A Foucauldian Critique of Restorative Discipline: Discipline Through Education or Discipline Through Shame?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: Discipline and Resistance in Education: On the Limits and Possibilities of Teachers and Other Subjectivities

Abstract

In response to the disproportionate numbers of urban students of color getting suspended today, many urban educators are looking into non-punitive alternatives to suspension such as Restorative Discipline. Restorative practices facilitate relationship-building and conflict resolution. They are intended to be opportunities for what Freire would call problem-based or co-investigative education. Invoking Foucault’s categories of mental, spiritual and physical discipline, however, I will illustrate how easily these same practices could become punitive and oppressive. I end with a clear distinction between the two, that urban schools attempting to reform their discipline code will see the depth of this task as a dialogic endeavor rather than a mere shift in structure or procedure.

Author

• Hilary Lustick, New York University