A while back my wife passed me a PDF copy of an academic paper entitled “Polite, well-dressed and on time: secondary school conduct codes and the production of docile citizens” by Brock University researcher Rebecca Raby. The citation shows the paper as having originally been published in The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology; Feb 2005. Rather than link you to a copy of the PDF, I’ve Googled up an HTML version that you can refer to if you wish.
While I’m not particularly impressed with the quality of the writing in the paper–and I don’t just mean “academic writing is dry”, but rather “this feels clunky and awkward”–I am pleased to see someone looking at some of the “subtext” of these policies. As tired as I am of the rhetoric and jargon of deconstructionism (and really all post-modernist analysis) I do wish that we as a society better trained ourselves to look automatically for some of the messages embedded in our “discourses”.
Here’s a couple of bits of the paper that I found telling:
Their lack of independence, their unequal social position, and discourses that locate adolescents in a process of becoming (Kelly, 2003; Lesko, 1996) complicate young people’s relationships to citizenship and have led to their exclusion from full or active citizenship (Beauvais, McKay and Seddon, 2002). As with the codes of conduct examined in this paper, young people are seen to be incomplete, at risk, and in need of guidance, a position that legitimizes school rules and their enforcement. As Devine (2002) argues, due to essentialist notions of childhood incompetence, “Children’s rights [are] defined negatively in terms of protection from abuse and inadequate care… rather than in terms of empowerment” (Devine, 2002: 316). Consequently, Devine argues that children are disciplined through time-space controls that the children themselves are not involved in setting. Instead, Devine (2002) and Roche (1999) argue that young people’s rights and, consequently, citizenship, need to include their participation as active citizens.
I believe this a complaint that I registered (albeit in less technical language) on multiple occasions, with reference to both secondary and post-secondary education. The paternalistic approach is perhaps somewhat justified in the early portions of the secondary level (although I would argue that this is another case where by merely setting the bar higher we could reap a better result) but is certainly not at any later levels. Any focus on active rights, or even more important active responsibilities, was entirely absent from interactions with the school hierarchies in my experience. (Although, admittedly, there were one or two individual educators who planted those seeds, outside of the formal school process–and indeed did so partly by analyzing the discourse of the education system.)
The increased formalization of “codes of conduct” in the year since I’ve left the system seem to have, if anything, accentuated the problem.
Rarely do codes of conduct outline students’ freedom of expression, right to be heard or procedures for them to voice grievances or appeal decisions (Covell and Howe, 2001). For instance, school councils are to be consulted on the introduction of uniforms, but it is only the parents who vote. Ultimately, the school rules neglect young people’s abilities as active agents (Devine, 2002). They groom passive, docile citizens, rather than the critical, involved ones necessary for a thriving, participatory democracy.
In their overt linkage of rights and responsibilities, school rules are examples of attempts at neo-liberal governance, “in which the active citizen is required to self-regulate and self-manage as a ‘responsible citizen'” (Kemshall, 2002: 43). This citizenship is about governmentality, with young people’s agency harnessed to a narrow, individualized and obedient self-discipline (3) through a discourse of responsibility. This citizenship reflects “prudentialism,” in which the individual “becomes responsible and accountable for the proper management of her own risk or potential risk” in the interest of “a responsible, self-sufficient future” (Hannah-Moffat, 2000: 522). When people take responsibility for their own actions the state can govern at a distance, ideally well beyond a young person’s time at school. Codes of conduct thus blend assumptions of an autonomous, self-regulating adolescent who must be responsible in the present with the guidance of an un-self-regulated teenager into becoming a self-regulating adult, legitimizing and reproducing conflicting assumptions about adolescents.
One other consequence of such self-regulation is that the person (Other) who does not adequately respond to neo-liberal techniques is blamed and subjected to mechanisms of control and repression. This Other is managed through school rules, with those who fail to self-regulate experiencing the more sovereign power of the school, such as suspension, expulsion or other consequences outlined in the schools’ conduct codes and the province’s zero tolerance policy.
I’d like to go into a full-on rant here about how institutional pressures, and not necessarily the conscious malicious actions of any individuals, have resulted in this situation, but I’ve already used up all my rants for this week in Monday meetings at work. Suffice it to say that anyone who thinks that high school is not already a pressure cooker of enforced identity politics wasn’t paying attention, and that attempts to channel this into “socially acceptable” behaviours without regard for teaching both critical analysis and respect for diversity is probably a willfully naive mistake.
Through these rules, we see a (not so) hidden curriculum in which students are groomed to be certain kinds of workers (and citizens): punctual, restrained in dress, and obedient. Rather than shaping young people for self-employment, focus on dress (especially uniforms) suggests links to the service industry or white-collar work, supported by the fact that this emphasis is quite evident in the business and technical schools.
Reading this makes me think of the interviewing process at my university–we had a heavily cooperative program, with students interviewing multiple companies for positions each “work term”. It was, to a large extent, a giant game of “dress-up”, with everyone playing at suits. Perhaps not unrelatedly, the system favoured large corporate employers, and didn’t have a lot of provisions for enterprenuerial terms.
Many codes of conduct are organized around respect for authority, property, self and others (see Appendix B). I have already discussed how an emphasis on respect for authority is meant to prepare young people for a hierarchical society in which they will need to answer to others in the workplace. This emphasis is not only about a work world, however. Authority is claimed to be something young people will encounter in “society at large” and through laws, reinforcing a general social hierarchy in which respect is manifested through obedience.
“a general social hierarchy in which respect is manifested through obedience”. Yarg. Respect means obedience–I certainly had some teachers who felt that way.
I wonder if–in an educational institution–a non-belligerant challenging of opinion might not be seen as a way to manifest respect. As my man Bertie said “I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.”
First, sexual expression, particularly female sexual expression, is presented as incompatible with self-respect. By linking displays of sexuality to a lack of self-respect, the marginalization and problematization of female sexuality is reinforced. The links between dress codes and gender are clear, even if rarely spelled out directly (students must avoid showing too much cleavage, for example).
I have nothing to add to that, except to note that it not only reinforces “problematization”
And, here’s the first bit of her conclusion, which–whether it is correct or not–completely reinforces all my anecdotally-inspired notions:
The citizenship being created through school dress and discipline codes in the Niagara and Toronto regions is premised on predefined responsibilities overtly linked to passive rights. The attempt is for students to internalize such responsibilities through self-respect, self-regulation and self-discipline, as well as obedience to authority. These rules include regulation of dress, space and time, emphasize the productivity of work, and link responsibility to respect for nation and property. I have argued that a docile, productive citizenry is thus envisioned, with those Others who fail to self-govern (or to display prescribed self-respect) disciplined through more sovereign applications of tools such as the zero tolerance policy. Such a shaping of the lives of adolescents is justified on the grounds that they are in the process of becoming citizens and therefore need the guidance of rules. Yet there is little in these rules to suggest an active citizenship based on involvement in decision making, challenge to the status quo or authority, independent thought, equality, or genuine democracy.
