Student resistance to the surveillance curriculum

Abstract

The growth of surveillance in UK schools in recent years has resulted in the development of what can be labelled as the surveillance curriculum. Operating through the overt and hidden curricula, contemporary surveillance practices and technologies not only engage students in a discourse of control, but also increasingly socialise them into a ‘culture of observation’ in which they learn to watch and be watched, accepting unremitting monitoring as a norm. This paper examines how the surveillance curriculum operates through observation, discourse and simulation, before drawing upon elements of Gary Marx’s typology of resistance to consider student responses to new surveillance technologies, such as CCTV and Internet monitoring devices. It is concluded that although the surveillance curriculum seeks to control, it also provides a space within which students can forge their own identities through playful resistance, (re)configuring the ‘algebra of surveillance’.