Who Decides What Is Normal?

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and historian of the twentieth century. In History of Madness, published in 1961, he traced how European societies came to confine people labeled mad in special institutions, and how medicine then claimed to know what madness is.

He found a pattern that runs through schools, hospitals, armies and prisons: the power to define what is normal. Through tests, records and examinations, institutions measure people against a norm, sort them, and train them to fit it. Foucault called this normalization. It works quietly, often through experts acting in good faith.

His point was not that every category is false, but that categories have histories and serve purposes. A related lesson, Nothing to Hide?, describes his use of the panopticon.

The reading groups

A school sorts seven-year-olds into reading groups named after colors. Within a term, children in the slowest group start calling themselves bad readers.

A teacher asks when the groups began, who designed the test, and what the label does. She finds the test was meant for scheduling. Once she sees how the label shapes the children, she changes how the groups are named and moved.

Try this today Pick one label used about people at work or school, and ask who created it, when, and what it lets them do.