The Perfect Prison for Children: Elementary School as a Panopticon Stephen Henry Angelo State- Comm 6381 Introduction Every elementary/primary school student welcomed into the wide open doors of learning is also forced into the damp cell of socialization. Public education is a wonderful system for its goal to instill knowledge in people of all backgrounds. It even acts as a shaper of morals, guiding students to develop admirable character traits and learn to cooperate with others in the world. However, the gilded surface of primary schooling is merely a mask for the darkness it hides within. Society found itself morphing as far back as the seventeenth century, with the advent of public education. Children began learning the ways of the world from sources other than their parents and having increased interaction with foreign ideas at a younger age than previously common. With the patriarchal head of house hold no longer acting as the sole source of ethical code development, hegemonical power structures were forced to evolve. To counter the potential social mobility attempt that public education offered in the casting off of gender domination taught by heads of house in more quarantined times, legislative and administrative controllers had to form a structure that would encourage the continued separation and inequality between the sexes. By initially providing education only for boys and following with segregated classrooms before finally having common schooling for both boys and girls, those in power guaranteed that an embedded understanding of the worth members of each gender had was formed. This, coupled with long standing societal understandings of gender roles and accepted performances, helped to shape the public education system into a reifying prison of traditional expectations. This prison, this panopticon, would grow to outstrip the effectiveness of its outside world counterpart, no longer requiring blatantly sexist degradation and demonstrations of power. Where previously it was necessary for men to hold women down by force, with schools acting as an innocent front it became possible to claim society had moved past such sexism, and women and men remained in their respective social standings and performative roles by nature alone. This authoritative structure has become so powerful and so engrained into national consciousness, that awareness of it by individuals at any point in their life is rare. Parents are unaware of the system they enroll their children into, teachers are unaware of the system they teach their students, and young students are unaware of the system that they are both subject and enforcer of. Situationally, this manifests as a system which sustains itself without the need for any actual central presence or even central leader. Gender, gender role training, and gender performance are learned at a very young age along with more deliberate forms of socialization. Unlike its peer doctrines of socialization, there is no guiding oversight in place to ensure the correct learning is occurring. Gender is taught and learned as natural rather than as strategic concepts. Removal of explicit acknowledgement of its training functions allows gender role indoctrination at the elementary school level to exist as a perfected panopticon. To understand my claim that gender roles in elementary schools act as a perfected panopticon, we must understand three things: what a panopticon is, what gender roles are, and where through research on a particular grouping of elementary schools we can see the system operating. Panopticism As theorized by Jeremy Bentham in 1785 as a system of controlling and surveilling prisoners, such an architectural structure would function primarily through the inability of any one inmate to not be seen as a consequence of the strategic placement of the guards/observers in centralized and elevated positions (Lavoie 2011). The panopticon can be considered a marvel of penal engineering and a dystopian form of social control. Bentham conceived of the idea in order to create a more efficient prison structure whose efficiency would manifest in less need for controlling efforts and more success in subduing prisoners. The structure can be easily conceptualized. Beginning first with a tall central tower whose exterior is covered in windows for viewing outwards but preventing viewing inwards, there is constructed around it a circular building divided into numerous cells. Each cell would contain a window facing the tower that would correspond with a window on the tower itself, allowing direct viewing into the entirety of the cell. A window on the other end of the cell would allow light to enter for illumination. The prisoner could see the edifice of the tower through one window and the foreign outside world through the other. With these two windows acting as the only ways to view the world outside of their cramped cell, prisoners would be left completely unaware of the situation of the prisoners around them. Isolation provides, “a guarantee of order” and ensures “there is no danger of a plot, an attempt at collective escape… [or] bad reciprocal influences…” (Foucault 1975). Each prisoner would be extremely limited in terms of knowledge of any kind. They would know by way of the window which lets in light that there is an outside world. They would know by way of the cell surrounding them that they are forcefully separated from that world because someone in power found their actions to be unacceptable and chose to put them there. They would know by way of the window facing inwards to the tower that there was a way for those in power to observe their actions. These items would be the complete extent of their knowledge. A