@raalkivictorieux, Master Ra’al Ki Victorieux
Uncover the profound impact of hidden curriculum in education & society, shaping unspoken lessons & norms. Explore more at Atma Unum. #HiddenCurriculum #Education #Society https://wp.me/p3JLEZ-4rr
In the realm of education, the concept of the hidden curriculum unveils a world of unspoken lessons and societal norms that shape the learning experience. Beyond the explicit objectives of academic institutions lies a set of implicit teachings, conveying values, beliefs, and behavioral expectations that influence students both within and beyond the classroom and work. From the perpetuation of social inequalities to the erasure of certain identities, the hidden curriculum permeates educational settings and society at large. Join us on a journey of exploration as we unravel the multifaceted dimensions of the hidden curriculum and its profound impact on individuals and communities.
Hidden curriculum or what “you should know”
A hidden curriculum is a set of lessons “which are learned but not openly intended” to be taught in school such as the norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in both the classroom and social environment.
Any type of learning experience may include unintended lessons; however, the concept of a hidden curriculum often refers to knowledge gained specifically in primary and secondary school settings. In these scenarios, the school strives for equal intellectual development between its students (as a positive goal), and the hidden curriculum refers to the reinforcement of existing social inequalities through the education of students according to their class and social status. The distribution of knowledge among students is mirrored by the unequal distribution of cultural capital. The hidden curriculum can also be seen as a set of norms and behaviors that are not explicitly taught, and students with limited social awareness, such as students with Autism Spectrum Disorder, may not pick up on these norms without having them be explained directly. This set of norms and behaviors also regards the culture of an environment that is unique to that environment, for example the norms and expectations of an office space would vary from those of a classroom.
Breaktime is an important part of the hidden curriculum in schooling. Some examples of the subjects of he hidden curriculum are:
- Morals: not to steal, to be polite, to respect our elders, etc.
- Norms: putting your hand up signifies that you want to speak, tucking your shirt in to “look neat”, you should be courteous, make an effort, keep busy, wait quietly for your turn, and turn up on time.
- Power hierarchies: the local government school is designed to remind the working class that they’re born to work. The posh school teaches young people from the wealthier classes how to be bosses.
- Gender roles: research shows that boys get a lot more attention from their teachers than girls. This “hidden” pattern might reinforce gender disparities.
Educational history
Early workers in the field of education 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. Over time, this theory has become less blatant, yet its underlying tones remain a contributing factor to the issue of the hidden curriculum. Since then, 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 as follows: a structural-functional view of education, 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 the acceptance of the idea that those norms and values are necessary for the functioning of society. 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. Additionally, it acknowledges the perpetuated economic and social aspects of education that are illustrated by the hidden curriculum.
Aspects of learning
Various aspects of learning contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum, including practices, procedures, rules, relationships, and structures. These school-specific aspects of learning may include, but are not limited to, the social structures of the classroom, the teacher’s exercise of authority, the teacher’s use of language, rules governing the relationship between teachers and students, standard learning activities, textbooks, audio-visual aids, furnishings, architecture, disciplinary measures, timetables, tracking systems, and curricular priorities. Variations among these sources can create the disparities found when comparing the hidden curricula in various class and social statuses. “Every school is both an expression of a political situation and a teacher of politics.”
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 on purpose.
These unintended learning experiences can also result from interactions between peers. Similar to interactions with authority figures, interactions amongst peers can promote moral and social ideals as well as fostering the exchange of information. Thus, these interactions are important sources of knowledge that contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum.
Heteronormativity
According to Merfat Ayesh Alsubaie, the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity is the erasure of LGBT identities in the curriculum through the privileging of heterosexual identities. In a quote from Gust Yep, heteronormativity is the “presumption and assumption that all human experience is unquestionably and automatically heterosexual”. Laws such as “No Promo Homo” that prohibit the mention or teaching of LGBT identities are considered to reinforce the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity. According to Mary Preston, in addition to No Promo Homo laws, the lack of sexual education in schools removes LGBT identities from the explicit curriculum and contributes to the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity. Currently, over half of the states in the United States are not legally mandated to have any sexual education.
Implications for LGBTQI Youth: Walton argues that the HC is in effect when sexuality education fails to adequately discuss LGBTQI sexuality. By discussing heterosexuality as the presumed norm for all young people, LGBTQI children are taught that they are different and, potentially, need to hide their identities or be ashamed of them.
