FORMATION OF STUDENTS’ BODY BUILD AS AN ELEMENT OF WESTERN EDUCATIONAL STRATEGY (IN M. FOUCAULT’S THEORY)

Abstract

Human corporeality is directly related to the space of education, although education is interpreted as, first of all, an intellectual process of cultural heritage transmission. Nevertheless, the formation of student’s physical body build is an important component of the state educational strategy. In accordance with the objectives and requirements of state and society there can be observed global changes in human corporeality within educational activities: the transformation of the body as a biological phenomenon into a socio-cultural phenomenon or “politically subjected body”. The authors use Michel Foucault’s ideas as the methodological base of their study of a student’s body transformation processes. Foucault’s ideas suggest that power influences an individual and their authentic behavior through the disciplining of their body, that the aim of the new type of power – the bio-power – is to increase the productivity and efficiency of a human body in the conditions of capitalistic industrial production, and that school is a specific disciplinary area, which allows to meet governmental demand for a new method of control via the production of “obedient bodies”. The authors come to the conclusion that in the modern educational model, despite democratization and humanization processes Foucault’s trends persist because education continues to be the part of the technocratic discourse. Modern school is a disciplinary space fenced off from the outside world, where there is a rigid hierarchy and a system of differences, physical drill, regulation, etc. All these are conditioned by the fact that school honors a governmental request for a technocratic person.