While teachers become bogged down with teaching subjects they can forget that buried inside the hidden curriculum are all the social cues and social expectations that students should master while they're in school. I have no problem with exams-SEA, CXC and CAPE-if they are meaningful, but they are only meaningful if they measure a student's analytical and communication skills. If teachers race through a curriculum or worse yet, drag out a curriculum forever so that students can have facts drilled into their heads, it is because this is what the system expects them to do. Of course I recognise teachers, for the most part, are doing the best they can do under the circumstances. The purpose of that communication is embedded in the hidden curriculum. We need students who can debate, give speeches, write essays and get their points across in an articulate way in every aspect of communication. Sadly, the hidden curriculum in many of our schools seeks to support colonial values by suppressing a sense of individuality in students, when schools need to consider how we nurture the leaders of tomorrow. Those values come from the hidden curriculum. Leadership is measured by the morals and values that turn ordinary people into caring and inspiring leaders. Leadership cannot be measured in the subjects one masters. One important aspect of the hidden curriculum is a school's mandate to provide the leaders of tomorrow. School is not of much use if students don't learn how to become model citizens. It is easy to think that passing subjects is vitally important so that students can climb up the academic ladder, when in reality they need to be studying more than all the literary elements of a novel they're reading for English class and more than the dates of Emancipation or Independence.Įnglish-and all subjects for that matter-should teach students how to think and analyse information in a way that makes life meaningful. It is often the message that no one talks about that's why it's called a hidden curriculum. Societies have always used schools to shape students, and Jackson claimed that the hidden curriculum was basically responsible for the socialisation process: the messages students processed from the experiences of being taught. Sociologist Philip Jackson was the first person to officially use the term "hidden curriculum" and although it was first used in 1968, the concept of a hidden curriculum is timeless. It's the purpose behind their teaching. The hidden curriculum is what teachers should be thinking about when they teach. It is what makes a subject meaningful and not a meaningless collection of facts. The hidden curriculum provides students with values and beliefs. School is a place where students go to learn "subjects": maths, English, social studies, science.but the most valuable lessons in our schools come from the hidden curriculum. Now that students are settled in school, we need to talk about what they should be learning on any given school day.
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