Foucault's "The Order of Discourse"

No one will probably get the chance to read this before class, but I'm hoping that the qeustions I pose here will be a good post-class discussion prompts.

In "The Order of Discourse," Foucault argues that discourse is controlled by certain functions, actions, or rules. In particular:

• certain topics are prohibited
  
• reason is valued and madness is ignored
  
• the will to truth: "[T]he highest truth no longer resided in what discourse was or did, but in what it said: a day came when truth was displaced from the ritualized, efficacious, and just act of enunciation, twoards teh utterance itself, its meaning, its form, its object, its relation to its reference" (1462).
  
• what we choose to comment on
  
• the author function (attributed to author so must be true, is it part of the author's "work", does it disagree with what else the author says)
  
• disciplines (excludes that which does not belong in the field
  
• distribution limited
  
• who speaks is limited

Since many of use are teachers or are desiring to be teachers, I'm wondering what ideas people have for how they can make decisions as teachers that are informed by Foucault. Hopefully, we'll start this dialogue in class, but I'd like it to continue here.

If you're not going into the teaching profession, how do you see Foucault's ideas affecting your work or the discourse that goes on in your chosen field?