Foucault and the proposed Code of Conduct for Teachers
Last week I wrote an article about the controversial General Teaching Council of England proposed code of Conduct for teachers. Commentators had protested at what they saw as intrusion into the personal lives of teachers. Furthermore, there was a concern as to who was saying what was and what was not acceptable behaviour and how such a code might be used to suppress ideas seen by authorities as undesirable.
Recent events in London show the dangers. As reported in the Guardian newspaper a Special Needs teachers, Adrian Swain, was dismissed a week before Christmas from St Paul’s Way, a comprehensive in Tower Hamlets, east London for refusing to stop wearing clothes which failed the school’s new dress code.
What were the offending clothes? Adrian Swain, who teaches Physical Education, came to work wearing track suit bottoms and trainers.
There is widespread suspicion that the real reason for sacking Adrian, is because he is secretary of the local teachers union, the National Union of Teachers.
The school justification for the enforcement of a dress code is that teachers should not wear anything that the students are not allowed to. And, for non UK readers of this blog, the UK persists in allowing schools to force students to wear school uniforms, even for very young children. When my stepdaughter was 7, I was summonsed to a meeting the her headteacher, who told me that she would no longer be allowed into school if she wore Doctor Martins shoes. The reason for the ban, said the head, was because wearing such shoes was hindering her learning!
As Foucault said prison is not unique. It is positioned within the disciplined society, the society of generalized surveillance in which we live. “What is so astonishing,” Foucault asked, “about the fact that our prisons resemble our factories, schools, military bases, and hospitals-all of which in turn resemble prisons?”
Commenting on the Swain case, Brian Lightman, former president of the Association of School and College Leaders, said many schools had dress codes for their teachers because staff were role models to their pupils. This begs the question of what sort of roles are being modelled, The sacking of Adrian Swain has no connection to his abilities as a teacher. It is all to do with reinforcing uniformity and maintaining the role of schools as an instrument of control. The proposed Code of Conduct for Teachers is designed for the same purposes. It should be stopped.
