This article seeks to question the present day proliferation of discourses related to undisciplined conduct of pupils in schools. Such propagation will be situated, within a foucaultian framework, against the backdrop of complex institutional and socio-historic realities constituted by multiple demands of government of the school subjects. It starts out with a preliminary overview of brazilian academic production concerning the disciplinary theme, and spanning over the last three decades. This leads to a problematization of the theoretical and methodological orientations of research regarding the (counter-)normative in everyday school life. Consequently, the results of a thorough investigation on disciplinary events occurring within a five year period (2003-2007) at a Sao Paulo public high school provide the empirical framework. Finally, the article proposes some analytical approaches to the problem at hand. Most notably, insisting on the fact that if the disciplinary complaints seem, at first, sympathetic to a kind of erosion of the classical modus operandi of schools, upon a second glance it becomes clear that they tend to constitute surfaces of emergence of subtle modes of control of both the teacher and student conducts, in tune with governmentalization processes acting in contemporary society.
discipline; public school; school regulations
