Education and Genealogy

Studies on school dropouts allow for a variety of approaches and interweave the most varied perspectives to deal with education, institutions, governments, the market and individuals. In view of the multiple possibilities for clipping, it is important to discuss how this issue is permeated by the machinery of truth production, by subjects, knowledge and their power effects. At the same time that dropout functions as an element that is frowned upon and should be banned from education systems, instigated by Michel Foucault's genealogical perspective, we problematise the discourses circulating in two Mathematics degree courses and how, contrary to what is generally said or written, it is seen as a benefit for institutional progress. Discourses on dropout have produced specific ways of organising courses, prioritising certain ways of student life and helping to sustain truths that establish hierarchies of knowledge. They also make it possible to establish places for subjects, subjectivise them and, immersed in the techniques of biopolitical governance of populations, reaffirm specific relations of knowledge and power.