ABSTRACT
In the enactment of judgement and the practices of testing, evaluation, and comparison, a particular kind of truth is told about the authors, one that articulates "discursive currency', that is, ways of thinking and talking about themselves, to themselves and to others. Numbers constitute 'a regime of truth offers the terms that make self-recognition possible'. This, as M. Foucault puts it, is the face of truth that has been 'turned away from one for so long and which is that of its violence'. This is the banality of numbers. Schools as institutions are now primarily concerned with the construction of effective subjects and the management of a competitive workforce. Educational testing is individualizing and totalizing. The production and management of a 'modern' population is articulated in an interplay between strategies of biologism, normalization, distribution and the institutional tactics of schooling, penality, sexuality, and so forth – specific sites for 'rituals of power' and 'ceremonies of objectification'.
