Nitin Deckha: Let's look a little bit further at the sociological perspectives and how they
think about the hidden curriculum.
Two that come right to mind are the Functionalists and if you remember, they see schools as an
important institution, which socializes young people into certain values, especially into
those values that will take them into the job market.
For the Functionalists, they see the hidden curriculum is a latent function, meaning that
it is hidden, but is important.
Part of what it teaches them is this idea of meritocracy.
That, basically, if you work hard in education, you'll get what you deserve.
That relates also to the Conflict Theorists who see schools, rather than just providing
necessarily equal opportunity and access, like we'd like to believe, creating some that
have more power, privilege, and status, better access to better education, versus others.
That the hidden curriculum, though it sets up this kind of divide, and with this idea
of meritocracy, so those that really internalize the school's norm, values, and procedures,
just what we were talking about before, better, have a better chance of performing in this
meritocracy and getting, potentially, a better education, or, at least, better access to
it.
The Conflict Theorist see the hidden curriculum kind of producing that divide again, that
we often see in access to education.
Another way to think about it is with the Symbolic Interactionists, and they look more
at the kind of culture of the school, and how different groups are there.
If you think about cliques, cliques, how they kind of perform the different norms and values.
It could be the dress code, it could be the lingo or the slang the students use.
It could be the relationship between teachers and students.
Because it's taken for granted in cultural behavior, the students actively reproduce
aspects of the school's culture and that also creates different kinds of divisions and meanings.
How students choose to internalize the culture, perform the culture, what cliques they belong
to, can all have an impact on how well they do in school.
Two other ones that we should talk about, as well, that related with this, culture things,
cliques, they're also Feminists would look at the work of the gender and whether there's
gender dimensions to the hidden curriculum, in terms of the norms and values.
They may look at the gendered impact of educational achievements.
For example, divides between girls and boys, and how well they do.
Lastly would be the Postmodernists.
I'm gonna put it up here.
For them, the individual subjectivity is paramount.
They would say, well, the individual can create or craft her or his or their own experience
of education and they may perform some of these norms, and values, and procedures, and
what have you, but they're creating their own pathway in the school.
There, in a nutshell, if you will, is what the hidden curriculum is about.
We talked about the formal learning, but then focused on the hidden learning that's hidden.
We looked at norms, values, and procedures, and we connected that to all the five sociological
perspectives.
Thanks very much for listening.