Now imagine yourself in a classroom. Although different places with different purposes, the structure of both of these remains remarkably similar. The idea of schools being referred to as prisons usually comes not from the teachers, but the students. They long to break the mold that teachers cast upon them. Prisons are used in the same way as schools. The population is conformed and rehabilitated from their past state to the authority's desired level. The panopticon is ever-present in prison systems, but is just as present in common grade-school classrooms. .
The structure of the Panopticon is a circular structure with cells in a doughnut shape around a central authority figure. Michel Foucault describes this structure in reference to society in his essay Panopticism. An originally architectural figure designed by Bentham, the Panopticon was designed to hold prison inmates cheaply. It positioned the inmates such that they could be viewed at all times by a central tower with a guard inside. The guard was able to see the inmates, but the inmates were not able to see the guard. This gave the impression that the inmates were constantly being watched. Unbeknownst to the inmates, the guard was not able to watch all the inmates at the same time. The inmates were also in such a position that they were isolated from each other. The reasoning for this was to separate their collective resistance and for the authority to break the remaining resistance on an individual level and achieve more success. Such structuring provides easy molding of the inmates to the desires of the authority.
Education is designed to teach what is important and essential to the students for the task at hand, or their entire lives. But who decides what is important? The teachers simply pass on what school principals think the students should learn. The principals pass on what school boards think the teachers should teach.
