What is a discourse?
“Discourse is the means by which institutions wield their power through a process of definition and exclusion. What he [Foucault] means by this is the way particular discourses or discursive formations define what it is possible to say on any given topic. A discursive formation consists of a body of unwritten rules which attempt to regulate what can be written, thought and acted upon in a particular field” (John Storey 92).

What are the functions of discourses?
The discourses are to “‘determine and constrain the forms of knowledge, the types of normality and the nature of subjectivity’ (Raman Selden 106) in order to produce subjects who conform to the accepted pattern of the community” (Neil Campbell 125).
Paul Rabinow suggests that “discursive formations surround the young, ensuring that ‘human beings are made subject’ through the ‘normalizing judgments’ of the social/communal group”

Episteme:
“Foucault argues that overt, physical discipline has been transformed culturally into more subtle, internalized control emerging from the very practices and knowledge existing within the community at any one time, what he terms an ‘episteme’” (Neil Campbell 126).
“An episteme . . . may be called a paradigm . . . a model of cognitive work. It is a basement (sous-sol) of thought, a mental infrastructure underlying all strands of the knowledge (on man) at a given age, a conceptual ‘grid’” (J. G. Merquior 38).

The discourse on model children:
What is its ideal intention?
What is its actual intention?
How is the ideal intention transformed into the actual one?

The fabrication of model children:
How are model children fabricated by the discourse?

Limit and transgression:
Model children do not dare to transgress limits—accepted social norms.



Surveillance
Jennifer M. Gore suggests that surveillance “was found frequently during our observations—where surveillance was defined as ‘supervising, closely observing, watching, threatening to watch, or expecting to be watched” (235).
Through surveillance, “teachers monitor students, and students monitor each other. Surveillance singles our individuals, regulates behavior, and enables comparisons to be made” (Gore 236).

Normalization
“Foucault highlighted the importance of ‘normalizing judgment,’ or normalization, in the functioning of modern disciplinary power. He explained that such normalizing judgment often occurs through comparison, so that individual actions are referred ‘to a whole that is at once a field of comparison, a space of differentiation and the principle of a rule to be followed” (Gore 237).
“Educating is about the teaching of norms—norms of behavior, of attitudes, of knowledge” (Gore 237).

Exclusion
“The category of exclusion was used in my research to mark the negative side of normalization—the defining of the pathological. Foucault refers to exclusion as a technique for tracing the limits that will define difference, defining boundaries, setting zones” (Gore 238).