Academic literature on the topic 'Fundamental insubordination'

Civilian control of the military is a fundamental attribute of democracy. While democracies are less coup-prone, studies treating civilian control as a dependent variable mostly focus on coups. In this paper, I argue that the factors predicting coups in autocracies, weaken civilian control of the military in democracies in different ways. To capture this difference, I advance a new comprehensive framework that includes the erosion of civilian control by competition, insubordination, and deference. I test the argument under conditions of an intrastate conflict—a conducive environment for the erosion of civilian control. A large-N analysis confirms that while intrastate conflict does not lead to coups in democracies, it increases the military’s involvement in government, pointing to alternative forms of erosion taking place. Further case study—Russia’s First Chechen War—demonstrates the causal logic behind the new framework, contributing to the nuanced comparative analysis of civil-military relations across regimes.

In the 21st century, it is inappropriate to have to ask whether criticising a political regime or exercising freedom of speech could lead to criminal charges and criminal punishment. In contrast, a hundred years ago the restriction of people’s freedom of speech, especially in relation to political matters, was quite extensive, both in autocratic Russia and elsewhere. The article addresses the legal situation in the Estonian territory of the Russian Empire until 1918, when insubordination to state authority and inciting mutiny were punishable by law. On 17 April 1905, the so-called Freedom Manifesto gave people freedom of speech, and the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire entered into force one year later, wherein fundamental rights were enumerated, among them the right to express one’s convictions, both orally and in writing. At the same time, however, restrictions continued to apply to the fundamental rights declared, which at times were very strict in the tsarist state and rendered the space for exercise of those rights extremely narrow. The article provides an overview of the penal legislation that was applicable within the Estonian territory at the dawn of the 20th century, which set boundaries to freedom of speech and of the press. Considered separately is the case law of the Tallinn Circuit Court pertaining to charges of instigation of mutiny, with the aim of showing how these provisions were applied in judicial practice and the context in which the state restricted people’s fundamental rights. In the Tallinn Circuit Court, it was primarily newspaper editors who were charged with incitement to mutiny, because they allowed the publishing of various calls to action in relation to workers’ movement propaganda and demands for better conditions and rights for workers. At the beginning of the 20th century, class warfare was considered a crime against the state, and the case law demonstrates how the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press were restricted via strict penal-law measures.

The sanctity of work dates back to the very creation of humanity and even has some divine origin too, so from time immemorial the human race had being destined to work and work well. Also, it has become an acceptable belief that there is dignity in labour and that work well done gives purpose to life. Obedience to constituted authority is another fundamental principle that is considered sacrosanct for any civilization to thrive. Consequent upon the foregoing, it is to be expected that shirking of work and disobedience to lawful order was bound to attract severe repercussions that exposes the offender to disciplinary actions and/or punishments. This case comment dissected the case of Avre v. NIPOST and appraised the penalty for insubordination as meted out on the appellant by the respondent and the position of the Nigerian courts with respect to abandoning official responsibilities without lawful excuse. It was ascertained that irrespective of the wide acceptance of diligence and dedication in the pursuit of official assignments as the hallmark of excellence, there were some who were hell-bent on enthroning mediocrity and shoddiness as acceptable practices, trying desperately to hide under technicalities like lack of fair hearing (where there was fair hearing) to mislead the court — a tactics the law clearly frowns at and the courts rightly discountenances. This work sought to even-out the responsibilities of employers and employees with the emphasis that the law will always be on the side of right, no matter whose ox is gored. The expectation to use the law as machinery to surreptitiously occasion injustice under the guise of being the under-dog was quickly discovered and justice decisively delivered accordingly. Indeed, he who comes to equity must come with clean hands.

La teoría de la insubordinación fundante sostiene que todos los procesos emancipatorios exitosos, que todos los procesos de construcción de soberanía real y todos los procesos de desarrollo que lograron resultados positivos fueron el resultado de la insubordinación fundante, es decir, de una insubordinación ideológica contra el orden ideológico establecido por el poder dominante, más un impulso estatal adecuado que permite que el poder (los elementos de poder tangible e intangible de un estado) se convierta en un acto. La primera potencia que construyó un orden ideológico destinado a inhibir la construcción del poder nacional de otros estados y a inhibir el desarrollo de otras naciones fue Gran Bretaña a través de la predicación de la teoría de la división internacional del trabajo y el libre comercio. De ahí que la construcción del poder nacional y el desarrollo económico estuviera vinculada, a partir de entonces, al rechazo de la división internacional del trabajo y del libre comercio. Para demostrar nuestra hipótesis, en este artículo se analizan los casos de Estados Unidos, Alemania y Japón.

This is a teacher's report describing the use of History of Mathematics as both a methodological resource and a knowledge object over fourteen lessons with two ninth-grade middle school classes. Following the students’ suggestion, the development and adaptation of the didactic sequence were carried out collaboratively the Mathematics teacher, History teachers, and members of a research group on Creative Insubordinations in Mathematics Education. The sequence included activities that incorporated a variety of pedagogical and visual resources—such as videos, texts, lectures, debates, and workshops—which explored counternarratives that challenged the classical Eurocentric historical perspective and highlighted contributions from underrepresented groups. The History of Mathematics played a key role in contextualizing ninth-grade learning objectives and in fostering personal and identity-based connections between the students, historical figures, and mathematical content, with positive repercussions beyond the classroom.

