Hidden curriculum

"Hidden curriculum", in the most general terms, can be defined as “some of the outcomes or by-products of schools or of non-school settings, particularly those states which are learned but not openly intended.” [Martin, Jane. “What Should We Do with a Hidden Curriculum When We Find One?” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 122-139.] However, a variety of definitions have been developed based on the broad range of perspectives of those who study this phenomenon. Any setting, including traditionally recreational and social activities, may teach unintended lessons since it is tied not necessarily to schools but rather to learning experiences. [Martin, Jane. “What Should We Do with a Hidden Curriculum When We Find One?” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 122-139.] But most often, hidden curriculum refers to various types of knowledge gained in primary and secondary school settings, usually with a negative connotation referring to inequalities suffered as a result of its presence. This attitude stems from the commitment of the school system of the United States to promote democracy and ensure equal intellectual development, goals that are hindered by these intangible lessons [Cornbleth, Catherine. “Beyond Hidden Curriculum?” Journal of Curriculum Studies. 16.1(1984): 29-36.] . In this context,hidden curriculum is said to reinforce existing social inequalities by educating students in various matters and behaviors according to their class and social status. In the same way that there is an unequal distribution of cultural capital in this society, there is a corresponding distribution of knowledge amongst its students. [Apple, Michael and Nancy King. “What Do Schools Teach?” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 82-99.] The hidden curriculum can also refer to the transmission of norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in both the formal educational content and the social interactions within these schools. [Giroux, Henry and Anthony Penna. “Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum.” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 100-121.] Hidden curriculum is difficult to explicitly define because it varies among its students and their experiences and because is it constantly changing as the knowledge and beliefs of a society evolve.

The concept that the hidden curriculum expresses is the idea that schools do more than simply transmit knowledge, as laid down in the official curricula. Behind it lies criticism of the social implications, political underpinnings, and cultural outcomes of modern educative activities. While early examinations were concerned with identifying the anti-democratic nature of schooling, later studies have taken various tones, including those concerned with socialism, capitalism, and anarchism in education.

Educational History

When considering the social implications of the hidden curriculum, it is useful to remember that the social control was a fundamental concern for the founders of educational curriculum. Early workers in this field were influenced by the notion that the preservation of the social privileges, interests, and knowledge of one group within the population was worth the exploitation of less powerful groups. [Apple, Michael and Nancy King. “What Do Schools Teach?” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 82-99.] Over time this theory has become less blatant, yet its underlying tones remain a contributing factor to the issue of the hidden curriculum.

Several educational theories have been developed to help give meaning and structure to the hidden curriculum and to illustrate the role that schools play in socialization. Three of these theories, as cited by Henry Giroux and Anthony Penna, are a structural-functional view of schooling, a phenomenological view related to the “new” sociology of education, and a radical critical view corresponding to the neo-Marxist analysis of the theory and practice of education. The structural-functional view focuses on how norms and values are conveyed within schools and how their necessities for the functioning of society become indisputably accepted. The phenomenological view suggests that meaning is created through situational encounters and interactions, and it implies that knowledge is somewhat objective. The radical critical view recognizes the relationship between economic and cultural reproduction and stresses the relationships among the theory, ideology, and social practice of learning. Although the first two theories have contributed to the analysis of the hidden curriculum, the radical critical view of schooling provides the most insight. [Giroux, Henry and Anthony Penna. “Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum.” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 100-121.] Most importantly it acknowledges the perpetuated economic and social aspects of education that are clearly illustrated by the hidden curriculum. It also illustrates the significance of abstract characteristics like theory and ideology that help define this phenomenon.

Sources

Various aspects of learning contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum, including practices, procedures, rules, relationships, and structures. [Martin, Jane. “What Should We Do with a Hidden Curriculum When We Find One?” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 122-139.] Many school-specific sources, some of which may be included in these aspects of learning, give rise to important elements of the hidden curriculum. These sources may include, but are not limited to, the social structures of the classroom, the teacher’s exercise of authority, rules governing the relationship between teachers and students, standard learning activities, the teacher’s use of language, textbooks, audio-visual aids, furnishings, architecture, disciplinary measures, timetables, tracking systems, and curricular priorities. [Martin, Jane. “What Should We Do with a Hidden Curriculum When We Find One?” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 122-139.] Variations among these sources promote the disparities found when comparing the hidden curricula corresponding to various class and social statuses.

While the actual material that students absorb through the hidden curriculum is of utmost importance, the personnel who convey it elicit special investigation. This particularly applies to the social and moral lessons conveyed by the hidden curriculum, for the moral characteristics and ideologies of teachers and other authority figures are translated into their lessons, albeit not necessarily with intention. [Kohlberg, Lawrence. “The Moral Atmosphere of the School.” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 61-81.] Yet these unintended learning experiences can result from interactions with not only instructors, but also with peers. Like interactions with authority figures, interactions amongst peers can promote moral and social ideals. But they can also foster the exchange of information and are thus important sources of knowledge that contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum.

