Another Brick in the Wall: Foucault and Schooling

Michel Foucault sees the examination as a practice of power and as a way of discipline; he sees a kind of shifting roles among the ones who are examined and the subjects of exam. The subjects (ones who are examined) are differentiated, objected, judged, and classified according to the objects of the exam, which are externally transmitted to them. There, the meaning of training and examination loses its real meaning and becomes a way of cultivation for the “people”, for Foucault they become “pupils”. The individual differences which makes the individuals who they are, erased and, now they are considered in a homogeneous group. Therefore, examination for Foucault is a way to dominate.
Now we are living in a world controlled and dominated by the processing of “bio–powers” ; the extraction of most ideal forms, development of them by the sophisticated technologies and standardization of them and imposition of this “ideal” to the given society or community. The authorities aimed to do that for the creation of “normal”, “healthy”, long-living nations. Examination in this perspective is another tool used for the imposition of the bio–power, through the practices.
Apparently, this way of “examining the things” has introduced to us by modernization, in order to be efficient and productive; the authorities have to have “legible” subjects. The legibility comes with classification and it requires an application of “standards”. Moreover, these standards are not always the ones which are determined by the average of the subjects, rather by the “will” of authorities. If we think about the IQ tests that were done on the colonial subjects of the European empires, we can see the same kind of plot. The subjects to which the colonial subjects are qualified were not matching the wills of “intelligent” Europeans, therefore the colonized people were classified as equal to non-humans. However, such kind of examination made the tacit, rationality, practicality of subjects to be lost.