Self-report studies are gradually becoming the predominating current of empirical research in criminology. This is particularly the case with etiological studies of deviant behaviour in young persons. However, the present popularity of self-report studies is not accompanied by improvement of their methodological aspect. No important development of the methodology of these studies has occured since the pioneer works of Short and Nye. It is the fundamental aim of the present paper to point to these of the methodological questions on which the further development of self-report studies will depend most. In Chapter I, the first works have been discussed in which the self-report methods were applied. The works anaiyzed are those of Murphy at al. Porterfield, as well as Wallerstein and Wy1e. Particular attention has been given to the methodological and substantive aspects of the series of studies carried out by Short and Nye. Chapter II contains the presentation of findings of the Polish self-report studies. The first attempt at a self-report study was made in the early 1960s by Malewska and Muszyński. A national random sample of pupils of the sixth grade of primary school n =2,222) was examined by means of an anonymous questionnaire. The basic aim of the study was to define the children's attitude towards the ownership rights and the situations in which violation of these rights is admissible. Besides, the authors were interested in how children perceived given situations to be thefts. Thus the question whether the respondents ever happened to take another person’s property was but a fragment of the questionnaire which served another purpose in its essence. To the question: "How often do you happen to take another person's property?", 0.8 per cent of the children answered ,,very often," 4.2 pet cent - "often," 26.6 per cent - "sometimes," and. 34.5 per cent-,,seldom’’ Like Malewska and Muszyński, also Szemińska and Gołąb aimed at defining the moral sense of young persons: pupils of primary schools (n=61) and inmates of educational institutions (n= 64), asking also about the extent and structure of deviant behaviour. The respondents answered anonymously in writing. The two compared groups of boys differed from each other considerably as far as both the frequency and the seriousness of thefts commited was concerned. While the majority of "delinquents" admitted a large number of thefts, the "nondelinquents" 'in their vast majority owned up to 1-2 thefts at most, mostly of small objects they stole from their classmates or next of kin with the intention to use these objects themselves." The study of Szemińska and Gołąb raises doubts, both as regards its merits and methodology. Among other things, in spite of the fact that various offences were committed by both of the discussed groups, the authors use a dichotomic pair of notions: delinquent and non-delinquent, failing to put these words in quotation marks which are necessary in this situation. In the years 1976-1977, Ostrihanska and Wójcik conducted a large self-report study of a random sample of pupils of grades 3-8 of Warsaw primary schools. 50 schools were selected at random, in which the study was carried out by means of a questionnaire in 120 classes, also randomly selected (n=3,177, of which there were 1,631 boys and 1,546 girls). The self-report study was part of a broader research programme aimed at estimating the extent of social maladjustment in the youth and defining its causes. Among other things, the questions concerned the following phenomena: school failures, truancy, running away from home, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, free riding, destroying another person’s property, other acts against property (including thefts, frauds, robbery-,,taking something from a younger child by constraint"). The possible answers were as follows: ,,never", ,,once'’, ,,2-3 times’’, ,,4-10 times’’, ,,more frequently’’ . As expected, both the extent and intensity (frequency of perpetration) of deviant behaviour were higher in the group of boys as compared with girls. For instance, as few as 15.3 per cent of the eldest boys (aged 15) stated that they never took another person's property while the percentage of non-stealing girls among the eldest group was over two times higher (38.0 per cent) In this age group 16.3 per cent of boys stole a dozen or more times, while percentage of girls who committed multiple thefts amounted to as few as 1.4 Instead, no greater differences were found between boys and girls who admitted having stolen once. In boys, the most frequent were thefts from allotments and gardens (35.2 per cent), thefts from parents (22.8 per cent) and thefts in self-service shops 18.1 per cent). On the other hand the most seldom were thefts from cellars (5.8 per cent), and thefts of wine in shops (9.7 per cent). Taking another person’s property ranked fourth among the types of deviant acts included IN the study The first position was taken by lies (88.8 per cent of answers in the affirmative). Near1y 90 per cent of boys admitted having chribbed anothe child’s exercise, 25.2 per cent- having destroyed property 2.8 per cent ran away from home, and 2.4 per cent tock drugs. There was an upward tendency with age: elder boys admitted a greater number of deviant acts, and actuallv commited these acts more frequently. The next self-report study was conducted by Ostrowska and Siemaszko in 1979. It included 2,991 pupils of Warsaw secondary schools (1,197 boys and 1,795 girls). Non-random selection was applied. Young persons of the first and last grades were examined by means of anonymous questionnaire. Among other variables, it contained a list of 42 questions about various types of deviant behaviour, acts of infringement of disciplinary regulations, transgressions and offences, from most trivial (like stealing a ride or failing to return change from shopping) to comparatively serious like house-breaking or robbery. All questions had the same set of possible answers: "never," "once of twice," several times," "a dozen or more-times," ,,more frequently." The examined young persons were characterized by rather a high level of deviance. In the group of boys for instance,539 persons (30.9 per cent) admitted having perpetrated a half of the 42 acts included in the questionnaire at least once, 2.8 per cent of them having committed 27 to 31 acts, and 2.3 per cent-32 to 42 acts. Thus together, 6 per cent of the examined boys were highly deviant. Since the study also revealed a close relationship between the number of acts committed and the frequency of their perpetration, the abovementioned 6 per cent of the examined persons (about 300 boys) are "multiple recidivists" in the interpretation used in self-report studies. Considerable differences in the level of deviant behaviour were found in respect of age and sex. For instance, the level of deviance in the group of elder boys was four times higher on average as compared with younger girls. Among the most widespread acts there were free riding (94,6 per cent of girls and 96. 