Function

Although the hidden curriculum conveys a great deal of knowledge to its students, the inequality promoted through its disparities among classes and social statuses often invokes a negative connotation. For example, Pierre Bourdieu asserts that education-related capital must be accessible to promote academic achievement. The effectiveness of schools becomes limited when these forms of capital are unequally distributed. [Gordon, Edmumd W., Beatrice L. Bridglall, and Aundra Saa Meroe. Preface. Supplemental Education: The Hidden Curriculum of High Academic Achievement. By Gordon, Edmumd W., Beatrice L. Bridglall, and Aundra Saa Meroe. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005. ix-x.] Since the hidden curriculum is considered to be a form of education-related capital, it promotes this ineffectiveness of schools as a result of its unequal distribution. As a means of social control, the hidden curriculum promotes the acceptance of a social destiny without promoting rational and reflective consideration. [Greene, Maxine. Introduction. The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. By Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 1-5.] According to Elizabeth Vallance, the functions of hidden curriculum include “the inculcation of values, political socialization, training in obedience and docility, the perpetuation of traditional class structure-functions that may be characterized generally as social control.” [Vallance, Elizabeth. “Hiding the Hidden Curriculum: An Interpretation of the Language of Justification in Nineteenth-Century Educational Reform.” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 9-27.] Hidden curriculum can also be associated with the reinforcement of social inequality, as evidenced by the development of different relationships to capital based on the types of work and work-related activities assigned to students varying by social class. [Anyon, Jean. “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work.” The Hidden Curriculum and Moral Education. Ed. Giroux, Henry and David Purpel. Berkeley, California: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983. 143-167.]

Higher Education and Tracking

While studies on the hidden curriculum mostly focus on fundamental primary and secondary education, higher education also feels the effects of this latent knowledge. For example, gender biases become present in specific fields of study; the quality of and experiences associated with prior education become more significant; and class, gender, and race become more evident at higher levels of education. [Margolis, Eric, Michael Soldatenko, Sandra Acker, and Marina Gair. “Peekaboo: Hiding and Outing the Curriculum.” The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education. Ed. Margolis, Eric. New York: Routledge, 2001.] One additional aspect of hidden curriculum that plays a major part in the development of students and their fates is tracking. This method of imposing educational and career paths upon students at young ages relies on various factors such as class and status to reinforce socioeconomic differences. As students advance through the educational system, they follow along their tracks by completing the predetermined courses. [Rosenbaum, James E. The Hidden Curriculum of High School Tracking. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1976.]

Literary References

John Dewey explored the hidden curriculum of education in his early 20th century works, particularly his classic, "". Dewey saw patterns evolving and trends developing in public schools which lent themselves to his pro-democratic perspectives. His work was quickly rebutted by educational theorist George Counts, whose 1929 book, "Dare the School Build a New Social Order" challenged the presumptive nature of Dewey's works. Where Dewey (and other child development theorists including Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson and Maria Montessori) hypothesized a singular path through which all young people travelled in order to become adults, Counts recognized the reactive, adaptive, and multifaceted nature of learning. This nature caused many educators to slant their perspectives, practices, and assessments of student performance in particular directions which affected their students drastically. Counts' examinations were expanded on by Charles Beard, and later, Myles Horton as he created what became the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.

The phrase "hidden curriculum" was reportedly coined by Philip W. Jackson ("Life In Classrooms", 1968). He argued that we need to understand "education" as a socialization process. Shortly after Jackson's coinage, MIT's Benson Snyder published "The Hidden Curriculum," which addresses the question of why students—even or especially the most gifted—turn away from education. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart the students' ability to develop independently or think creatively.

The hidden curriculum has been further explored by a number of educators. Starting with "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", published in 1972, through the late 1990s, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire explored various effects of presumptive teaching on students, schools, and society as a whole. Freire's explorations were in sync with those of John Holt and Ivan Illich, each of whom were quickly identified as radical educators.

More recent definitions were given by Meighan ("A Sociology of Educating", 1981)::"The hidden curriculum is taught by the school, not by any teacher...something is coming across to the pupils which may never be spoken in the English lesson or prayed about in assembly. They are picking-up an approach to living and an attitude to learning."and Michael Haralambos ("Sociology: Themes and Perspectives", 1991)::"The hidden curriculum consists of those things pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions."

Recently a variety of authors, including Neil Postman, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Jonathan Kozol have examined the effects of hidden curriculum. One increasingly popular proponent, John Taylor Gatto, radically criticizes compulsory education in his book "" (1992).

References

See also

*Cultural capital
* Curriculum studies
* Critical pedagogy
* Tacit knowledge
* The Hidden Curriculum (book)
* Youth voice in education

External links

* [http://www.thomhartmann.com/german-school.shtml "Good German Schools Come to America", Thom Hartmann]