prisoner could not know that there were others similarly situated on each side, for the cell is constructed in a way that no sound or signal could pass through. No guarantee would exist that a guard is watching at any given time, or not watching all the time. This function of the panopticon is crucial to its working. If a prisoner could ascertain correctly the moments when a guard was watching, then they could act unlawfully without being observed and potentially receiving further punishment. There could be no way for the prisoner to know if there was one guard splitting his time between watching an indeterminate number of cells within a set work schedule or if there were myriad guards watching every cell simultaneously. Never knowing when someone might catch them misbehaving, “the prisoners would begin to self-regulate, producing a self-propelling machine of fear, paranoia, and watchedness” (Lavoie 2011). In order to avoid punishment, there can be no room for criminal activity at any time. Unlike a dungeon which hides prisoners and allows them activity in the shadows or a regular modern day prison which is layers and rows of cells open to a common center with guards and their line of sight noticeable by all, the panopticon is shrouded in mystery so impenetrable that prisoners can never be sure of their standings. “Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power… surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary… inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers” (Foucault 1975). Prisoners, however they may enter the panopticon from their former life, are socialized to the expectations of the system without even a single explicit instruction provided to them. Through observation alone is it possible to deduce the situation one is placed in, and through further observation will the prisoner come to understand the at once solipsistic and also never private reality of their confinement. While the prisoner can never make contact with another inmate and thus escape the loneliness of their own cell, they can also never absolutely know when a guard is watching them. Making matters even more advantageous to the central correctional power, the prisoners have no image in their head of those who could possibly be observing them. This faceless and unconformable overseer “automatizes and disindividualizes power” (Foucault 1975). Panopticism, while indeed terrifying, is at this point in the paper still confined in its reach to the purpose of confining prisoners. For the move towards arguing gender roles as a perfected panopticon to continue, we must now conceptualize the panoptic structure in regular, non segregated and enclosed society. Society as a Prison A panopticon freed from its towers and walls would still possess more than enough features to be successful in controlling and inducing fear in a large populace of “prisoners”. Strub (1989) conceptualized the panoptic structure as functioning within the dystopian novel 1984. Part of the popularity of 1984 is attributable to the way it epitomized the metaphor of society as a prison. It depicted an entire community ruthlessly policed by a small ruling group that deprived millions of people of any meaningful liberty or individuality. The dominant power in the novel, the governmental body known as either Ingsoc (English Socialist Party) or simply the Party, held its citizens completely under its control through use of fear and constant monitoring. The use of the telescreens – projectors with camera function which allowed Party members to both disseminate ideas and observe individuals – was crucial to the continuance of their regime. Telescreens could be understood analogously to the windows in the guard tower and the windows in the cell combined into one. Party members could look in at every prisoner at any given time, while each prisoner couldn’t look back or even know if they were being looked at. This technology naturally is not heavily implemented in our society, though argument could be made for the possibility of it. Instead, we have similar function served by wire taps, security cameras, mass media, and increasingly from social media networks. If we consider each of those mediums as either windows of the guard tower or windows in the cell, we can conceptualize our society as existing as a panopticon on some levels. There is a flaw in this structure, though, that arises from the knowledge of centers of surveillance. Despite the sheer encompassment of nearly all aspects of everyday life that the collusion of security cameras, wire taps, and social media observation creates, a cautious criminal can still find ways to break the law without punishment, or at least be guaranteed swift punishment for more minor crimes they may test run prior to larger ones. The panopticon as Bentham envisioned it precluded any “safe zone” in which the criminal could confidently act without redress quickly following. Another weakness of conceptualizing society as a panopticon lies in the surety of punishment for specific crimes. If someone decides to light a house on fire in broad daylight they are aware that both: what they are doing is against the law, and they will be arrested for their actions. In 1984, a great deal of fear experienced by the populace stemmed: From the incomplete specification of which behaviors and thoughts were prohibited. Indeed, “nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws”. Daily behavior was guided largely by the existence of well-established (but unstated) norms and by periodic negative feedback (such as sharp reprimands) for deviations from these norms (Strub 1989). Just like the prisoners in the cell of Bentham’s original panopticon, the citizens