1 per cent of boys), failure to return change from shopping (79.6 and 84.1 per cent respectively), petty frauds in shops (67.6 and 84.0 per cent respectively), and failure to return a found object to its owner (69.9 per cent of girls and 83.8 per cent of boys). Aggressive acts were relatively frequent, particularly among boys. Battery "without an explicit causes” was comitted by 20.2 per cent of boys and 6.5 per cent of girls.11.6 per cent of boys and 2.8 per cent of girls participated in affrays in which dangerous weapons were used. Among thefts, comparatively less serious acts predominated. 16.9 per cent of girls and 31.6 per cent of boys admitted having perpetrated petty thefts. 8.2 per cent of girls and 14.6 per cent of boys stole change from call-boxes. Serious thefts were committed by 1.6 per cent of girls and 4.6 per cent of boys. Ostrowska and Siemaszko repeated their study in 1981 on a random sample of students of secondary schools in five typically agricultural provinces. 2,144 persons (1,702 boys and 420 girls) aged 14-19, students of 29 schools, were examined. They young persons who participated in the study went to :89 classes that were selected at random. The extent and structure of deviant behaviour were examined by means of a questionnaire identical to the one applied in the previous study Also the way in which the study was carried out in the classes was the same. In the group of acts termed insubordination, the most widespread one was smoking at under: 14:78,2 per cent of boys and 44,8 per cent of girls admitted it. Somewhat less than 10per cent of the examined persons admitted having run away from home, 2 per cent of them having run away several times. Over 20 per cent of the respondents admitted having had their identity papers checked by the police (30 per cent of boys) and somewhat less than 7 per cent took drugs. Among various types of dishonest behaviour the most widespread one was free riding- over 80 per cent. Nearly a half of the examined persons admitted having failed to return a borrowed object; 7 per cent of them did it repeatedly Also nearly 50 per cent of the respondents stole money from their parents:15 per cent of them did it several times, and 5.6 per cent-more frequently. In the group of offences, thefts predominated. 24.9 per cent of girls and 32.4 per cent of boys admitted having stolen an object or money to the value of under 100 złotys (the percentage amounting to 38.6 in the group of eldest boys); nearly 20 per cent of them repeatedly stole money from their parents. About 25 per cent of the examined persons committed shop- lifting, the percentage of shop-lifters in the group of eldest boys exceeding 40. The acts of breaking into cellars, recesses, attics etc., were committed by 15 per cent of the respondents 6.1 per cent of girls and 17.2 per cent of boys. The most seldom offences against property were: robbery (2.4 per cent of girls, 10.1 per cent of boys), stealing from call-boxes (6.6 per cent of girls, 7.8 per cent of boys), thefts of money to the amount of 500-1000 złotys (6 .2 per cent of girls, 7.0 per cent of boys), failure to pay the bill in a restaurant (3.3 per cent of girls, 5.6 per cent of boys) and thefts of over 1 000 zlotys (2.8 per cent of girls and 5.6 per cent of boys). Among aggressive behavior, brawls and beatings prevailed (25 per cent of girls and 50 per cent of' boys). In Chapter III the most important methodological problems related to self-report studies are discussed. In self-report studies, both direct (e. g. ,,have you stolen), and indirect and euphemistic questions (e, g. ,,have you ever happened to take and not to give back. ") can be found. The indirect questions undoubtedly less threatening. Yet on the other hand, those asked directly are probably easier to interpret explicitly. There is no proof as to the superiority of any of these ways of asking. However indirect and euphemistic questions prevail in self-report studies. The degree of abstractness of questions varies. The good point of clearcut questions (e.g. ''have you ever taken and failed to give back some article in a supermarket") is that the highly detailed formulation may help the respondent to recall an event which the researcher is interested in. On the other hand, their weak point is that the respondent cannot be relied upon to admit having acted in another, very similar yet not identical way. Unfortunately, the majority of self-report questionnaires contain questions about inseparate classes of phenomena. Hence the danger of one and the same act being counted several times. In self-report studies, the number of questions about deviant behavior is an important problem. One should bean it in mind that the deviant acts taken into account by the researcher are always nothing but a certain sample of the totality of such acts, the parameters of which are usually unknown (e.g. Christie et al.). The greater the number of acts taken into account, the more standard the "sample of acts" seems to be with respect to the "totality of acts." There are great differences as regards the number of acts included: from several (e.g. Hirschi, Dentler and Monroe) up to several dozen (e.g. Gibson). Today time limits are usually introducted as regards the period between the act and the