Catching the Disc: Panopticism, Surveillance and Punishment as a Pedagogical Tool in the Acquisition of Colonial Languages in Post-Colonial Schooling

ABSTRACT This article analyses the use of ‘the disc’ – a curious pedagogical post-colonial artifact, intended to discourage native languages – a tool employed in teaching colonial languages in schools in parts of the post-colonial world. The disc assumes many forms depending on where it is employed, but it is usually an object fashioned to be carried, or worn as an article of clothing, or a cap making it reminiscent of the Dunce Cap. The role of the disc and its variants is the same: to leverage surveillance and shaming and channel them towards the purposes of instilling school discipline, promoting moral education and often as a pedagogical tool. However, the use of shame for these purposes has since fallen out of favour in the West (Stearns & Stearns 2017). Using Michel Foucault’s notion of panopticism to illuminate the workings of this artifact, this article focuses on shedding some light on the indignities suffered by speakers of native languages in such post-colonial school systems. As Foucault (1980, 30) wrote, power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions, attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives. This article’s main gist is on this one aspect of colonial legacy in education: the language policies that put a premium on mastery of colonial over native languages. Among the issues typical in post-colonial discourse, this vestige represents apt exemplification of deleterious aspects of colonialism that continue to present perverse challenges in post-colonial societies. It however concurs, in spite of the blistering critique of the emphasis on colonial language use, and in light of a rapidly globalising world, with Kevin Forster’s (2003) analysis, which concludes that in instances where contemporary values like empowerment and perfection is gained while sacrificing autonomy and freedom from surveillance, subjugation could be seen as worthwhile.