Overvågningsregimer i skolen

Abstract

This article is about the various monitoring methods that have been used in Danish school from 1822 to 2010. The article shows the dif- ferent monitoring techniques that have been used, and links them with the knowledge that monitoring provides. The theoretical basis of the article is retrieved from Michel Foucault, especially his work “Discipline and Punish” and Foucault’s description of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon.

The article begins by discussing the surveillance of monitorial teaching (The Bell-Lancaster method), which was introduced by royal order in 1822. In the inter-education students were targets of a hierarchical moni- toring, which was intended to increase com- petition amongst students. In the late 1800s the monitoring focused on creating healthy and disciplined students. The monitoring focused on hygiene after studies showed that a large percentage of the Danish students suffered from various diseases. At the time the monitoring also became a part of the school architecture. In the interwar period monitoring was individualized, the individual student was to be cared for. IQ tests and progress assessment were introduced, and health became a monitoring theme. In the 1970 project work and student groups were a central teaching technique, and students should now monitor each other the group. There was in other words established a monitoring relationship between

the students. In the 1990s self-monitoring was introduced and students monitored their own progress together with the teacher. After the turn of the millennium monitoring was inserted into a panopticon system which aims to improve students’ skills. The monitoring of the new millennium is distinguished by being comprehensive and put into a linear system where the municipality monitors schools, and the state monitors all the country’s schools and municipalities.

The discussion of monitoring is also a dis- cussion of morality, a critique of humanism, a discussion of how the normalization and the instruments are defined. Monitoring at school is related to the discussion about what kind of students that the society wants the school to output. Monitoring is therefore a co-creator of the student.