History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 177-90.
38. Eggermont, B. "The Choreography of Schooling", 133. Eggermont observed that: 'If the stereotypical, simultaneous actions of a group of children transformed them into a class, the photograph was its identification.'
39. Durkheim, E. Moral Education. New York: Free Press, 1968: 148.
40. Ivan Illich did a good job pointing out the differences between education and schooling. Illich, I. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
41. See note 33, below.
42. Michael Apple and David Gordon traced the specific term 'hidden curriculum' to Philip Jackson in Jackson, P. W. Life in Classrooms. New York: Harper & Row, 1968: 10-33.
43. Kathleen P. Bennett and Margaret D. LeCompte noted that the sociologist Edgar Z. Friedenberg had used the term in a conference in the late 1960s. Regardless, the view that more is taught and learned in schools than the official curriculum is both ancient and plain common sense. See Portelli, J. P. "Dare We Expose the Hidden Curriculum." In Reason and Values: New Essays in Philosophy of Education, edited by J. Portelli and S. Bailin. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: Detselig Enterprises, 1993: 171-97;
44. See also Margolis, E., M. Soldatenko, S. Acker, and M. Gair. "Peekaboo: Hiding and Outing the Curriculum." In The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education, edited by E. Margolis. New York-London: Routledge, 2001: 1-19.
45. Taylor, D. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC-London: Duke University Press, 2003.
46. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 166.
47. See Tagg, The Burden of Representation; Margolis and Rowe, "Images of Assimilation"; and Margolis, "Looking at Discipline".
48. Catteeuw, K., K. Dams, M. Depaepe, and F. Simon. "Filming the Black Box: Primary Schools on Film in Belgium, 1880-1960: A First Assessment of Unused Sources." In Visual History: Images of Education, edited by U. Mietzner, K. Myers and N. Piem. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2005: 217.
49. Skinner, B. F. Walden Two. New York: Macmillan, 1948: 95.
50. Althusser, L. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)." In Lenin and Philosophy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971: 127-86.
51. Schlossman, S. L. Love and the American Delinquent: The Theory and Practice of "Progressive" Juvenile Justice, 1825-1920. Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 1977: 27.
52. Burrows, E. G., and M. Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
53. Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent, 28.
54. Quoted by Joseph Curtis in Burrows & Wallace, Gotham, 502.
55. The Wikiepedia website defines parens patriae as Latin for parent of the homeland. In law, it refers to the public policy power of the state to usurp the rights of the natural parent, legal guardian or informal caretaker, and to act as the parent of any child or individual who is in need of protection, such as a child whose parents are unable or unwilling to take care of him or her, or an incapacitated and dependent individual. Available from http://www.wikiepedia.org; INTERNET.
56. Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent, 8-9;
57. quoted from the judgment in Ex Parte Crouse.
58. British 'progressives' were engaged in similar political action at roughly the same period. See Grosvenor and Myers, "Progressivism, Control and Correction".
59. 'Schlossman, Love and the American Delinquent, 10-11.
60. 'School days, school days, dear old golden rule days, Reading, and writing, and 'rithmetic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick ...' Lyrics by Cobb, W. D. "School Days", 1907.
61. Tuer, A. W. History of the Hornbook. New York-London: Leadenhall Press, 1896.
62. Finkelstein, B. Governing the Young: Teacher Behavior in Popular Primary Schools in Nineteenth-Century United States. New York: Falmer Press, 1989.
63. Ibid., 96.
64. Adams, D. W. Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience 1875-1928. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.
65. Students reported being 'spanked' for speaking Spanish on school grounds in Texas until the 1960s. Valencia, R. A., S. R. Garcia, H. Flores, and J. R. Juarez, Jr. Mexican Americans and the Law. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004: 29.
66. Roberts, D. E. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Pantheon Books, 1997: 21.
67. "Preparing for School." Harper's Weekly 2 November 1872: 849.
