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CHAPTER 6: Philosophical Roots of Education
“hidden” curriculum What students learn, other than academic content, from the school milieu or environment.
urban and rural areas, for example, serve mainly the poor, African Americans, and Latinos. Typically underfinanced, these schools are often deteriorating physically and lack needed resources. Inner-city schools, as well as many other schools, are ensnared in large, hierarchical educational bureaucracies. With orders coming down from the top, teachers have little or no decision-making power about how schools will run. Within the school, teachers tend to be isolated from each other in self-contained classrooms. Further, parents and others in the local community are kept at a distance, with little school involvement. The curriculum, too, is determined by higher-level administrators, with little room for local initiatives that relate to the life experiences of students or community members. Critical theorists identify two curricular spheres: the formal official curriculum and the “hidden” curriculum. Mandated by state and local districts, the officially approved curriculum requires teachers to teach certain specific skills and subjects to students. The dominant classes use the official curriculum to transmit their particular beliefs and values as the legitimate version of knowledge for all students. Transmission, instead of critical thinking and analysis, reproduces in students the officially sanctioned and mandated version of knowledge. For example, the official version of history portrays America’s past as a largely white, male-dominated, Euro-American series of triumphs in conquering the wilderness of the frontier, industrializing the nation, and making the United States the greatest country on earth. Women, Africanand Native Americans, and Latinos are marginalized or treated as afterthoughts to the official narrative. NCLB and the Common Core State Standards, a new version of the old official curriculum, impose outside requirement demands on teachers and students that Giroux says standardizes knowledge and assessment and “is very deadly” for critical and creative thinking.68 The “hidden curriculum” is a key element in school-based social control in that it imposes approved dominant group behaviors and attitudes on students through the school climate. “Hidden” because it is not stated in published state mandates or local school policies, it permeates the public-school milieu. For example, sexist attitudes that males have a greater aptitude than females in mathematics and science maintain and reproduce gender-specific patterns of entry into education and careers in those fields. The student cliques and groups that are either “in or out” in popularity often mirror the socioeconomic status found in the surrounding community. Although the privileged classes have historically dominated schools, critical theorists do not see their domination as inevitable.69 They believe that teachers, as critically minded activists, can transform schools into democratic public spheres in which they raise the consciousness of the exploited and empower the dispossessed. The multicultural society in the United States provides many more versions of the American experience than the officially approved story. Members of each racial, ethnic, and language group can tell their own stories rather than having the stories told for them. After exploring their own identities, students can develop ways to recognize stereotyping and misrepresentation and to resist indoctrination both in and out of school. They can learn how to take control of their own lives and shape their own futures.70
Al Baker, “Culture Warrior, Gaining Ground: E. D. Hirsch Sees His Education Theories Taking Hold,” NYTimes.com, December 1, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/books/e-d -hirsch-sees-his-education-theories-taking-hold.html 69 Patricia H. Hinchey, Becoming a Critical Educator: Defining a Classroom Identity, Designing a Critical Pedagogy (New York: Peter Lang, 2004). 70 “Rage and Hope: Critical Theory and Its Impact on Education” at www.perfectfit.org/CT /index2.html. 68
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