Identity

A person's Identity can be one of many things depending on where and when you live. In the lecture we talked about how there have been many different kinds of Identity throughout history. There was the pre-modern Identity, where the institutions of various forms of power determined the identities of the populace. Things like Marriage, The Church, Monarchy, Government, The State, and Work all had a say in the overall identity of the individual. Some examples of these identities are the farm worker, soldier, factory worker, housewife, gentleman, and the idea of Husband and Wife.

During Modern times, Identity evolved into something different. There were a few different ideas behind it. Some of it was based on social class and fashion that dictates one's outer identity. In this instance, people were more able to "choose" their own identity, meaning people became more outwardly self conscious about how they acted and looked within a group. People were no longer born into an identity that stuck with them throughout the rest of their life.

In the post-modern setting, ones Identity is completely constructed for an by the person. It accepts a fragmented form of oneself, with various discerning points to flesh it out. Examples of these would be Education, Age, Income, Nationality, Ethnicity, Sexual Orientation, Gender, and many other things. In art, many of these ideas have been explored these identities through various mediums.

“The notion ‘you are who you pretend to be’ has a mythic resonance. The Pygmalion story endures because it speaks to a powerful fantasy: that we are not limited by our histories, that we can be recreated or can recreate ourselves... Virtual worlds provide environments for experiences that may be hard to come by in the real”

Sherry Turkle (1994), Constructions and Reconstructions of the Self in Virtual Reality

Within the internet as a whole, online communities have become more and more popular, and with that comes the possibility of a completely constructed persona, one that might not be anything like the person sitting behind the desk. This has resulted in a very new kind of Identity, where you don't even have to meet the person or be anything like the real you in order to show an identity.

Identity has been one of the defining traits in humanity since the start of civilisation, and has become more and more broken down as time has gone by. Its an interesting phenomenon to see.

Panopticism

In the early 1600s there was a thing known as the Great Confinement, where tons of "houses of correction" were erected to curb unemployment and idleness. It was the birth of the asylum, where someone who wasn't a boon in life was sent to a place where they would be "corrected" to fit back into society. The birth of the forms of science and knowledge like biology, psychiatry, and medicine legitimised the practices of various doctors and psychiatrists. It rationalised the various correction institutions like prison, the asylum and the hospital, and conditioning institutions like the school. Michel Foucalt, a philosopher responsible for Madness & Civilization, and Dicipline & Punish, said that it was these institutions that 'internalized our responsibilities'. He said that

"Discipline is a ‘technology’ [aimed at] ‘how to keep someone under surveillance, how to control his conduct, his behaviour, his aptitudes, how to improve his performance, multiply his capacities, how to put him where he is most useful: that is discipline in my sense’"

(Foucault,1981 in O’Farrrell 2005:102)

The Panopticon was an Architectural Design made by Jeremy Bentham proposed in 1791 to help discipline and condition people into learning a certain way. Its a large circular design with cells going around the outer edge, with the person in power being in the centre of the building. This design made it so that the only person you could see was the person who was either holding you or teaching you. It was supposed to internalize in the individual the conscious state that he is always being watched. It was supposed to make the individual more productive. The idea was that this building design could help reform prisoners, treat patients, instruct schoolchildren, help confine, but also study the insane, supervise workers, and put beggars and idlers to work.

Foucault described that there was a new mode of power called panopticism. It is the idea that the person in power is always watching, a sort of "big brother" mentality to keep the people in check and always working. That way the people would turn into 'docile bodies' who were self monitoring, self correcting, and obedient. He stated that power was a relation between individuals and groups, and only exists when it is exercised.

The Flipped Classroom

The flipped classroom is the somewhat liberal idea of having a non-hierarchical, student centred classroom in which the students actively engage in the ideas presented, and peer assess themselves according to their different points of view. Instead of a traditional classroom, where the teacher gives assignments and homework in a hierarchical structure that is teacher centric where the students follow instruction.

There have been a few instances of this type of classroom, mostly during the 60s and 70s, but one dates back all the way to the 1700s. Joseph Jacotot was an exiled teacher from france that went to the Netherlands to work at a job for half pay. The main problem with that setup was that Joseph and his students could not understand each other. He gave his students a flemish and french copy of an assigned book, and by the end of the book the students could understand the book and speak french as well. From that it was surmised that all men have equal intelligence and that we can teach what we don't know, as well as every person having the ability to instruct themselves. Also that the idea that "everything is in everything."

There are a few schools nowadays that grew out of these types of philosophies, such as Universite Paris 8, which grew out of a student revolt from 1968. Their battle cry was "Egalité! Liberté! Sexualité!" and they were for student autonomy and education for all.

There is also The School Of the Damned in London, which is a completely autonomous student driven university.

Overall the idea of turning the traditional educational spade on it's head is at least somewhat appealing. I feel as though it would be a little chaotic, but some people thrive on chaos.