Schooling the Docile Body: Physical Education,Schooling and the Myth of Oppression

Abstract

There is a popular perception of physical education in Australian schools as an oppressive practice. In this paper, we attempt to qualify this myth of oppression and extend some of the arguments surrounding it. First, we build on some of Foucault's arguments to show how children's bodies were worked on in Victorian elementary schools in pursuit of the twin aims of docility-utility, a key requirement of capitalist Australia. Second, we point out that the disciplinary practices which constituted early physical education were in themselves a central part of the notion of schooling. Our argument is that schooling was primarily concerned with fostering economically productive citizens. This form of physical education and notion of schooling were available to Australian educators at this time as a result of the disembedding of social practices, driven by the increasing use of clock time, the arrival of print, the invention of childhood, and the objectification of the human body.