Discipline and Self-Formation Michel Foucault in Reading the Achievements of Junior High School Students of Yohanes Berkhmans Todabelu Mataloko at PORSENI 2026 Golewa Raya District

Abstract

This study analyzes the achievements of students at Junior High School Seminary Yohanes Berkhmans Todabelu Mataloko in PORSENI 2026, Golewa Raya District, through Michel Foucault’s perspective on discipline and self-formation. Research on student achievement commonly treats competitive results as an effect of talent or short term preparation, rarely examining the institutional arrangements that produce them. This study asks how the daily regulation of time, training, supervision, and habituation in a boarding seminary operates as subject formation. The research employs a qualitative approach using a case study method involving observation, interviews, and documentation of coaching in the school and dormitory and of participation in PORSENI 2026, with informants drawn purposively from competing students, accompanying teachers and coaches, and dormitory supervisors, and with the material analyzed thematically through the concepts of disciplinary power, exercise, the docile body, and technologies of the self. The results show that student achievement is a manifestation of the coaching process through time management, training, supervision, mentoring, evaluation, and habituation in both the school and dormitory environments. Thus, PORSENI serves not only as an arena for competition but also as a space for self-formation.  A distinction is maintained between what was described by those involved and what is concluded from it, so the Foucauldian reading is offered as interpretation rather than measured outcome. The contribution is theoretical, extending Foucauldian educational analysis beyond the classroom to the competitive arena of a rural Indonesian boarding seminary, with claims confined to the case examined.