Schools Under Surveillance: Cultures of Control in Public Education

13. Seductions of Risk, Social Control, and Resistance to School Surveillance

230 Chapter 13 Seductions of Risk, Social Control, and Resistance to School Surveillance Andrew Hope Risk and surveillance are inextricably linked. Concerns about threats to well-being tend to give rise to risk-alleviation practices, which often include surveillance of people and situations labeled as potentially dangerous. However, surveillance plays a central role not only in the management of risks but also in their selection (Foucault 1977, 195). Furthermore, Bauman (1993) infers that the multibillion-dollar surveillance industry may be complicit in generating new fears while at the same time fostering the perception that only the application of greater technology offers sustainable solutions to risks.As the relationship between risk and surveillance has become ever more complex, there has been a growth in counterdiscourses, which challenge mainstream orthodoxy and foster strategies of resistance. Drawing upon seductions of risk, this chapter examines such resistance by analyzing student interactions with school surveillance. After briefly considering some of the links between danger, surveillance and schools, I will explore some definitional issues relating to risk, then shift the focus to the use of surveillance as an instrument of social control in educational institutions. Finally, using data from two school-based research projects, one analyzing Internet use, the other dealing with Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operation, I will explore students’ resistance to school surveillance. Schools, Risk, and Surveillance In recent years, schools have become increasingly perceived as “risk environments.”To a limited extent, this can be seen as illustrative of Giddens’ (1991) belief that in late modernity people are risk obsessed.There also exist, however, specific reasons why schools have become more strongly associated with danger.Armed massacres in educational institutions, growing fear of child Seductions of Risk 231 abuse, violence against staff, increasing vandalism and theft, and the spread of illnesses such as meningitis have resulted in a greater awareness of the hazards that potentially lurk in schools (Hope 2004, 60). Even mundane activities such as providing school meals, taking examinations, using educational cyberspace, and filming of student events by parents have been labeled as problematic, potentially engendering harm. As Frank Furedi notes, “[S]afety in schools is a big issue. The comprehensive range of cameras, swipe cards and other security measures that are now routine make many schools look like minimum security prisons” (1997, 3). Burgeoning fears about safety in schools and the development of a multibillion -dollar risk-alleviation business have resulted in rapid growth in the use of various measures of control, most notably surveillance technologies. The use of observational techniques in schools is not a new phenomenon, however. Schools have a long history of operating as institutions of social control, with surveillance often playing a key role.Thus, in the late eighteenth century, the liberal utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed several schools that utilized a semicircular seating arrangement to facilitate teachers’ observation (Markus 1993, 66). Hall notes that in the early nineteenth century, Lancasterian schools utilized formal, rigid observational systems with an “explicit focus on monitorial assessment” as “part of the unremitting surveillance ” (2003, 50).This demand for ceaseless observation of students also found embodiment in other practices, such as the keeping of attendance registers, the strict use of timetables, and testing to scrutinize performance. In late modernity, school surveillance has undergone something of a revolution, with increased provision, speed, and reach giving rise to what could be labeled as “the surveillance curriculum” (Monahan 2006).To further develop an understanding of the connections between this burgeoning surveillance technology, risk, and student resistance it is first necessary to reflect on the main features of the cultural risk perspective. The Cultural Risk Perspective and Schools In Western societies, risk is predominantly used as a way of referring to the chance of loss or the possibility of damage to people and what they value (Furedi 1997, 17). When such negative outcomes are the focus of public discussion, there is a tendency to adopt a realist approach, treating risk calculations as “absolute truths” (Bradbury 1989, 382), wherein disagreements with “orthodox scientific” views are assumed to indicate “irrationality.” For example, media reporting of the United Kingdom (UK) government’s attempt to restrict the sale of “junk” food in schools focused overwhelmingly on the threat to students’ health and the need for school authorities to monitor diets. An attempt by two mothers in SouthYorkshire to fight what they labeled as A n d r e w H o p...