The Hidden Curriculum video transcript

Most of us think that school is all about academic stuff such as math, English and history and I suppose we agree that there is also social stuff such as going to prom and making friends. There are what we call extracurriculars sports, music and drama for example but there is another curriculum, one outside what we see and talk about, there is the hidden curriculum. First published by author Philip W Jackson in the 1968 book, Life in classrooms, the hidden curriculum is described by Peter McClaren as the unintended outcomes of the schooling process. Tacit ways in which knowledge and behavior get constructed outside the usual course materials and formally scheduled lessons. For example, it may include but is not limited to the idea that good children sit quietly in their seats and do their work, while only bad children do not. That boys should be academically aggressive while girls should be passive, that certain ethnic groups are just better at school than others and that performance on a test is indicative of a child’s worth.

The hidden curriculum depends upon the educators' philosophies so some teachers may teach the concept that children are not born with self control and others may teach that all children are motivated by the internal desire to be good.

Critical theorists suggest that the hidden curriculum is actually more important in schools than the formal one because it transmits the true ideals and goals of the educational institution. Some may have deluded themselves into thinking that these behaviours are necessary for classroom control or even that they are for the students’ own good but what makes the hidden curriculum so dangerous is that we usually don’t even recognise that it exists instead it insidiously becomes a part of the way in which we think about ourselves and the world in which we live. Often rather than teaching our students to be independent creative thinkers, we end up propagating dominant ideologies such as the lessons that some groups of students are more important than others, that some subjects are more important than others that the status quo us always best and that sameness is good. Unfortunately we cannot run away from the hidden curriculum. As McClaren says, so curriculum, policy or program is ideologically or politically innocent. However we can learn to be self-critical so that we can identify our biases in our own classrooms and schools.

All hidden curricular are not inherently evil but if we do not examine our own political assumptions and ideologies, we will only reproduce socially unjust practices in our schools. What message are you sending?

The Hidden Curriculum video

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