School and the Hypertrophy of Formlessness: The Construction of Today's School

Introduction
The present article, titled “School and the Hypertrophy of Formlessness” – which has been designated as the core code serving as the central signifier in the discourse of education specialists – was conducted to examine the current state and the construction of today’s school.
Method
This qualitative study, using grounded theory, conducted semi‑structured interviews with 13 education experts at various levels. Based on the coding model, this resulted in 54 open codes and 9 axial codes.
Findings
This group, which for many years have not only worked *in* the school but also *for* the school at different decision‑making levels, believe that today’s school generally lacks a clear and definite purpose for students and is characterized by structural routinization and executor-oriented practices. Centralisation, together with a lack of will and capacity for local management, means that the mechanism, approach, and spirit of the school organisation are determined not within the school itself but from outside it. As Apple argues, when the planning process is separated from implementation, a form of alienation emerges, and the executor’s capacity is ignored for creativity and volition.
While Foucault characterizes the educational system as an apparatus of institutional power, Apple contends that this framework is incomplete. Instead, Apple posits that the school is not merely a product of top-down authority, but a contradictory synthesis of micro- and macro-level tensions across the cultural, political, and economic spectrum, the resolution of which defines the current state of schooling. Apple states that education is fundamentally political and ideological, and it is power that decides what knowledge is to be distributed and how. He raises the question of what a school is and for whom it exists, what knowledge it distributes and promotes among people and how, and he explains the relationship between education and power and the contradictory relations between them. He argues that the educational system is a function of the institution of power, controlling everything through the curriculum and allowing no other programme or activity.
However, the definition of the subject in today’s school has become entangled in a serious struggle between institutional and non‑institutional sources of power in society. The outcome of this struggle in most schools is the reproduction and hypertrophy of the same extant form.
Conclusion
The results of this research show that schools essentially make individuals ‘fatter’ – i.e., amplify them – based on what they already are. As the relevant theorists contend, this is the very nature of the educational system and the school organisation in the modern era. Indeed, the goal of the modern school is defined as serving the sources of power. Nevertheless, given the general condition of schools – apart from special and alternative schools – this core code expresses a situation in which schools, institutionally and structurally, lack both the programme and the necessary capacity to shape the subject even according to the definitions of the national policy documents. In fact, There is a rupture between will and possibility within the school. This rupture manifests itself as an exaggeration of form without content, and in the field of practice the subject becomes formless. In a sense, the school organisation reproduces listlessness and indeterminacy.
This situation does not mean that the school has no orientation; rather, it means that because of its diversity, today’s school merely assembles a homogeneous group of students and reproduces their existing social and cultural background – i.e., it makes the students ‘fatter’ in their own shape. In effect, this formlessness is the amplification of the existing state. Indeed, given the events in society and as argued by Rezaei (2005), today’s school is caught in a conflict among various discourses and regards itself as lacking a firm theoretical refuge. In such circumstances, the school, without a refuge, effectively falls into a state of stagnation and aimlessness, leading it to perceive itself as formless and indeterminate. Consequently, the school reproduces a status quo within which it has become empty and alienated, turning to credentialism. Credentialism, in turn, aligns the school with the market order and turns it into a commodity. At this point, school‑based education leads to the reification of the human being and the instrumentalisation of knowledge; everything becomes listless, and individuals are merely amplified - become ‘fatter’ - within the school based on their cultural capital, economic capital, and family background. In this state, the school itself becomes a purchasable and saleable commodity, and, according to Freire, turns into a centre for information testing. In a dialectical relationship, the school is reduced to a shapeless, identity‑less physical framework that acquires shape and identity only through the aggregation of a relatively homogeneous group of students. Hence, the school lacks the capacity for genuine “tarbiat” (education/upbringing) and merely amplifies the shape of that student group, thereby spreading its own formlessness.
Based on the conducted coding procedures, the open codes are explained according to the categories. In total, interviews were conducted with an expert group comprising 13 participants, resulting in the extraction of 54 codes and 9 core codes. Moreover, according to the statistical output using MAXQDA software, the most frequent words among this group were: school, change, society, power, credential, and identity.