in 1984 have no set guidelines to follow. Sure, they have some awareness of what is considered good behavior and what has gotten others in trouble, but they have no certain way to determine if they are acting in accordance with their rulers wishes or not and if they will be punished without warning of their missteps. Constant uncertainty and fear are key to the proper functioning of the panopticon, and that is something society as a whole has yet to show itself capable of. The reason society is lacking in this regard is in fact the result of a solidified central police force. One might imagine that a strong police force would be a positive attribute of a prison state, but it is through their centralizing of punitive power that they block the potential of a panoptic society. Structurally, there is a single known force that can meet out punishment. Even with the presence of “window”-like technology, this destroys the important function of obfuscating the guards. Because of the ways the justice system functions, viewing society at large as a panopticon is not feasible. Instead, let us continue moving towards the goal of this paper by seeing how a particular system within the larger society can function as a panopticon, and indeed an upgraded one. Education System and Panopticism However, now more than ever before, one could argue that a new panopticon has evolved, one that relies on more than complacency and the fear of surveillance to control people’s behavior. The new panopticon also relies on media-produced fear that is further complicated by unprecedented levels of state control. Goldstein (2004) was integral to the creation of this paper through her theorizing of the education system as a panopticon due to the cultural milieu created by the No Child Left Behind legislation. The No Child Left Behind [NCLB] act was advertised to be a legislative act dedicated to the furtherance of education for all students, implemented through stricter regulations on teachers and standardized testing on students. The act has proven itself faulty at many stages, but most significantly to this discussion it has made the teacher a person to blame for student failure. Governmental oversight was deemed necessary to monitor the skills of each individual teacher and assess their performance to make sure they weren’t deficient and at fault for students doing badly in school. With the government changing the blame on bad performance from the child who did not try hard enough in school to the teacher who was not good enough at their job, parents were quick to jump on the bandwagon and berate teachers whom they claimed were at fault for their precious child’s poor performance. Adding fuel to the fire, media networks sensationalize information and egg on the angry viewers, encouraging them to see the teachers as transgressing against their sacred calling. This educational environment can be seen as a panopticon, as each individual teacher is in a sense placed in their own cell of evaluation and cannot be certain if they are doing right or wrong with their method of teaching, cannot know if they will be punished should their students do badly, and cannot know who will seek to punish them. These unknowns build upon and rely on each other to entrench teachers in fear. Since teachers are assessed individually in addition to the school as a whole, there is a sense of being singled out which causes fear. Already in fear from a sense of watchedness, teachers must next cope with their understanding that teaching and learning are not mechanical actions, so there can be no assurance for any teacher that a correct method of teaching exists which will make their students do well and ingratiate them to the invisible guards. Should their students fail, teachers then have to cope with the uncertainty of whether or not they will be punished. Convicted to leaving no child behind as the government may claim itself to be, there are too many teachers with “subpar” performance for all who deserve punishment to receive it. Teachers feeling uncertain about whether or not they will be punished fits perfectly into the model of Panopticism. Finally, the inability to predict where punishment will come from is crucial to being able to identity this as a panopticon. While above I say that they cannot know if they will be punished by the government, they also cannot know if they will be punished by either the media or parents as well. Separately, each fearful unknown could be confronted and dealt with, but in tandem with one another they make it impossible to predict and impossible to rationally deal with. This all works to make it correct to view the education system as a panopticon, but Goldstein takes it a step further to envision the system as having upgraded Bentham’s structure. The worst consequences of these policies are that they are being accepted with little resistance— so little, in fact, that many people are unconsciously becoming its carriers. In other words, such policing is so unconscious that often we are unaware that we do it (Goldstein 2004). Traditionally, the panopticon necessitates a high level of self-regulation. In the upgraded panopticon, teachers do not only regulate themselves but also each other. This internal-regulation (regulation from prisoners within the same system) is not considered by Bentham. Since he saw the prisoners eternally separated from each other in order to avoid cooperation and rioting, he had no reason to think of prisoners policing each other in order to prevent punishment. When the prisoners exist in a system where their movements are free and can observe others around them, then the situation changes slightly. Hoping to deflect punishment (from