moment of examination one year as a rule), though Short and Nye introducted no limits as regards the period during which the respondents committed the admitted acts. Shorter periods can also be found. (e.g. Simone et al, - 2 months, Lipton and Smith - 18 months). The limits are among the most important problems in self-report studies, since it is on them that the estimation depends on the level of deviance of the entire examined group, as well as the precise estimation of the separate respondents levels of deviance. The views on the optimum time limits are not uniform. Different sets of possible answers to the questions about deviant behaviour can be found: from most precise (e.g. "once," "twice," etc.) to most general and ambigous (e.g. "seldom," ,,frequently"). A strictly enumerative set of answers may be methodologically correct only in the case of a short period (one year or less). In the remaining cases, this set may be misleading as one hardly expects the examined persons to remember past events with such accuracy. The questions about deviant behaviour may constitute a separate block (nay a separate questionnaire), or they may be put among other questions. There are no studies showing the good and weak points of each of these two solutions. It seems more proper however, to "mask" the aim of the study by interlarding the questions about deviant behaviour with those neutral or concerning "acts of kindness." When the level or "depth" of the examined person's deviant involvement is defined, an important problem emerges: acts with different "charges of deviance are taken into account here. Therefore, one can either try and attach different weights to them, or treat all of them as equally serious. Christie et al. ranked acts according to the judges opinion. Morash weighted them with the use of Selling and Wolfgang's scale of seriousness of offences. In Hindelang's study, the weight of acts was defined by specialists by means of a fivepoint scale. Hepburn weighted deviant acts basing on appraisals done by the examined persons themselves. However in the vast majority of self-report studies, no weigh ting procedure is applled. As shown by Farrington, weighting procedures fail to contribute substantially to the increase in accuracy of measurement. An anonymous questionnaire, though most frequentlv applied, is not the only method of gathering information about unrecorded deviant behaviour. E, g. Gold (and other researchers who applied Gold’s scale) employed a questionnaire interview In Belson's study a card sorting procedure was applied. This method of gathering information is particularly popular in England (see also Gibson, Farrington, West, Morash, Shapland). Hirschi examined his respondents with a signed questionnaire. Should the differences in veracity of answeers of a signed and anonymous questionnaire prove to be inessential (and there is much to be said for it, e.g. Krohn, Waldo and Chiracos), it would be advisable to use the signed version (because of the possibility of comparing the separate sociometric choices or comparing the findings with external sources of information). The main objection raised to self-report studies concerns the doubtful veracity of the data gathered this way (Dentler, Liska). A relatively small number of studies concerned the reliability of self-report studies, e.g. the stability of findings in time. This is the most difficult problem in the case of a strictly anonymous questionnaire as the separate respondents cannot be retest. Only global distributions are compared then (e.g the scores of respondents in a given class) Siemaszko finds no valid differences between the distributions answers about deviant acts between a test and a retest which took place there months later. Dentler and Monroe found that 92 per cent of answers to a test and a retest two weeks 1ater were consistent, yet the respondents could still have remembered their previous answers in this case. Belson conducted a retest after a shorter period still: one week. The percentage of consistent answers amounted to 88. Also Farrington’s study revealed rarther a high degree of consistency in spite of the two year's interval. The percentage of mistakes in the test or retest was 3.2 The tendency to inconsistent answers was less explicit if the general scores of the examined persons on the deviance scales were analyzed and not the proportion of their affirmative and negative answers to the separate questions (11.5 per cent of the, examined persons found themselves in another quartile than Before). The results obtained by Shapland were parallel. The results seem to point to a high stability of self-report questionnaires in time. Hardt and Peterson-Hardt distinguish the following methods of defining the validity of self-report questionnaires: comparing with external sources of information, comparing with a known group, lie scales, and defining face validity. The most frequent method of defining the validity of questionnaires used in examination of unrecorded deviant behaviour is the comparison of the respondents' answers with other reliable sources of information. Erickson and Empey found that none of their respondents concealed their contact with the police or an offence with which they were charged. According to Gold, the probability of contacts with the police diminishes monotonically together with decrease of frequency of offences admitted during the examination. Gibson, Morrison and West found a high consistency between offences revealed by means of the self-report method and the contents of the police files. Hindelang found a distinct positive interdependence between high scores in the deviance scale and having a record in the police files. Farrington, as well as Farrington and West, examined the so-called predictive validity of self-report questionnaires. It appeared that those of the examined persons who score highest in deviance scales at the moment. A, have records in the police files much more frequently at the moment B. Gould compared the scores in the Short,/Nye scale with those in the recorded crime scale, finding a high, positive and valid interdependence. Results of self-report tests were