Hidden curriculum, in general terms, is “some of the outcomes or by-products of schools or of non-school settings, particularly those states which are learned but not openly intended.”[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] Hidden curriculum is difficult to explicitly define because it varies among its students and their experiences and because it is constantly changing as the knowledge and beliefs of a society evolve. it something schools cannot control.
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.
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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.[6] 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.[7] Most importantly it acknowledges the perpetuated economic and social aspects of education that are clearly illustrated by the hidden curriculum.
Various aspects of learning contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum, including practices, procedures, rules, relationships, and structures.[8] 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.[9] 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.[10] 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.
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.[11] 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.[12] 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.”[13] 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.[14]
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.[15]
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. Children tend to be placed on tracks guiding them towards socioeconomic occupations similar to that of their parents, without real considerations for their strengths and weaknesses. As students advance through the educational system, they follow along their tracks by completing the predetermined courses.[16] This is one of the main factors limiting social mobility in America today.
John Dewey explored the hidden curriculum of education in his early 20th century works, particularly 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. 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 A. 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 Roland Meighan ("A Sociology of Education", 1981):
and Michael Haralambos ("Sociology: Themes and Perspectives", 1991):
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 Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992).