Title: (DOC) Can education change society? | Lloyd Gray - Academia.edu
Headings: Can education change society?
Can education change society?
Can education change society?

Content: Secondly, the instrumental approaches, such as institutions, or policies used by governments in response to these dilemmas were enacted. Finally, a third element of µbiopolitics ¶ centres on the relation between forms of governance and the processes of µsubjectivation ¶ ± the relation between the objectives of the government to how individuals govern themselves (Fimyar, 2008:5). Through the uses of µtechniques of power ¶, systems employed by the government to monitor, control and coordinate the actions of individuals, such as schools or police, governments went about creating governable subjects, hoping to control and normalise people ¶s conduct to the benefit of society in terms of the economy (Fimyar, 2008:5).For Foucault, the ways in which external authority shapes the structure of the mind was important in understanding how power operates and he questioned the role of knowledge, produced through scientific reasoning about the biological and psychological traits of humans, had in justifying these institutions and the way they organise and intervene in whose lives they are responding to. This knowledge was also a way of classifying the varying forms of individuals within a society deemed as µeither contributing to the collective prosperity or constraining ¶ its efficiency, thus possible to split populations into sub groups, such as children, elderly, criminal and different workforces, for example, (Fimyar, 2008:6).³Truth is centred on the form of scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; it is subject to constant economic and political incitement´ (Foucault, 1980:131-132 in Jardine, 2008 The DfES report, referred to earlier in this article, regarding personal and social education is important at this stage to demonstrate further the ideas of µbio-power ¶ as it makes recommendations about particular populations needing intervention based on the inability to make rational choices and not in a position to contribute to society. Central to the report is that some communities or populations of people, mainly those in de-industrialised and urban housing estates, are less prepared than others for change and a future of uncertainty and µbleakness ¶ will follow (DfES, 2003:3). The report appears to place full responsibility on individuals in making the wrong choices in life, stating that µthose who do not have the personal skills to chart their path effectively often choose alternative sources of satisfaction and identities ¶ (DfES, 2003:3).This example raises a few questions in relation to whether individuals have autonomy over their lives, namely the assumption that individuals seek alternative identities out of choice. In the context of current debates around liberalism, it demonstrates the extent to which the idea of choice has reached. This form of educational intervention suggests a response to the notion of µneo-liberalism ¶, a critique of classical liberalism which has historically seen as problematic as markets and economies have gradually been regarded as intertwined with society, rather than external to it, through political, legal and social conditions (Burchell (1993:270). Neo-liberalism, on the other hand, attempts to create µa State on the basis of an economic freedom ¶ (Burchell, 1993:270) and as a result, as Bansel (2007:285) argues, greater levels of what is considered social is being opened up and framed in terms of economics and µof the individual crafting ¶ itself.