Power/Knowledge for Education Theory Article

Imagine going to a restaurant with a multiple-page menu in an unfamiliar language. You ask the wait staff for assistance because it's your first time at the restaurant. The person proceeds to give suggestions based on the listings. The pasta dish sounds nice from the title and the restaurant employee describing the dish. You order your food. It comes out to your surprise. In front of you is a plate of raw vegetables and half-cooked pasta, not al dente. It does not look appealing, nor is it what you expected. You have yet to learn what the chef was thinking, nor do you understand if the sous chef was a part of making your dish. What was the recipe? Could a fire in the kitchen have prohibited the food from being fully prepared correctly?
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​This inadequately prepared vegetable pasta dish is the equivalent of reviewing Chia-Ling Wang's article "Power/Knowledge for Educational Theory: Stephen Ball and the Reception of Foucault." Not being a philosophy scholar nor having any knowledge of Foucault before reading the author's article, the intended audience for this article was those in the field of philosophy, not anyone researching educational theory in meaningful ways. In the beginning, the author describes two parts of the article: Stephen Ball's work and accepting Michel Foucault's concepts of power/knowledge into his own work and suggesting problems with the promotion of Foucault's theories. The second part was to take a different philosopher's work, like Gilles Deleuze, to refute Foucault's ideas of power and knowledge. Wang gave much thought to writing this journal article about educational theory from philosophers' points of view. However, it would be fair to say that anyone outside of the field of philosophy would need clarification, similar to the restaurant illustration. This article had ingredients that needed to be prepared as described. Second, areas in the article had unrecognizable ingredients, which left this reader going to additional sources to try to understand the thought patterns, organization, and specific things written to draw a conclusion about the article. 

The author writes about Foucault with educational theorists in mind, remembering that the power/knowledge concept was turned upside down by wanting to change the structure of school systems. Wang argues that Stephen Ball's alignment with Foucault's power/knowledge concept was restricting. In several places, Wang gives notions of circular fallacies with suspicions of sovereign power without giving real context to what this means concerning Foucault's context and description of power/knowledge. Foucault (1982, p. 777) states his work is not about power but what things turn people into subjects. Is this true? Was this the reason the author brought up subjectification in this article? If Wang's intention in considering Stephen J. Ball's work in educational theory was to find errors or faults with the critique, slippery slope fallacies were examples given, such as when talking about educational management being the new Panopticon. This is a word that this blogger had to look up because it sounded like something from a science fiction thriller. The author adding Deleuze's viewpoints of the outside of power/knowledge appeals to contradictory conclusions teetering on a slippery slope. Additionally, this article eluding to Foucault distancing himself from the Marxist views related to power will leave a reader wondering if this is a form of mudslinging. Adding this portion to the article didn't add value.
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From what I gathered from this article, Stephen Ball, influenced by Foucault's philosophy on power, desires knowledge in educational theory that aligns with some of Foucault's thinking on the subject. In education, if students are the subjects, power in subjects brings about an adaptation with effects and consequences. Students will use their power/knowledge for learning outside of the philosophy of Foucault, Ball, and others. Wang improving this article could be by not giving suspicions and speculation of educational technology, power/knowledge of Ball's ideas based on Foucault's constructs with objections from Deleuze and other scholars with a more logical approach for readers who are not philosophers being left with confusion. Philosophers present day or in the future will look at the work of Foucault, Ball, and others perhaps creating a menu of works that are insightful, thought-provoking, critiqued or simply understandable with an appetite for more.

References
Wang, C. L. (2011). Power/knowledge for educational theory: Stephen Ball and the reception of Foucault. Journal of philosophy of education, 45(1), 141-156.
Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. Critical inquiry, 8(4), 777-795.
Image by Lukas Bieri on Pixababy
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