Panopticon and Education

             In the Panopticon Letters by Jeremy Bentham, he describes an observation house primarily to be used for prisoners.  He explains how in this house the guard will be able to see everyone prisoner however the prisoners will be unable to see where the guard is.  He explains that this concept can be used for other facilities such as mental hospitals and schools also. 

The purpose of the panopticon is to improve behavior of the prisoners or people inside of it.  Bentham believes that the use of this system in schools will allow for not only improves behavior but also in improved education and studying habits.  He believes that with the use of these observation houses you can always have someone watching the students during study hour, also since each student is in his own cell they will not be distracted.  Thus leading to better grades and smarter students.  Often today we see some uses of security in schools that mimic the ideas of the panopticon.

The use of security and the ability to watch over students to monitor behavior has greatly increased in the past few years.  For example in my high school we had security cameras in everyone hall, some rooms, and the parking lots.  This reminds me of the panopticon very much. When the school installed these cameras they had assemblies for all the students so inform them of the new technology.  They let us know that at any time of the day or night the cameras would be on and if we caused any trouble or miss behaved they would automatically know about it.  After that most of the kids acted and presented themselves better when they thought they were in the presence of the cameras.

Also I feel like there is uses of panopticon principals in this school to an extent, for example I the dorms.  With the use of the RAs the school can better monitor your behavior in the dorms.  The RAs have the ability to go in the rooms and check to make sure you don’t have any illegal substances and they can also monitor you based on your noise levels and what they may be hearing from other residences.  Because of this most people are very cautious of how they act in the dorms.  You act with a better manner because if you are caught doing something wrong you could be written up or kicked out.

Through these examples and the letter by Jeremy Bentham we see that the idea of the panopticon is very effective.  The idea that it will make people behave better because they always think they are being watched seems to be true.