Just another brick in the wall: education as violence to the spirit

Abstract

This article is concerned with the violence done in and to education. It does not address physical violence in schools, but is interested in cultural, emotional and psychological violence in schools and education systems. It asks three questions: is education inherently violent? If so, how serious a problem is this? How should spiritual education respond? Using discourse analysis, it seeks to show that much educational language is implicitly violent, because it is in the habit of using terminology and metaphors taken from warfare and from heavy mechanical industry, and because its cultural position in relation to the people involved in its enterprise is domineering, controlling and invasive. This analysis is followed by a discussion of the extent to which implicitly violent discourses and cultural models matter, and whether they can be said to do any damage if physical violence is avoided. Finally, it invites spiritual educators to consider the ambiguous response of spirituality to violence, and to develop their own resources for dealing with education as violence.

Keywords:

• Compliance
• Education
• Mechanization
• Metaphor
• Monitoring
• Violence