Narrative Essay On Foucault's Panopticism

Time after time again we would tattle tale on each other. A family of four kids, I am sure you can only imagine all the fights that went on during the early Saturday mornings when we were up, but not trying to wake mom and dad. It would all start after the TV shows we all agreed on finished. Chaos usually started shortly after we could not all agree on a TV show or a movie. Whoever had the controller was usually seen as the “bad guy” only because they would never put on what everyone else wanted or it was three to one. Mom and dad would wake up shortly after the yelling or crying started. No one could tell the truth of what actually happened. This is when dad would say the magic words, “Okay then mom and I will just go back to the room and …show more content…
Everywhere we go we are being “watched”, even if we are not. In Foucault’s Panopticism he states, “Everyone locked up in his cage, at his window, answering to his name and showing himself when asked”, not giving the prisoners much freedom to explore who they are (182). As we went to school starting at the age of five, we never got the chance to explore who we really were. In class we sat next to who the teacher said to sit next to, and didn’t get to pick what classroom we sat in for the eight hours we were locked up in school. When the teacher called roll call we were required to answer and make our presence known so that the teacher knew we were actually who we were, as some kids liked to say here for no reason. It was a way for the teacher to know who was present for the day, or “it was the great review of the living and the dead” because if no one answer then that usually meant that person was out sick for the day (182). As the years went by, roll call became a daily routine. The teachers would always threaten the kids that missed a lot, saying the cops are watching their attendance, and will come get them and their parents if they missed too many days. As a first grader, you didn’t know that only the principle reported those things, and the cops were not really watching you. This is just one of the many ways the teachers would scare kids to make them come to school. Teachers would also tell us the hallway police, a teacher that was on duty during the day, was watching all the cameras around the school not to misbehave. If we were running in the hallways, the hallway police would come catch us. If and when I ran in the hall I never got caught, but was always scared that I would. When someone was caught running in the hall, it was by chance, but we had no idea. Once caught they would then face a disciplinary action, time out from recess or silent lunch. Every “wrong” action at school had a