also compared with other sources of information (teachers, colleagues, social workers, etc.). As shown by Jessor, Graves, Hanson and Jessor, results of the self-report tests tally with appraisals of the degree of deviant involvement made by teachers and colleagues of the examined persons. Also Gould compared the respondents' statements with appraisals of their behaviour made by their colleagues and teachers. The interdependence proved to be as expected. Hardt and Peterson-Hardt compared statements in which the examined persons admitted having robbed parkometers with the official data concerning the extent of these thefts. The respondents appeared to have answered truthfully. In many studies scores of school children and of institutionalized youth were compared. As demonstrated already by Short and Nye, although the inmates of reformatories scored somewhat higher than students of normal schools, nevertheless the profiles of distributions and their structure were analogous. Voss found the correlates of deviance in groups of school children and institutionalized youth to be parallel. This finding was confirmed in many other studies. The only exception here is the parents socio-economic status. Uniformity of views could not have been reached as yet as to whether the positive interdependence between the socio-economic status and deviant behaviour found in the majority of self-report studies is artificial or real (see i.a. Tribble, Axenroth, Hindelang Hirschi and Waise). Much can be said about the validity of a self-report questionnaire only on the grounds of the distributions of answers to the separate questions, Siemaszko found the percentage of affirmative answers to decrease monotonically with the increase of seriousness of the act and its scarcity in the general population. In the same study the percentage of affirmative answers to the question about being checked by the police was found to be higher than that concerning detention: also the level of deviance of elder as compared with younger and boys as compared with girls proved higher, These results agree with theoretical expectations, Hardt and Peterson-Hardt found the percentage of affirmative answers to the questions about acts commited during the last year to be generally lower than it is the case with questions that concerned also acts commited longer before. Not all of self-report questionnaires contain lie scales. Moreover, the researchers are not in agreeement as to the usefulness of such scales this type of studies (i.a. Farrington, Smart, Hardt, Peterson- Hardt). I seems that lie scales should be employed Questions should however be avoided which might be correlated with deviant behaviour, as in such case there is the danger of the lie scale becoming the reverse of that of deviance. The popularity of self-report studies was determined by the effectiveness of this method (relatively low cost 1ittle time consuming, promptitude and the possibility of examining large samples) Today, self-report studies have become popular in spite of the fact that many important methodological problems have not been solved yet.

AbstractResistance involves a range of actions such as disobedience, insubordination, misbehaviour, agitation, advocacy, subversion, and opposition. Action that occurs both publicly, privately, and day-to-day in the delivery of care, in discourse and knowledge. In this article I will demonstrate how resistance plays an important (but often overlooked) role in shaping health and well-being, for better and worse. To show how it can be largely productive and protective, I will argue that resistance intersects with health in at least two ways. First, it acts as an important counterbalance to power; undermining harmful policies, disobeying unfair instructions, challenging rights abuses, confronting those who would otherwise turn a blind eye and even holding ourselves to account when simply accepting the status quo. Second, and beyond being oppositional, resistance is a constructive, productive force, that is fundamental to imagining alternatives; new and better futures and perhaps most fundamentally resistance is cause for hope that we are not resigned to the status quo. While there are numerous examples of how resistance has been employed in service of health and well-being, resistance is not always rational or productive, it can also harm health. I will briefly explore this point. Finally, I will offer some reflections on the intersections of power and health and why this makes resistance both distinct and important when it comes to how it shapes health and well-being.

Abstract The essay argues that the idea of the United States as a classless society was never a faithful representation of the U.S. socioeconomic reality, but constituted a myth elaborated since the 1830s by the first generation of U.S. economists to oppose the insubordination of Northern white workers, their mobilization through strikes, their politicization of class, and their critique of wage labor. It was precisely to counter the workers’ discourse, the essay maintains, that the first U.S. economists, most importantly Henry Charles Carey (1793–1879), developed an ideological representation of U.S. society as a classless structure devoid of fixed boundaries, in which industrious individuals could improve their condition through labor and in which social positions reflected a scale of talents and merits. By studying the early writings of Carey, but also of Theodore Sedgwick (1780–1839), Francis Wayland (1796–1865), Henry Vethake (1791–1866), Alonzo Potter (1800–1865), and Francis Lieber (1800–1872), the essay shows how economists used the myth of the classless society to scientifically legitimize the coming of capitalism to the United States, as well as to delegitimize class conflict. This anti-labor reaction, the essay argues, marked the very emergence of political economy in the United States as a science aimed at justifying the order of society through a mystified representation of its power relations, while the myth of the classless society would persist as a fundamental ideological pillar in the legitimation and naturalization of American capitalism.