any of their enforcers) from themselves when they are performing badly, teachers will attempt to redirect focus on another teacher who is doing worse. One would think (or hope) that the teachers (prisoners) would band together and support one another against the dominant enemy. The panoptic structure prohibits this by presenting no foe that they can hope to vanquish, much less a centralized one. Instead, it makes sense to utilize strategies that limit the gaze directed towards you and focus it on another. The subliminal message goes something like this: As good “Americans,” we should report any threats and be willing to relinquish our civil liberties to remain safe. The consequence: Who needs the government to police us when we can do it ourselves? This study opens frightening doors for conceptualizing the possibilities of a perfected and long standing panopticon. While the education system under NCLB is upgraded and spreads the impetus for punishment among a variety of bases, a perfected panopticon would have no authority center at all. Such a structure would exist in a way that governance does not need to be mandated, but rather is considered natural. Blaming the teacher for students learning badly is far from a natural concept, but what about seeing men and women as essentially different in many non-biological ways? Toye (2007) readily proclaims that gender can act as a panopticon for women, finding this to be a result of the indoctrination on biological tendencies they receive. Gender Roles “Womanliness therefore could be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it – much as a thief will turn out his pockets and ask to be searched to prove he has not the stolen goods” (Riviere 1929). Gender performance is a result of social instruction rather than innately natural to each separate gender. Women do not develop in the womb with the desire to bathe and feed children and iron a man’s shirts. Men have no instinctual inclination to wear a crisp three piece suit instead of a dress. Karre (1976) argues that “Boys learn early that controlling and manipulating their environments and people around them is the expected role”. Similarly, girls learn quickly to let their opinion fade to obscurity and adopt passivity and meekness as their defining traits. These roles, embedded as they are into our consciousness, may seem strange to suggest are arbitrarily assigned and not the natural way of things. Conceiving of and accepting the existence of gender roles takes first the realization that the roles, while assigned, are not done so arbitrarily. Judith Butler (1991) gets to the heart of the issue, stating: There is no “proper” gender, a gender proper to one sex rather than another, which is in some sense that sex’s cultural property. Where that notion of the “proper” operates, it is always and only improperly installed at the effect of a compulsory system.” If you consider that a compulsory system is responsible for the creation and perpetuation of gender roles, who would you think is in charge? Would it be the gender that carries the most power, assures the world that their opposite gender exists as a compliment to them, and trivializes any of their attempts to be seen as equal? That line of reasoning is behind the feminist understanding of gender roles as performances taught to us by a dominant structure. The system promotes the dominance of men (masculine) over women (feminine), but through its function serves to lock both genders into specified performances. Women are held in a subordinate position and taught to maintain their place their through specifically self-limiting actions. Men are understood to be worthy of dominant positions, and thus are seen as aberrant when they choose not to fill such a role or as a failure when they are unable to. Odd as it may be to suggest that men are “forced” to have a dominant position over women; this statement does not condone the heirachical structuring but merely describes societal expectation. In our final step before examining the cluster of schools which I claim act as a perfected panopticon for enforcing gender roles; evidence of gendered performance in youth must be presented. While studying children’s reaction to television shows, Aubrey & Harrison (2004) found that “Boys are more likely to report same-gender characters as their favorite media characters than girls” and “girls may be more likely to pick male characters as role models than boys are to pick female characters”. An indictment of television’s perpetuation of gender roles, these results conform to the idea of men being more preferable to women, even when women are the one’s doing the preferring. The researchers found these results alarming, as “Children might perceive this as an indication that women and girls are less important than men and boys” (Aubrey & Harrison 2004). To better contextualize the controlling grip masculinity has on young boys, I turn to an autoethnographic piece. Hensley (2011) wrote of his path to becoming a bodybuilder, stating “As I reflect now, I know that I was buying into a hegemonic masculine ideal equating strength with manhood, control, and self-defense.” While the results of his bullying has put him into a position of power and domination over those around him, he recalls the bullying came in response to his lack of masculinity or reverence for male superiority as a child. His bullies attacked him physically and verbally, “suggest[ing] I was not masculine, not a man. If I did not "man up" I feared the suffering would never end” (Hensley 2011). Both the need for self-regulation from the researcher and the acts of internal-regulation from the bullies are significant to this study and will be explored