68. Whitman, W. Death in the School-Room, 1841. [cited 15 April 2006]. Available from http://www.schooltales.com/death_schoolroom/text.html; INTERNET.
69. Lyman, R. "In Many Public Schools, the Paddle Is No Relic." New York Times 30 September 2006.
70. Humphries, S. Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Childhood and Youth 1889-1939. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981: 62.
71. Regina v. Secretary of State for Education and Employment and others (Respondents) ex parte Williamson (Appellant) and others, House of Lords [cited 24 February 2005]. Available from www.parliament.the-stationery-office. co.uk/pa/ld200405/ldjudgmt/jd050224/will.pdf; INTERNET.
72. Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
73. Connerton, P. How Societies Remember. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989: 31.
74. Margolis and Rowe, "Images of Assimilation", 220.
75. Distinguishing between art and photography is far beyond the scope of this paper; suffice it to say that engravings like 'Caught Napping' represent general cases (studium) and punctum in Barthes's first meaning. Photographs like 'leveling off' exhibit the second meaning of punctum, the indexical quality that draws attention to a real student and real teacher who are no longer present but once were. It may also produce intimations of our own mortality.
76. Berger and Mohr, Another Way of Telling, 92.
77. Ibid., 96.
78. Attempts to codify body language have not been completely successful. See Darwin, C. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York-London: D. Appleton and Company, 1924;
79. See also Goffman, E. "Gender Advertisements." Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 3 (1976): 69-154;
80. and See Morris, D. Gestures, Their Origins and Distribution. New York: Stein & Day, 1979. Perhaps this is because the body speaks in languages different from words.
81. Peim, "The History of the Present", 177.
82. Halbwachs, M. On Collective Memory, edited and translated by L.A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992: 38.
83. Yerushalmi, Y. H. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982: 95.
84. Catteeuw and others, "Filming the Black Box", 218. The authors argue that photographs are of little use to historians of education seeking to understand how 'reality' is created, favoring instead the press. But of course the press published images extensively to shape and 'create reality'. Academic historians do not own history; images appear increasingly in public venues like 'The History Channel'.
85. See also, Mondale, S., and S. Patton. School: The Story of American Public Education. Produced by Stone Lantern Films, 2001-a profusely illustrated companion piece to a PBS documentary series that made extensive use of historical photos in the positivist 'seeing is believing' style made popular by the producer Ken Burns. The producers selected images and academic historians were summoned to make this or that point.
86. Sekula, A. "Photography between Labor and Capital." In Mining Photographs and Other Pictures: A Selection from the Negative Archives of Shedden Studio, Glace Bay, Cape Breton: 1948-1968, edited by B. H. D. Buchloh and R. Wilkie. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983: 198.
87. Ibid., 195.
88. Catteeuw and others, "Filming the Black Box".
89. Margolis, E. "Class Pictures: Representations of Race, Gender and Ability in a Century of School Photography." Visual Sociology 14, nos 1-2 (1999): 7-38.
90. Grosvenor, I. "On Visualizing Past Classrooms." In Silences and Images: the Social History of the Classroom, edited by I. Grosvenor, M. Lawn, and K. Rousmaniere. New York: Peter Lang, 1999: 83-104.
91. Catteeuw and others, "Filming the Black Box", 215.
92. Ibid., 222.
93. Ibid., 213.
94. Ibid., 215. The absolutist position taken in this polemic about 'unused sources' vitiates arguments made in an earlier work by some of these same authors in which they note that classics scholars have moved beyond the writings of the masters to 'focus on potsherds and seek to decipher obscure inscriptions in an attempt to see beyond that horizon. Historians of education have to make a similar effort to be able to look further than the standard sources, in this case official reports and data.'
95. Depaepe, M., F. Simon, and A. Van Gorp. Order in Progress: Everyday Educational Practice in Primary Schools Belgium, 1880-1970. Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2000.