The docile body – Reflecting the school

Abstract

The paper deals with corporeality in the school environment from a historical perspective. The body has tended to appear and disappear in the discourse and scientific disciplines and has permeated education. This permeation can be viewed traditionally within Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological theory of the “lived body” but also in school discipline. Discipline is typically used to organise the school and is unquestionably associated with the body and corporeality. In this article, we therefore rely on Foucault’s theories. Docile bodies are typically found in schools and classrooms and are shaped by the institution so that they are easy to manage and control. In part, we demonstrate this using handwriting in schools as an example.