in greater depth with the central case. Popularity as Preferencing- The Lobel Case However, if an individual is to participate in an activity that is regarded either as appropriate or inappropriate on a gender basis, these activities must have been labeled as masculine, feminine, or even gender-neutral in order for the individual to judge the gender appropriateness of them. If the labeling of sports as masculine, feminine, or neutral, is viewed in the light of the gender schema theory presented by Bem (1981), the stereotyping of sports and physical activities on the basis of gender would be expected to be more apparent in sex-typed individuals than in others, since these individuals process information on a gender basis to a larger extent and also need the categorizations in order to maintain their view of appropriate behavior (Koivula 1995). Observing and being able to concretely claim what you are observing is gender role indoctrination is very difficult for researchers. Where is the line drawn between willful agency and coded societal training? For this reason, case studies documenting gender role performances typically do not appear. More common are surveys and interviews from which results can be gleaned which indicate the prevalence of gender role normativity in a set location. This is the nature of the case which I base my paper around: Thalma Lobel’s Sex Typing and the Social Perception of Gender Stereotypic and Nonstereotypic Behavior: The Uniqueness of Feminine Males. In her study, Lobel (1994) took a participant sample of 251 fifth and sixth grade male students from a school district, exposed them to a video of two children playing a sport together, and had them use a set word bank to describe and rank the popularity of the boy playing games that they saw in the video. The results created a clear heirachical structure. Boys who played masculine sports with other boys received the highest popularity rating. Boys who chose to play sports with girls were interpreted as feminine and described in similarly negative ways as girls. Boys who played gender neutral sports received none of the acclaim as those playing masculine sports, but also none of the backlash as those playing feminine sports. Conclusions can be drawn from these findings which suggest the permeance of gender role understanding in the schools’ cultures. A simple display of alignment with gender role expectations is not enough to designate a school as a panopticon for gender roles, much less a perfected one. It is in conjunction with the second set of data from the study that we can begin to do that. After the initial study, participants were asked to consider the boy in the video and respond to whether or not they would like to play a sport with him. Findings from the masculine rated boys of course showed a desire to play games with the masculine boy in the video, ambivalence with playing a game with the gender neutral boy, and no desire to play with the feminine boy. Lack of desire to engage in play with the feminine boy can easily translate outside of the study into policing of the feminine boy who is not playing masculine games and conforming to his gender role. Koivula (1995) points out that just as some sports are considered the domain of men and inappropriate for female participation, some sports are considered to girly and thus inappropriate for male participation. For male sports, football in America is very securely defined as masculine. Basketball, while played by women is typically held to be masculine at younger ages. To a lesser extent baseball is, especially when softball is present as an alternative. Feminine sports, however, are much less well defined. 5-on-5 volleyball can be interpreted as feminine in certain areas, but in others it can be played by men and seen as very masculine. Jump roping (as used in the study) is a feminine sport in casual circumstances but can be masculine in competitive situations. Dance, likewise, is feminine typically but masculine in the right settings. This uncertainty of what is unacceptable echoes the uncertainty of the prisoner in a panopticon quite tellingly. Boys will internally-regulate other boys to ensure they stay within the parameters of masculinity. Examining the remainder of the findings will bring up shocking results with relevant connections to Panopticism as well. The feminine boys who participated in the study chose to answer the follow up questionnaire the same way as the masculine boys. They too would rather play a masculine sport with the masculine boy than a feminine sport with a feminine boy. Throughout the study, the feminine boys (rated as such from a prior gender identification test) could in a sense be read as betraying their true feelings. They rated the masculine boy as popular, the feminine boy and not, and would rather play a masculine sport than a feminine sport. Even in the confines of a research study with no possible ramifications on their social standing, the feminine boys felt it necessary to self-regulate. To properly interpret what is occurring in this study, a host of other pieces need to be called on to situate the findings. First, we must understand the “in house” sources for the “rules” of gender performance that young elementary students draw upon. Within the curriculum, Karre (1996) found “boys and men are overwhelmingly more present in readers than are girls or women. In active mastery stories, where the main character exhibits cleverness, problem-solving ability, bravery, acquisition of skills, and adventurousness, males are the protagonists”. At the most basic level, the make-up of a school is sexist. If we interpret the primary purpose of children attending school to be