Continuing to read Christian Privilege in US Education & having thoughts. There's a lot in the book about the connection between the expectations of monastic life and K-12 education, especially in younger grades--the policing of bodies, the surveillance, the obedience.

As the authors say, "It is made to line up and follow, to be silent, compliant, and most of all, obedient." That's nursing school to a T, isn't it? My high school and undergrad weren't like that, but when I went to nursing school, I felt like I'd been sent back to jr high.

Or elementary school, even. The student's body "is informed what it can and cannot adorn." It is "ever about control, punishment, discipline, and the possibility of redemption."

And of course the book compares things to monasteries, but we nurses were never the monks or the priests--we were the nuns, the handmaidens to the physicians. We "silently [accept] the...notion that education (just as God before it) knows best."

And physicians know best. But we who have a lack of control over our own avocation (there's a word), over health care, can control our students. And our new nurses. We require "submission and subjugation," just as we were/are made subject and submissive (and dismissed?).

"The religiously inspired goad of shame and compulsory discipline still reigns."

"The need to discipline bodies along a timetable, the desire for submission to a single entity of power at the head of a cellular building, and ultimately the requirement that students confess to be saved."

If you're more than 5 minutes late 3 separate times, you may be withdrawn from the class.

Dresscodes. "Incivility." "Professionalism." And we can't forget "non-compliant," which may not be a word we specifically use to describe students, but the intent is very much the same as when we describe patients that way.