Grading Vs Panopticism

The grading of written works, in the area of education and academia, is used as the method for evaluating a student’s ability; however, the ability of the student directly correlates to the standards by which their work is graded against. The standards and grading, following from Foucault’s Panopticism, are a method for controlling the students, as they discipline them into a certain type of writer and person. Upon analyzing the grading of example essays, such as from a 1923 project that sought to normalize grading across secondary school English departments in the United States of America, it becomes clear the grading of these essays is not resting on an objective, natural standard, but, instead, only stands upon the subjective intent of the

The most blatant failure of the first essay to meet current grading standards is the horrendous failure to follow the rules of English. Expect, even with these failures, the essay is easily understood. Although “with popo bush. they broke ten” (2) does not follow English grammar, as it was just read by the reader, it clearly can be read. Therefore, the current policies appear to prevent lower socioeconomic classes from applying their own dialect in a formal setting, even if the dialect does not cause misunderstanding. If the intention to prevent the use of this dialect is ignored, the first and second essay would be matched in grading value with the fourth, at least in the category of writing quality. Similarly, grading based on the content of the essays shows a clear bias to a certain style of writing. The prompt states, “How I Learned a Lesson,” but does not appear to ask: what the lesson is, why the lesson is valuable, why the lesson is broadly important or applicable. A cursory inspection of the essays with this topic in mind quickly refits the essays into a differing order. The second essay, for example, failed, according to the given grading, because it fails to give detail and appears to ignore the prompt. But, at the start of the essay,

The students who partook in the assignment were given the same amount of time, the same conditions, the same prompt, and were supervised by a teacher during the writing period. Foucault uses all these descriptors to describe a physical panopticon. Despite the existence of different individual’s ability to work in a time-based manner, may it be because of a disorder, disability, simple natural difficulty, all students were forced to complete the essay in fifty minutes. The only way to help ensure all the students can complete the essay in this time is “If... , there is... no waste of time” (Foucault, 288). Of course, the lack of waste does not ensure the proper surplus, instead it seeks to assist. However, if the student must work to gain the proper amount of surplus without having the standard moved to him, the idea of a time limit can be easily related to grading standards. By not wasting time, the student is given an opportunity to strive to gain the ability to finish the assignment in time; by creating thesaurus and having guides to the English language, the poor students can be forced to strive to gain the ability to write in a higher-class, formal english. Likewise, when the students are placed under the same conditions or a “house of certainty” (290), particular students must