We live in an era in which the ‘active learner’ has become accepted as the fundamental goal of good teaching from early childcare to university education (Silberman; University of Melbourne University). In this paper we reflect upon the arts of stillness in contemporary classrooms based on research in schools across Sydney (Watkins and Noble).Part of the context for this paper is the way ‘activity’ has been uncritically elevated to a pedagogic principle in contemporary education. Over several decades a critique of traditional or more formal approaches to education has produced an increasing emphasis on learning that is said to be more engaged often under labels such as ‘discovery’ or ‘experiential’ learning, enquiry methods or ‘learning by doing’. This desire to give students a greater role in the educational process is admirable. It is also seen to be more democratic and ‘relevant’ to young people (Cope & Kalantzis). Positioned against a straw man of ‘passive learning’, characterised by the dominance of teacher direction, rote learning and individuated desk work, this active learning or progressivist perspective on education privileges student ‘ownership’ of curriculum, group-based activity and the ‘doing’ of things. Stillness is characterised as a ‘problem of passivity’, a ‘disease’ of ‘chalk and talk’ (Lucas 84-85). In its most extreme form, this emphasis on activity has been translated into ‘educational kinesiology’ and ‘brain gym’, in which physical movement is seen to have a direct, beneficial effect on learning, often in place of content-based curriculum (Lucas 50). In this paper we don’t engage in a critique of ‘active learning’ per se; rather, taking seriously Foucault’s insistence on the productivity of discipline, we argue stillness is crucial to scholarly labour.Part of the context for this research is public anxiety about ‘Asian success’ within Australian education systems. Students from ‘Asian’ backgrounds are often perceived as having a cultural proneness towards educational achievement (Duffy 28). These perceptions rest on assumptions about ‘Asian values’ of family, sacrifice, hard work and success (Robinson). These assumptions, however, are problematic (Wu and Singh), and carry a concern that such students are ‘passive’ in the classroom, deferential to traditional forms of education and obsessed with exams. Certainly, despite their success, these students don’t conform to what many teachers favour as the ideal learner within the dominant paradigm of progressivism (Cope & Kalantzis 4). These anxieties have also emerged in response to the proliferation of coaching colleges which are seen to transgress western notions of childhood.The research – based on a parent survey in 10 primary schools, interviews with Year 3 teachers, parents and students and classroom observations in six of these schools – explored the extent to which a ‘disposition’ to academic achievement can be explained by ethnicity or relates to a complex set of socio-cultural factors. The report from this study engages with the broad question of the relationship between ethnicity and, what we call, following Bourdieu, the ‘scholarly habitus’ (Watkins & Noble). Against a pathologising of cultural background, it examines the ways achievement is embodied as orientations to learning through different home and school practices. Here we use examples drawn from the observations to focus on the capacities for self-discipline and stillness that can foster achievement. Against the tendency to equate stillness with inaction, we argue that a 'productive stillness' underlines capacities for sustained attention and self-direction. This bodily discipline entails a state of composure, a 'staying' of movement which entails a readiness for action necessary for academic tasks. While not all stillness is ‘productive’, we argue there are forms of stillness which are conducive to the formation of the 'scholarly habitus' (Bourdieu, Logic). The Bodily Capacity for Scholarly LabourBourdieu (State) refers to dispositions that are valued in education: self-discipline, the ability to work intensively, confidence, independence, contemplation, abstraction and the value of excellence. Yet he is less interested in exploring these capacities in relation to teaching practice than in discussing them as forms of social distinction. Educational applications of Bourdieu also focus on the social reproduction of inequality, separate to the technical competencies of schooling, although Bourdieu does not differentiate between them (Lareau and Weininger). To understand the uneven distribution of educational competencies, however, they first need to be examined as bodily capacities that are enabling.To do this, let us contrast two classrooms in Broughton PS, a large school in a low-to-mid SES area in Sydney’s inner south-west with large numbers of Arabic-speaking and Asian students, and smaller groups of Anglo, Pasifika and African students. One class is an enrichment class, in which high ability students are placed and where there is a strong focus on academic work. The other class has many of the least able students. The enrichment class comprises students of mostly Chinese background, with a smaller number of Vietnamese, Indian and Anglo background. There is one Arabic-speaking student but no Pasifika students. The second class is more diverse, and has many Pasifika students, with fewer Chinese, Arabic and Anglo students.The first time we saw the enrichment class was after recess. Students shuffled into their classroom and sat down at their desks with minimum fuss. Many of them pulled out books and read them while waiting for their teacher, Heather, to enter. If they talked, it was quietly, and often about what they were reading. They sat still: the posture of most students was upright, even when they were working. Some students occasionally rocked back, stretching arms and legs. Overall, however, these students had mastered the arts of stillness. Sonia, of Chinese background, is a case in point – she was always work-focused, sitting still and getting on with it. Even during unstructured discussion she remained task-orientated displaying a substantial investment in her work.In the second class the students bustled in, taking a while to settle. Kids stood around chatting, playing, shoving each other until the teacher, Betty, shouted at them, which she did a lot. The noise of the students never abated, even as the teacher was giving instructions, and it frequently reached high levels. There was constant movement as students came in late, and teachers and students wandered in and out. Kids visited other kids; one student rolled on the floor. When they were directed to sit at the front, several squatted, some sat away from the area, several simply stood. When they were at their desks, many slouched forward or leant back; a large number of the students rocked on their chairs during the sessions, some constantly. The directions of the teacher to put ‘feet on floor’ and ‘hands on heads’, or putting her fingers to her lips to gesture for them to be quiet, shouting or by counting back from 5 had little effect. This class was a very active group, but little work got done. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness appropriate for academic activities. In the enrichment class, the teacher didn’t have to check noise or movement very often – the students had internalised these behaviours as capacities that directed their work. Occasionally, they policed each other if they were disrupted. There was occasional talk, but it tended to be in whispers. If the task required it, there was plenty of discussion; and some of the students didn’t hesitate in challenging the teacher when she made a mistake. These students’ stillness and quiet was by-and-large productive and appropriate. We call this a state of composure, a readiness for activity. When required, this class was capable of concentration and application; or, alternatively, discussion. We call it composure because it links to Foucault’s (162-3) insight that modern forms of discipline rest on a ‘composition of forces’ which not only produce an efficient organisation but individuals with a disposition towards acting skilfully.Betty’s class, in contrast, was in a state of decomposure, with unproductive movement and noise. They were rarely still, posture was poor, and many students spent little time attending to work or the teacher. They were rarely ready for work when the teacher called them to it. Rather they saw a change in activity as a chance for movement and chatter. This was not the caged resentment that Willis described in his analysis of resistance to school amongst working class boys. It was not a form of conscious insubordination, though a similar form of ‘self-damnation’ was evident.Sonny, a Samoan boy in this class, in contrast to Sonia, struggled to stay on-task for more than a few minutes, and clearly had little investment in his work. He generally didn’t care where he was at with the task, and expected the teacher to constantly direct him. Sonny was a very large child – the teacher commented that his physical presence in the class was an ongoing problem as he was unaware of other children, constantly bowling them over. The teacher struggled to manage Sonny’s body. He talked frequently and loudly, and leant back on his chair despite being placed in a way that pinned him against a cupboard. His location in the class was telling. He was sitting at a table with students who followed tasks, separated from the usual troublemakers. This is significant for another reason of which Sonny was not fully conscious. At one stage in the lesson he sat bolt upright and pointing at each of his tablemates, yelled, ‘Miss, why am I sitting with all Chinese?’ Betty apparently hoped that being with the quieter Chinese students Sonny would not only be out of harm’s way, he might absorb the skills of application they possessed!This uneven distribution of capacities was also seen in the way different classes undertook a maths assessment task on fractions. While other classes treated it as a general lesson, in the enrichment class it was completed in test conditions, which the teacher later commented the kids loved. The teacher explained the task and the conditions – that there should be no copying, to work in silence, concentrate on the questions, the amount of time they’d get and what to do when they finished (further maths work). She initiated an enthusiastic class discussion of the topic (fractions), reminded them of work they had completed in this area and got them to go through basic aspects of fractions. The task was distributed and students immediately filled in their name and the date. When they commenced their work she moved around the room monitoring their progress. Occasionally she directed a student to reread the instructions and towards the end she reminded them to check their work and then gave them a five-minute warning. There was little movement, fiddling or talk, unless it was a question of clarification directed to the teacher. Most finished and moved quickly onto their maths workbooks. There was a lively discussion afterwards as the class went through the questions and discussed the answers and procedure. Overall, there was a clear sense of a strong investment in the process and the product: with many showing real annoyance when they got things wrong, and deep pleasure when they were correct. While the contrast between these classes is clear, and show an uneven distribution of particular capacities, we should be careful not to make a simple assumption that stillness, quiet and obedience are good, and their opposites bad. Apart from the fact that the enrichment class showed itself capable of vociferous and physical behaviour (as when they were completing a craft activity), the point is really about the appropriateness and productivity of these embodied competencies for particular tasks, and the ability to move between these capacities when necessary.Stillness, and its attendant capacities described above, is not a good in and of itself. There is another kind of stillness that we found in a class in another school we observed. Chestervale PS was in a middle class area in a northern suburb of Sydney that was favoured by parents of Chinese background. This class was by no means as unruly as Sonny’s – classroom behaviour was generally well managed by the teacher, and the students were fairly adept at following tasks. Two students we observed – Walter (of Chinese background) and Eric (of Anglo background) – seemed at first glance to be well-behaved students who did their work. Watching these boys for several hours, however, we became aware of the fact that for large chunks of the classroom time they did nothing, but were not recognised as doing so. Walter spent 45 minutes without adding anything to his writing – a straightforward comprehension task. This was also run in near-test-like conditions of quiet concentration, and Walter, apart from a few minor distractions, seemed to be focused on the pages in front of him but actually wrote nothing in the lesson. The teacher strolled around checking students’ work and giving advice or praise as needed – she managed the class quite well – but seemed not to notice when she checked Walter’s work that he hadn’t written anything. Eric, rather more obviously distracted, but who nevertheless seemed to complete 1-2 questions, got by with little work by being, like Walter, generally quiet. His distractions amounted to little more than staring at the contents of the shelf next to him and fidgeting. Walter and Eric were acquiring specific types of capacities – skills in getting out of work that are also fundamentally unproductive. Walter’s general abilities allowed him to