learning specified sets of knowledge they need in the real world, then gender roles can be concluded to be considered necessary. Looking to the teacher to perhaps balance this out with tolerance, we are disappointed. Richmond and Dyba (1982) discovered a strong tendency towards sexist language in elementary teachers and encouragement of gender role stereotyping. Both state provided parts of the school equation, the curriculum and the teacher, are then providing rules on gender performance for the students to follow. This is troubling, as “children will actively transform and restructure information from the programming in the form of rules and conceptions. These symbolic conceptions will then be translated into appropriate courses of action and will be reinforced by rewards or punishment of these behaviors” (Aubrey & Harrison 2004). With specific guidance from teachers and curriculum instructing them how they should behave and how they should expect others to behave, we see how students make use of the information provided to them. Within the system of public education, the students are at once constantly reminded of the presence of their judgmental peers but also encouraged to socialize at certain points as if they were free and alone. Conick-Smith (2005) notes the way in which a space that provides the illusion of privacy for the students also provides the best setting for supervision. The students from Lobel’s study had come to understand the illusion that privacy was, and held a feeling of constant watchedness. This feeling comes from the tendency of an audience in an open panoptic system. Where in a Bentham panopticon there is no gaze besides that of the guard, when we transpose the structure to an open system with a multitude of enforcers, there will always be an audience tantalized by the “jouissance of a voyeuristic gaze” who hopes to catch a prisoner transgressing (Lavoie 2011). Students know they are constantly under the gaze of others, both in their self-regulating to stay within the systems bounds, and also in their internal-regulating to prove that they are enforcers of the system who do not encourage violation of the rules. With a constant gaze by every peer, there cannot be a situation where the ploy is given up and defenses relaxed. This is apparent in co-ed group and friendship formation. When friendships are formed, one typically assumes that those coming together do so in order to share in the joys of common experiences with someone else like them. This assumption has held little truth in young child cross-gender friendships. Thorne (1993) observed that children often interact in contexts where gender is organized dichotomously, with boys and girls defined as opposing sides. In these contexts, gender becomes highly salient. Friendships may well blossom between young boys and young girls, but gender role performance will be adhered to strictly. In the panopticon, these prisoners understand that there is no moment where they can transgress without being caught. Unique to upgraded panoptic structures, the possibility of internal-regulation by a trusted comrade is possible, putting strain on any relationship that may attempt to work outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. Killen & Naigles (1995) and Martin & Muthukrishna (2011) each found that stereotypical gender roles and gender dominance was played out by both boys and girls, with attempts from members of each group who attempted to subvert norms and act in a counterstereotypic way or perform their friendship with gender equality failing. The second research specifically found that girls who befriended boys and attempted to act as equals in the friendship were frowned upon as expected, but even the boys who befriended girls and attempted to maintain a friendship without employing masculine domineering strategies failed. With all the fear of being watched and perhaps punished by their enforcer peers, one would imagine there were more severe penalties for transgression than just a lack of popularity. For elementary students, policing of gender roles is a common practice. McCarry (2010) found that boys and girls would seek to develop masculinity in wayward boys through often violent or emotionally distancing measures, and punished when they presented a performance not conforming to the strictly created but unspoken rules. Bullying from masculine boys is expected, as is emotional distancing from girls who wanted to ensure that the boys did not continue performing femininity with them. Strangely though, girls would also bully the boys (who they felt needed to learn masculinity) further emasculating them in the process. The process of aligning with gender role expectations, to self-regulating to stay in line with them, to policing and inter-regulating to force others into order, and finally to enforcing through physical or emotional measures can get out of hand in any situation and fast. Low, Freyman and Brockman (2010) worked with six schools on attempting to defuse severe bullying and aggression problems resulting from gender role defying behavior on the part of bullied students. The research suggested that the lack of friendly support and expectations of retaliation added to the problem initially caused by gender role policing, claiming that more support and an atmosphere that did not encourage retaliation would work in conjunction with an intervention program. Though all of this works in support of describing gender role indoctrination in an elementary school as a panopticon, I’ve still yet to adequately explain what moves it from an “upgraded” panopticon to a “perfect” panopticon. What distinguishes a perfect panopticon from an upgraded panopticon is