First published in 1990, this book was the first to explore Foucault's work in relation to education, arguing that schools, like prisons and asylums, are institutions of moral and social regulation, complex technologies of disciplinary control where power and knowledge are crucial. Original and challenging, the essays assess the relevance of Foucault's work to educational practice, and show how the application of Foucauldian analysis to education enables us to see the politics of educational reform in a new light.

Part 1: Foucault and Education 1. Foucault and Educational Research 2. Foucault Under Examination: the Crypto-Eduationalist Unmasked Part 2: History, Power and Knowledge 3. The Genealogy of the Urban Schoolteacher 4. Educational Practices and Scientific Knowledge: A Genealogical Reinterpretation of the Emergence of Physiology in Post-Revolutionary France 5. Docile Bodies Part 3: Discourse and Politics 6. Deconstructing Hegemony: Mulitcultural Policy and a Populist response 7. Management as a Moral Technology: a Luddite Analysis 8. Education and the Right's Discursive Politics: Private Versus State Schooling