The places of contemporaneity and the school of control: Chartographies of power within the educational system

Abstract

This text is a result of a research project that is still in development and tries to understand how the educational system is being restructured to meet the new social and cultural demands of contemporaneity. Looking more specifically at the present educational system, we observe a growing decadence in the traditional forms of education. The school, an institution created to meet the needs of modern disciplinary society, is trying to connect with these new demands and the different times and spaces engendered by them. This text is result of a research done at a public elementary school, located in a city in the northeast of Brazil that has been under intervention by the federal prosecuting counsel for the past two years. This school is based on an extremely new organization that brings together federal, state and municipal government, society and private companies. Control is the organizing element of the power relations in it. Based on some theorists who reflect on contemporaneity, its different lines and the society of control, the article tries to understand how power acts within the school structure. I use the fictitious name “Mangue” to refer to this specific school. I also use fictitious for others schools and people in this text.

Keywords: school, power, contemporaneity.