Question

In addition to treating students differently based on social class, schools also convey implicit messages about gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, country of origin, and disability. Like the messages about social class, these implicit messages are also forms of the hidden curriculum. Often these messages reinforce the status quo that is discriminatory towards non-dominant groups (females, sexual minorities, immigrants, non-Christians, low-income people, and people with disabilities). In general, the hidden curriculum helps to reinforce and reproduce the social hierarchy that is already present in the adult world. Remember: The hidden curriculum is not the “regular” academic curriculum. It is “taught” both overtly and covertly through behaviors, words, and the school structure.

The example provided by Johnson and Rhodes focuses on how schools provide differential learning environments that prepare students to remain in the social class into which they were born. Jeff Sapp (article in this module) illustrated the hidden curriculum by describing the ways his school “taught me I was poor.”

Discussion Assignment: Reflect on your K-12 education and identify the hidden curriculum in your school related to one of the following variables: gender, race or ethnicity, language, country of origin, religion, social class, or disability. In your response, be specific about what messages you received about the variable you chose and how those messages were conveyed.

Answer 1

Answer.

Hidden curriculum refers to knowledge gained in primary and secondary school settings, where the school reinforces existing social inequalities by educating students according to their class and social status. The unequal distribution of cultural capital in a society is mirrored in the system of education among its students. However, such inequality are always explicitly promoted in the main curriculum but through extra curricular programmes and even the pedagogic medium in the classroom. To this end, I find that our own district schools promote mainstream biases and norms about sexuality. In particular, the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity is seen to mark an erasure of LGBTQ identities in the curriculum as the current sex education programme only promotes heterosexual identities.

Such a practice creates a false assumption that all normal sexual experience is unquestionably and automatically heterosexual and according to me, the absence of teaching about LGBTQ identities reinforces the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity.