SCHOOLING THE DOCILE BODY - PHYSICAL-EDUCATION, SCHOOLING AND THE MYTH OF OPPRESSION

There is a popular perception of physical education in Australian scho ols as an oppressive practice. In this paper, we attempt to qualify th is myth of oppression and extend some of the arguments surrounding it. First, we build on some of Foucault's arguments to show how children' s bodies were worked on in Victorian elementary schools in pursuit of the twin aims of docility-utility, a key requirement of capitalist Aus tralia. Second, we point out that the disciplinary practices which con stituted early physical education were in themselves a central part of the notion of schooling Our argument is that schooling was primarily concerned with fostering economically productive citizens. This form o f physical education and notion of schooling were available to Austral ian educators at this time as a result of the disembedding of social p ractices, driven by the increasing use of clock time, the arrival of p rint, the invention of childhood, and the objectification of the human body.