Lancaster schools synchronized pupils’ bodies through measured spacing and simultaneous action

Evidence

The classes were taught ‘silently to measure their steps, when going round the school in close order, to prevent what else would often occur from numbers, treading on each other’s heels, or pushing about. In this case, measuring their step commands attention to one object, and prevents disorderly conduct. It is not required that the measure should be exact, or be a regular step; but, that each scholar should attempt to walk at nearly a regular distance from the one who precedes him.’ The monitor of each class was also responsible for ‘the cleanliness, order, and improvement of every boy in it’. All instruction was received standing, which was said to be better for the health, except at certain periods when they returned to their benches and sat down for the writing exercise. The exercise followed numbered instructions (to be memorised by the monitors), with all pupils writing the same words or the same letter, starting the word or letter at the same moment and finishing it at the same moment. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 227

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the author’s own reading lens—the disciplining of bodies in space—and connects to the ruler-and-compass geometry threading through this book and to Foucault. — connects to: Sync and body-presence are required for affective resonance in teaching — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 286; Physical classroom movement dismantles the desk’s implied hierarchy of truth — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 259