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Hidden causes of student failure

Sunday voices: Thomas A. Regelski

Public interest in school curriculum is often only about troublesome topics. Subjects like biology (evolution), health (sex education, vaccination), language arts (i.e., controversial literature) and history (e.g., correcting myths about the Pilgrims) generate more public interest than other subjects.

But there are four kinds of curriculum: (a) the explicit or written curriculum (if there is one it often comes “pre-fab” as published materials that are ‘delivered’ like a recipe); (b) the instructed curriculum (i.e., the actual content ‘covered’ by instruction), and (c) the action curriculum (i.e., what students can do-newly or better-as a result of instruction (e.g., language arts). For some teachers, “do” is mainly a matter of written tests, not authentic assessment of learning the curriculum is said to be “good for.” What was your least favorite required subject that was claimed to be good for you?

There is, however a fourth kind of curriculum, (d), what educational sociologists call the “hidden curriculum.” This is the unspoken or implicit curriculum that is “soaked up” by students every minute of every day. It takes the form of attitudes, values, habits, behaviors and learnings that result from the institutional structure of formal schooling itself: the norms, beliefs, rules, routines, class schedules, and social organization of daily school life.

It consists of unspoken messages given to students about socially approved behavior (public civility); differential power (of students, teachers, administrators, school boards, parents, and taxpayers); social evaluation (dress codes); what knowledge is valued (merely ‘academic’ vs. useful?); by whom (scholars who write texts?); and whether all students have equal access to a functional education. It also sends powerful messages through the ‘silences’ of what is left out (e.g., history of treatment of Native Americans)

The hidden curriculum exists to produce behavioral outcomes for later life, particularly to prepare (propagandize?) students to accept as legitimate certain patterns of social behavior; e.g., positions in the social class structure (e.g., gender norms), and occupational placement (college-bound tracks vs. BOCES). Inability to follow (or defiance of) the hidden curriculum-aka “discipline problems” — more likely leads to student failure (failing grades) and leaving school early than just poor academic work. Schools can fail to compensate for weak family models of and support for educational attainment.

The hidden curriculum is so taken for granted that it is sometimes invisible to teachers and administrators. They absorbed it in their own school days (e.g., being late to class is a no-no; not paying attention when bored). Some of it may be idiosyncratic: teachers who expect some hubbub when busy minds are doing group projects vs. those whose classes are like boot camp or avoid such projects. The students have to adjust to teacher differences, especially in middle and high school! The hidden curriculum, in other words, exerts institutional power over students that conditions in a variety of ways whether subject learning takes place at all; and if what is learned is good for students and society.

Unfortunately hidden curriculum goals are widespread. One addressed by social critics is that regimentation (bells, timed periods, dress codes, attendance taking, uniform conduct, hall passes, etc.) is central to the hidden curriculum of providing good workers for society. These expectations are simply not universally imposed in social democracies where social class inequality is not an educational issue!

The hidden curriculum also focuses on middle-class values. These are challenging for students from lower socioeconomic classes: a matter of children of working-class parents in classes of middle-class teachers-e.g., “I wasn’t no good at math either”; “What good is literature?”

Fact: Sociologically, parents from working-class families typically relate to their children at home in ways that are often different than middle-class parents and teachers! For example, the “boss” (or “bossed” at work) who is a “boss” at home often doesn’t promote the kind of give-and-take discussion or critical thinking that may be at stake in school classes; e.g., thoughtfully led class discussions of contemporary issues (e.g., socioeconomic inequality).

Some critics of U.S. public schooling see the hidden curriculum as destroying students’ natural joy of learning; their curiosity, and personal interests, and initiatives. To these critics, the routines, the rigor, stultifying boredom, and irrelevance of dictated curricular content to students’ interests outweigh any proposed outcomes and “turn-off” many students to the natural rewards of learning.

Fact: The healthy human brain is attuned to novelty: it cannot not learn! Otherwise it stares out the window, socializes with equally bored classmates, or worse. Educators should consider how it is that schooling, especially the hidden curriculum, so often hinders the brain’s natural propensity for learning.

The hidden curriculum often impedes the ability of students from lower economic backgrounds to rise above the status of their parents. With the disappearance of the middle-class, it is useful to analyze the many limiting factors of the hidden curriculum in each school and to teach each student according to need and ability. Insensitivity to hidden curriculum parameters only perpetuates poverty begetting another generation of poverty.

Thomas A. Regelski is an emeritus distinguished professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Send comments to tom.regelski@helsinki.fi.

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