float through the class, but Eric’s failure to develop productive capacities was demonstrated in his poor reading and writing levels. We don’t wish to participate in the academic romanticisation of such tactics as ‘resistance’, however, because while this ‘ordinary art’ is diversionary it does not ultimately work to ‘the advantage’ of the student (de Certeau 29-31). Rather, it is simply disabling.This example highlights two important points. First, as mentioned, stillness and quiet are not in themselves signs of educational ‘productivity’ – such capacities always have to be seen in context, related to specific tasks and aims. Many teachers may encourage stillness and quiet – even reward it – simply because it produces an orderly classroom. Second, we should be wary of looking to ethnicity as an explanation of the uneven distribution of capacities: Eric, as an Anglo student, isn’t subject to the kind of cultural pathologising usually reserved for students of particular ethnic backgrounds and Walter, clearly, did not match the stereotype of an academically engaged Chinese student. These issues are taken up in the larger report. Disciplining the Scholarly HabitusOur point is not just to outline some differences in abilities, but to begin to analyse how these contribute to the dispositions, or lack thereof, of the scholarly habitus, to think about how these capacities relate to particular kinds of practices at home and school which instil specific kinds of discipline, and thus eventually to elaborate links between schooling and cultural background. Neither popular pathologies of cultural difference nor sociologies of education which reduce these complexities to either class or gender adequately account for the capacities and practices at stake here (Watkins and Noble).The comparative account of these vignettes of classroom practice provide examples of different disciplinary forms demonstrating the ways in which school structures and pedagogic practices affect students’ engagement in learning and overall performance at school. As indicated, the notion of discipline used here does not simply pertain to control, operating as a negative force inhibiting learning – though a disabling discipline of control was apparent in the pedagogy some teachers employed and also framed some whole school practices. Discipline, here, has a broader meaning. As Foucault intended, it also refers to the knowledge and skills which need to be mastered in order to achieve success in particular fields. Foucault famously analyses the roles of discipline in the functioning of modern institutions. He describes the emergence of the school in modern times as ‘a machine for learning’. Despite his much-repeated insistence on the productive and enabling nature of discipline (and his insight that discipline ‘is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, … but of composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine’), it is the machine-like and oppressive quality of discipline that is often the focus. In relation to the nineteenth century school, for example, he describes it as a ‘morality of obedience’ based on a prescriptive discipline of absolute silence and a Pavlovian process of ‘signalisation’ and response (164-7).Sonia’s class (the enrichment class), however, is not one where passivity or docility is the rule – and illustrates better the form of disciplined, productive stillness crucial to educational activity. As this first group of students demonstrates, this discipline takes a material form, whereby students’ bodies are capacitated through the control and focus they embody. This recalls Foucault’s other focus captured in his view that ‘a disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture’ (152). This discipline predisposes students towards particular types of endeavour; a discipline that takes the form of dispositions as in the scholarly habitus. Differing degrees of discipline resulting from the repeated performance of certain practices is what distinguishes the three groups of students in this paper.Writing, listening and talking in class are all forms of labour that require bodily control as well as forms of knowledge. Sonia, for example, evinced capacities of stillness, quiet, attention, self-direction and self-discipline which disposed her to engaged learning. This is a state of composure which evinces a readiness for activity. When required, she was capable of sustained application. This is not to be mistaken for docility – her stillness and quiet were productive for academic engagement. In contrast, many in Sonny’s class were far from composed. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness and quiet or the capacity for self-control in an educational environment. They manifested different types of bodily capacities which incline them, like Sonny, towards disengagement. Eric and Walter are different cases yet again. They displayed a degree of quiet and stillness that was unproductive, that didn’t ready them for engaged activity.This sense of bodily control also operates at basic levels of mastery as well as readiness for intellectual activity. Indeed, low-order capacities are stepping stones for higher order skills. It is difficult to develop literacy, for example, without mastering the physical skills of writing. Such skills require a certain posture and control for perfecting letter and word formation. Such mastery, for example, is needed for writing to become ‘transparent’: the student stops ‘thinking’ about forming the letter or word with the pen, and concentrates on the content of their writing. The physical nature of the labour of writing stops being a conscious task and becomes a largely unconscious capacity, which lends itself to the development of capacities in composition, analysis and abstraction. Neither Walter nor Eric had developed a mastery of the pen or their own body. In the case of Eric, Deirdre, his teacher, commented that he had ‘immature fine motor skills’, which affected his writing. She pointed out that ‘when your writing doesn’t come easy it is going to take longer’, which meant Eric ‘rarely completes things’. ConclusionAs Vitalis argued thousands of years ago, with writing, the whole body labours (cited in Ong 95). But this form of labour entails stillness, self-control and the bodily capacity for sustained intellectual engagement. Educational practice needs to not only return to an appreciation of the arts of stillness but to rethink the ways in which activity in learning is understood; the ways in which an active mind is reliant upon a composed yet capacitated body and the particular pedagogies that, from the early years of school, can promote this form of corporeal governance. ReferencesBourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Polity, 1990.———. The State Nobility. Trans. Lauretta Clough. 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