What is the "hidden curriculum"? What is learned in the hidden curriculum? Where is the hidden curriculum taught? What future impact does this have?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A means of socialization through which education not only creates social inequalities but makes them seem natural, normal, and inevitable. Students learn individualism and competition, conformity to mainstream norms, obedience to authority, passive consumption of ideas, and acceptance of social inequality; social lessons about hierarchy, peer pressure, and how to act around the opposite sex; teachers, administrators, and peers require us to conform to narrow definitions of what it means to be a "boy" or a "girl," and they punish deviance, subtly or not; The hidden curriculum is taught inside and outside of the classroom. The most important lessons of the hidden curriculum actually take place outside the classroom, on the playground, in the cafeteria, in the many informal interactions that take place during every school day, from kindergarten through college. Students learn which of their peers are "supposed" to dominate and which are "supposed" to be bullied, beaten, laughed at, or ignored. They learn about gender hierarchies (call a boy a "girl" to humiliate him, or "gay" to humiliate him even more). They learn about racial hierarchies. They learn about social status. The lessons they learn will influence their future decisions, whether they are in the boardroom or the courtroom, whether they are applying for a job or doing the hiring, regardless of how often the formal curriculum includes units on diversity.