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

Content: The idea that people no longer bound together in feudal communities, brought into being the idea of a population of individuals as living, working and social beings, each with their µown customs, habits, histories and forms of labour and leisure ¶ (Dean, 1999:107). If the economic and social development of this new population was to be maintained, however, it was important that the welfare, health and efficiency of individuals were protected. Therefore, the management of the population became the perceived role of government as it was the basis for the state ¶s future prosperity (Fimyar, 2008). µGovernmentality ¶ examines the way in which governments went about formulating this new society, based on the idea that certain µtruths ¶, or knowledge, in social, cultural and political spheres is used as the justification of such action (Fimyar, 2008:4). Firstly, through political reasoning, ideologies and discourses provided in response to social dilemmas, the idea of social welfare and improvement of the individual through education and health were proclaimed. 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.