Walton (2005)
Depending on the cultural norm of the school, when students fall outside the heterosexual norm, other students and teachers have been shown to police them back in line with heteronormative expectations. C. J. Pascoe said policing takes place through the use of bullying behaviors such as the use of words such as “fag, queer, or dyke” which are used to shame students with identities outside the norm. Pascoe said the use of LGBT slurs forms a “Fag Discourse.” The “Fag Discourse” in schools upholds heteronormativity as sacred, works to silence LGBT voices, and embeds these heteronormative ideals within the hidden curriculum.
Autism
The term “hidden curriculum” also refers to the set of social norms and skills that autistic people have to learn explicitly, but that neurotypical people learn automatically, such as theory of mind. Another aspect of the “hidden curriculum” often taught to autistic students is that of labeling their emotions in an effort to help students avoid alexithymia.
Hidden curriculum changes across gender, cultures, environments, etc. Many of the hidden curriculum” topics can be humorous but breaking one of the rules can make a person a social outcast by their peers. That’s why organizations and authors focused in helping autism persons have developed materials to give practical solutions for understanding unstated rules in social situations. For example:
- The meaning of figurate speech, for example, “get off my back!” (the person is raising his voice, looking irritated and frowning, so you should take a pause, or leave him alone.
- Age YES makes a difference.
- Who you are WITH makes a difference too. Adolescents with his/her peers use a language when there are no adults in sight and another language in the presence of an adult.
- Images to understand body language and gestures in a rational way. Some expression memory card games can be useful.
- It is better not to stand too close to people, and leave a little space in between. If you stand too close, and you are almost touching them, this could bother people.
- Voice volume matters too, it’s different in a movie theater, a library, a church, a concert, talking on the phone, or in the office and classroom.
- And lots of other unwritten rules in different social situations: bathroom rules, birthday parties, public behavior, eating manners, texting, funerals, doctor’s office, holidays, dangerous situations, and going to a friend’s house.
Some resources to teach hidden curriculum and provide attention to autism patients are:
- The Hidden Curriculum and Other Practical Solutions to Everyday Challenges for Elementary-Age Children with High Functioning Autism (Myles & Kolar, 2013)
- How Rude! The Teenagers Guide to Good Manners, Proper Behavior and Not Grossing People Out (Packer, 1997)
- A Little Book of Manners (Barnes & Barnes, 2000)
- The American Girl Series (Pleasant Company)
- Life Lists for Teens (Espeland, 2003)
- ADHD Vocabulary & Resources
Racism, white supremacy
Tuck in That Shirt!: This journal article argues that there is a HC in schools that forces young people of color to dress like white people. Fashions popular in the black community are discouraged because they are considered inferior fashions to the fashion of the dominant culture. Morris (2005, p. 28) argues: “The hidden curriculum tacitly teaches students unspoken lessons about their race, class, and gender.”
Morris (2005)
Uncritical thinking
The Moral Construction of the Good Pupil: Thornberg argues that the hidden curriculum in school rules teaches us to be docile and unquestioning of the social order. Students internalize the rules of the school because they learn that if they follow the rules they will be rewarded for being ‘good pupils’. Because there is no explicit discussion and critique of school rules in lessons, students aren’t taught to question the norms and learn to be blindly obedient. Thornberg therefore thinks the HC is a bad thing. He argues: “The function of the hidden curriculum is social control”
Thornberg (2009, p. 246)
Advantages and disadvantages
Between the advantages, we can see that the hidden curriculum helps alumni to prepare for life in society beyond school, teaches them to obey authority, and helps to maintain law and order. On the disadvantages, we can mention that hidden curriculum reproduces social class inequalities, outdated social roles are reinforced, and minorities are expected to assimilate into the majority culture.
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. 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.
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.” The 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.
Although the hidden curriculum has negative connotations, it is not inherently negative, and the tacit factors that are involved can potentially exert a positive developmental force on students. Some educational approaches, such as democratic education, actively seek to minimize, make explicit, and/or reorient the hidden curriculum in such a way that it has a positive developmental impact on students. Similarly, in the fields of environmental education and education for sustainable development, there has been some advocacy for making school environments more natural and sustainable, such that the tacit developmental forces that these physical factors exert on students can become positive factors in their development as environmental citizens.
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 differences in class, gender, and race become more evident at higher levels of education.
Additionally, tracking is another aspect of the hidden curriculum that plays a major role in the development of students. This method of imposing educational and career paths upon students at young ages relies on a variety of factors such as class and status in order to reinforce socioeconomic differences. Children tend to be placed on tracks that guide them towards socioeconomic occupations similar to that of their parents, without real considerations for their personal strengths and weaknesses. As students advance through the educational system, they follow their tracks by completing these predetermined courses.
Hidden curriculum at work and living
The hidden curriculum is the set of assumed knowledge thatñis generally not directly taught because it is considered to be universally known and understood. It is reflected in expectations, guidelines, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, values, inferences, behavior, and terminology. It affects the working life and also the everyday social life, even the relations with your neighbors.
