Word of the Day: Teratogenesis
This is one of those words you hardly ever see, and when you come across them you realise you wouldn't want to use them even if you had occasion to do so. The most common place to find this word is in the biological or chemical sciences.
'Teratogenesis' really means 'giving birth to monsters'. It comes from Greek teras which means 'something monstrous' or 'a marvel' (of the perverse sort), and 'genesis' which is now an English word adopted from the Greek for 'beginning'.
The thing is that for the last two decades or so, I've been studying education. And I never cease to marvel at the monstrosities that arise from the best of ideals. What better ideal is there but to educate the young in order to help them attain a better quality of life? (Yes, rhetorical question; yes, there are better ideals, but not many.)
But at the same time, the pathways to educating the young have spawned many monsters. One of the keys can be found in the utilitarian and pragmatic philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. In 1785, in an age of revolutions, he came up with the idea of the panoptikon, a prison in which the inmates could be observed with great efficiency. That word comes from the Greek for 'all-seeing'.
Modern schools are often designed, conceptually or physically, like Bentham's Panopticon (that's how it was transliterated into English). They tend to be surveillance-oriented, whether in terms of actual visual interdiction or in terms of what they call 'monitoring'. Every student is 'monitored' in many different ways, watched and tracked and so on.
It's important to note two points that come out of this narrative.
The first is that 'monitor' comes from the same root as 'admonish' — i.e., a monitor is 'one who warns'. This meaning became 'one who warns with intent to control behaviour', then 'one who warns with intent to check (as in restrain or block) behaviour', then 'a thing that warns you of certain behaviours', then 'a thing that watches other things'. When you monitor someone else, you are a thing, and so is the other person.
The second is that the adjective 'all-seeing' is normally applied to monsters. Argus Panoptes, the Greek titan with many eyes, was a monster; so too was Sauron, epic villain of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and known as the 'All-Seeing Eye'.
By creating a system that fosters this concept of subjecting students to close monitoring, we have brought new life to old monsters. Surely it is time to stop treating schools as prisons or lunatic asylums. And yes, I am sure many educators and principals (the two are not always the same thing) will object to what I've said. To them, I can only say, "You can object to the truth, but the truth is objective to you."
'Teratogenesis' really means 'giving birth to monsters'. It comes from Greek teras which means 'something monstrous' or 'a marvel' (of the perverse sort), and 'genesis' which is now an English word adopted from the Greek for 'beginning'.
The thing is that for the last two decades or so, I've been studying education. And I never cease to marvel at the monstrosities that arise from the best of ideals. What better ideal is there but to educate the young in order to help them attain a better quality of life? (Yes, rhetorical question; yes, there are better ideals, but not many.)
But at the same time, the pathways to educating the young have spawned many monsters. One of the keys can be found in the utilitarian and pragmatic philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. In 1785, in an age of revolutions, he came up with the idea of the panoptikon, a prison in which the inmates could be observed with great efficiency. That word comes from the Greek for 'all-seeing'.
Modern schools are often designed, conceptually or physically, like Bentham's Panopticon (that's how it was transliterated into English). They tend to be surveillance-oriented, whether in terms of actual visual interdiction or in terms of what they call 'monitoring'. Every student is 'monitored' in many different ways, watched and tracked and so on.
It's important to note two points that come out of this narrative.
The first is that 'monitor' comes from the same root as 'admonish' — i.e., a monitor is 'one who warns'. This meaning became 'one who warns with intent to control behaviour', then 'one who warns with intent to check (as in restrain or block) behaviour', then 'a thing that warns you of certain behaviours', then 'a thing that watches other things'. When you monitor someone else, you are a thing, and so is the other person.
The second is that the adjective 'all-seeing' is normally applied to monsters. Argus Panoptes, the Greek titan with many eyes, was a monster; so too was Sauron, epic villain of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and known as the 'All-Seeing Eye'.
By creating a system that fosters this concept of subjecting students to close monitoring, we have brought new life to old monsters. Surely it is time to stop treating schools as prisons or lunatic asylums. And yes, I am sure many educators and principals (the two are not always the same thing) will object to what I've said. To them, I can only say, "You can object to the truth, but the truth is objective to you."
etched with acid at 11:28:00 am
2 Comments:
hmm. I think observing students and teacher is perfectly fine. It just shouldn't be too over-bearing to the point that it necessitates the modification of behavior on the part of student/teacher to avoid detection warranted or unwarranted. More importantly is the familiar question, who watches the watchmen? But I must say that the structural design looks familiar hehh.
Augie: that's because you have never not been observed and monitored before, you child of a-technological-age-gone-berserk, you... :)
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