Manual for secondary school teachers in Mexico (1968): archaeogenealogy of a pedagogical device

Abstract

Published in 1963 in the USA under the title Using Effective Discipline for Better Class Control, and in 1968 in Mexico under the title Empleo de una disciplina eficaz para el mejor gobierno de la clase, this pedagogical manual was produced by the American professors Robert L. Schain and Murray Pulner as part of a collection of manuals for secondary school teachers, published in the USA and in Latin America. Taking this teaching manual in its dimension as an event and archive, the article seeks to carry out an archaeogenealogy of forms of government in the pedagogical manuals of modernity, recognizing the emergence of this manual within a grammar of forms of classroom governance and, therefore, as a pedagogical device. It is thus divided into two sections: the first is entitled “The teaching manual as archive and pedagogical device,” and the second, “Pedagogy as a technique for governing conduct.” In the first part, the notion of archive is presented based on Foucault and Didi-Huberman, in order to demonstrate how this concept makes it possible to recognize the pedagogical manual as an intertwined set of statements that meet and are organized anachronically, as a support of surviving times. It also seeks to demonstrate how this manual operates in the educational field as a pedagogical device. In the second part, it analyzes how this document emerges in its singularity, as a proposal to overcome ineffective disciplinary forms and to constitute modern, fair, and effective disciplinary forms.