The junior lyceum entrance examination : a Foucaultian genealogy

Abstract

This study rests on an association conceived while reading for a Masters degree in Philosophy of Education between two of my areas of interest, namely the study of the works of Michel Foucault and the Junior Lyceum Entrance Examination. As a teacher it is somewhat startling to realize that when I was a child I sat for the very same exam that I prepare students for. Twice in a lifetime a successful outcome at this examination has been, and still is, an objective towards which I have had to strive vigorously. If ever proof was needed of the life defining importance of the Junior Lyceum Entrance Examination this is surely it. On the other hand, the works of Michel Foucault, particularly his genealogical approach of going back to the emergence of discourse in order to trace how most of the life-constituting truths are in reality just 'fabricated in a piecemeal fashion from alien forms' (Foucault, 1984a, p. 78), have shaken the foundations on which my conceiving education rest - those very same foundations upon which I decided to become an educator. Once I started to look at education from this perspective, I couldn't but examine the discourse from which the Junior Lyceum Entrance Examination grew; to became central, not just to the specific Year group I teach, but to all of primary education, through the same lens; the discourse around the technology that has got me to try to anticipate the requirements of the educational regime and work to meet its standards. Thanks to this Foucaultian perspective, the Junior Lyceum Entrance Examination is revealed as a central technology contributing to a disciplinary society. True to the Foucaultian analysis methodology, this study is not intended to determine whether this technology has been a 'good' or a 'bad' technology Rather it seeks to make one discern how 'dangerously' power loaded such discursive practices can be. It is also intended to open a whole new area of thinking for all the teaching practitioners, to start questioning the rudiments of their so much loved vocation.