Autism
Autistic persons face a challenge when understanding several subjects of the hidden curriculum. Just 6% for adults with classic autism have a current full-time job, and 12% of adults with Asperger Syndrome, according to autism.org.uk That’s why they should find a mentor, engage the services of an employment agency, create and grow professional network, and create a proper professional resume.
Some “universally known” hidden curriculum subjects (that autistic persons need help understanding) are:
- If you are at work, personal activities such as making personal phone calls, sending personal emails, texting, and social media should be minimal.
- You should not take any work items for personal use, this is theft.
- Sexual harassment is against the law, it is defined as unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature. If you wish to pay someone a compliment, it must be a general comment, such as “You look very nice today”, and should not be given often.
- How to behave in the job interview, -in person or by webcam- what to wear, what to say and how to say it. What to do after the interview.
- Affirmations and meditations to boost confidence, and self-esteem, as Affirmations for Self-approval of Perfectionism and Insecurity, Affirmations for Self-Affirmation
- How to manage stress, emotional meltdown, or Somatic Flashbacks. How to Heal Trauma Triggers.
- How to interpret and react to social demands: nonverbal cues, missteps, communication with colleagues and supervisors, criticism, social time vs. work time.
- Remember to say something if you are a part of a conversation.
- When your supervisor ask you to do something, it is generally an order.
- Look interested, even if you are not.
- Do not do a task while someone is talking with you, especially if that person is a supervisor.
- Constructive criticism is a natural part of an interaction with a supervisor.
Literary references
John Dewey explored the hidden curriculum of education in his early 20th century works, especially in his classic, Democracy and Education. 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. Counts claimed that Dewey hypothesized a singular path through which all young people travelled in order to become adults without considering the reactive, adaptive, and multifaceted nature of learning. Counts emphasizes that this nature of learning caused many educators to slant their perspectives, practices, and assessments of student performance in directions that affected their students drastically. Counts’ examinations were expanded on by Charles A. Beard and, later, Myles Horton who created what became the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.
The phrase “hidden curriculum” was 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 of the term, 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’ abilities to develop independently and 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. Other theorists who have identified the nature of hidden curricula and hidden agendas include Neil Postman, Paul Goodman, Joel Spring, John Taylor Gatto, and others.
More recent definitions have been given by Roland Meighan (“A Sociology of Education,” 1981) and Michael Haralambos (“Sociology: Themes and Perspectives,” 1991). Meighan wrote, “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.” Haralambos wrote, “The hidden curriculum consists of those things pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions.”
Further, educational critics Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Jonathan Kozol have also examined the effects of the hidden curriculum.
Additionally, developmental psychologist Robert Kegan addressed the hidden curriculum of everyday life in his 1994 book In Over Our Heads, which focused on the relation between cognitive development and the “cognitive demands” of cultural expectations.
Professor of communication Joseph Turow, in his 2017 book The Aisles Have Eyes, used the concept to describe acculturation to massive personal data collection; he wrote, “The very activities that dismay privacy and anti-discrimination advocates are already beginning to become everyday habits in American lives, and part of Americans’ cultural routines. Retailing is at the leading edge of a new hidden curriculum for American society—teaching people what they have to give up in order to get along in the twenty-first century.”
Conclusion
The concept of the hidden curriculum in education unveils a world of unspoken lessons and societal norms that shape the learning experience, beyond the explicit objectives of academic institutions. This implicit teaching conveys values, beliefs, and behavioral expectations that influence individuals and communities, permeating educational settings and society at large. While the hidden curriculum may convey important knowledge, its unequal distribution among classes and social statuses often promotes negative implications and perpetuates social inequalities.
Various aspects of learning contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum, including practices, procedures, rules, relationships, and structures. These school-specific aspects create disparities when comparing the hidden curricula in different class and social statuses. Furthermore, the hidden curriculum is not limited to primary and secondary education but also affects higher education, work environments, and everyday social life.
The hidden curriculum covers a broad range of topics, including heteronormativity, experiences of autistic individuals, racism and white supremacy, and uncritical thinking, among other issues. While the hidden curriculum has both advantages and disadvantages, efforts such as democratic education and environmental education seek to minimize negative impacts and promote positive developmental forces.
Some notable figures and works related to the exploration of the hidden curriculum include John Dewey, George Counts, Paulo Freire, and Robert Kegan, among others, who have contributed valuable insights into the effects of presumptive teaching on students and society.
Overall, the hidden curriculum is a complex and multifaceted aspect of education and societal norms that warrants continuous examination and consideration for its implications on individuals and communities.
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