FROM POTENCY TO DEFICIT: THE SCHOOL AS AN APPARATUS FOR THE PATHOLOGIZATION OF EXISTENCE

Abstract

This article examines how the school institution, under the influence of neoliberal 
rationality, has transcended its educational function to consolidate itself as a device of control and 
optimization of life. It is argued that, immersed in the logic of capital, the school aligns itself with 
mechanisms that promote productivity and conformity, viewing the body and subjectivity as human 
capital to be enhanced. The historical analysis of the concepts of normal and pathological, influenced by 
authors such as Canguilhem and Foucault, highlights the social construction of "truths" about health and 
behavior, which legitimize the pathologization of human existence. From this theoretical framework, the 
text demonstrates how the modern school, through its disciplinary apparatus, began to manage 
childhood, converting it into an object of biopolitical intervention. The central critique is directed at the 
instrumentalization of knowledge such as medicine and psychology which, under the pretext of inclusion, 
act to normalize subjectivities that resist the norm, transforming diversity into a deficit to be corrected. 
It is concluded that, rather than acting as a space for emancipation, the school operates as a tool for social 
adjustment that priorizes functionality and productivity over singularity and the potency of life.