Education and discipline. The monitorial school in Greece
Author(s):
Conference:
ECER 2005
Format:
Paper

Session Information

Session 8, Historical Perspectives on Educational Provision (2)

Papers

Time:
2005-09-09
11:00-12:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Helena Ribeiro de Castro

Contribution

Already by the foundation of the first public schools in the 17th century a central scope of the government was the domestication of the "mass". The disciplining of the pupils aimed first of all at the domestication of the body. As a result of the intensification of the central government during the 17th and 18th centuries the body became a main focus of the power. In this framework the educational system and especially the primary school played an important role with respect to the aim of disciplining, forming and normalizing pupils. Concepts like time and space, observation and the encoding of bodily movements as well as orders obtained a key significance. It was just the domestication of these processes by means of a newly developed, minutely detailed technique that made effective disciplinary strategies possible.The monitorial School in Greece, the so-called Allelodidactic School, is influenced by the French monitorial school developed by SARAZIN. The first monitorial school in the Greek space we find it already before the independent war against ottoman rule in 1821. But the first systematic efforts took place under Capodistrias, the first Governor, which introduced in 1829 this method as the only official teaching method in Greece. In the follow the monitorial school dominated the educational system in Greece in the 19th century and beyond.The monitorial school became an institution of learning, supervision, hierarchy and reward. It aimed at registering, subjecting and domesticating the body, disciplining and normalizing the pupil with the purpose of utilizing him, making him more useful and efficient. In the monitorial school supervision and control of the pupils moved to the center of teaching practice, which function as a mechanism aiming at increasing the pupil's performance from within. In order to achieve this, the monitorial school made use of the hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, exams and a regulation of time.

Author Information

Education Research Centre, Athens

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