the lack of a central authority. A regular panopticon is characterized by an unknown and deindividualized authority which still is housed in the central location of the tower. While there is no definite face of enforcement, it is still known to the prisoner that someone united group is punishing him. In the upgraded panopticon, the deindividualized authority morphs, representing a variety of still faceless enforcers. Here there remains a primary central authority, but there are also secondary authorities with the power to punish the prisoner. This results in the internal-regulation among prisoners which adds another layer of constant fear, thus upgrading the structure. What I argue is a perfected panopticon is one that exists without any central authority. To apply gender roles in explaining it, there is no legislative force that mandates men and women act within their gender roles. In the school setting, there are teachers, peers, parents, media, and curriculum that teach and enforce gender role performance. However, none of these are a central authority that all prisoners must obey. Each student may be prisoner to their classmates and their particular parents, each class to their teacher, and each school of students to their cultural surroundings. None of the above forces act as a constant and – if not individually identifiable – at least presumable presence. This perfects the panopticon because there is no need for any exertion of force onto the system. In both the traditional and upgraded panopticons, the central authority had to choose to continue endorsing and maintaining the system with their time and energy. The prison had to be kept open, and the NCLB act had to remain on the books and enforced. With gender roles, the panopticon is self perpetuating and never in need of reaffirmation. Without interference, the system could potentially continue indefinitely, as it has shown little signs of slowing down from its own internal weakening over the last few centuries. Conclusion Recognizing gender roles in schools as a panopticon is not done in order to stand in awe at the marvelous structure or glorify its existence. Only in knowing the reach of its power can there be hope of dismantling it. Though it is not necessary for all who wish to combat gender performance norms in to conceptualize of it specifically as a panopticon, having a grasp of its scope through some frame of reference is necessary. Describing it as a prison, and a prison that our youngest children are locked up in no less, is a stylistic choice I make to stress the need for change. Parents concerned with the policing that occurs as a result of their natural sex typing may choose to encourage their child to act in accordance to whichever gender performance they wish, and have compassion for others who perform differently. Teachers who are shocked that their words can be responsible for delinquent behavior can seek to use more inclusive language and make it a mission to require the same of their students in their academic work. Legislative forces, as they have been forced to do in the past, may change their approach to schooling in order to make the experience more tolerant of all involved. As Escalara (2009) suggests, children learn gender specific behavior as a result of segregation as certain ages. Removal of segregation by gender at any time is a possible road legislative forces could travel down. There are so many possible ways to begin breaking down the panoptic structure from both the inside and outside, that it becomes almost laughable to call it perfect at all. That action rendering my decision to call the structure perfect may occur as a result of my paper is my firmest hope. In this paper I have examined the interplay between the centuries old structure of the panopticon and the millennia old system of gender role performance and imaginatively synthesized the two into an oppressive whole which imprisons young school children. Presenting an over-the-top horrifying vision of gender roles in elementary schools was done to demonize the system in question. Had the goal been satirizing the system as ridiculous, which it surely is, I could have surely presented it through another lens. As Butler (1995) claims that “gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original…” perhaps it would be appropriate to view gender as a simulacrum, a hyperreality of sorts. Baudrillard (1981) defines a hyperreality as a simulacrum of a simulation, a false reality created by the interpretation of another false reality. It is fitting to view gender roles as such, for we have lived with them as a basic truth of society for so long that “We can no longer imagine any other universe” (Baudrillard 1981). Interesting as this view would be though, it would run counter to my hope to illuminate for the purpose of instigating change. Gender performance normativity cannot be viewed as an immutable fact of society, for it must be disposed of in order for gender equality to become a new reality. Works Cited Aubrey, J., & Harrison, K. (2004). The gender-role content of children's favorite television programs and its links to their gender-related perceptions. Media Psychology, 6, 111-146. Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and science fiction. In N. Badmington & J. Thomas (Eds.), The routledge critical and cultural theory reader New York, NY: Routledge. Butler, J. (1995). 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Eating their way out of the patriarchy: Consuming the female panopticon in angela carter's nights at the circus. Women's Studies, 36, 477-506. doi: 10.1080/00497870701593721 The Perfect Prison for Children 23 RUNNING HEAD: The Perfect Prison for Children 1