Foundations of Education: Unit 4


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Unit 4 opens on Sunday, February 1st and closes on Sunday, February 15th.

Unit Title: The hidden curriculum and the culture of power

Unit overview:


In Unit 4 we'll be reading, thinking, and writing about an idea called the hidden curriculum. We're going to step back from the functionalist/conflict theorist debate and look at a couple other key concepts that will help us analyze our experiences and beliefs about schooling - but will also help us ready for our first couple of assignments.

So... back to the idea of hidden curriculum: We can think about curriculum in many ways - as what gets taught, as how it gets taught, even as in what order it gets taught -- but we can also think of curriculum as what doesn't get taught but still gets rewarded. For example, one might argue that what gets rewarded in schools is passivity and compliance rather than open questioning and investigation. Perhaps this is a bit pessimistic but I bet we can all see that in our own school experience. Further, within each subject matter area there are items of the hidden curriculum too. For example, history classes typically talk about Westward expansion from the perspective of an explorer and what it did for our country. We less frequently see it described in the negative terms that many native American people (of the time) would use. Students then, are being led to believe, by this selective teaching, in only one perspective on Westward expansion. Get the idea?

We'll also be talking about an idea called the culture of power. We all know that to get ahead - you have to walk, talk, dress like, and adopt particular cultural values. This might seem oversimplistic but there's lots of research that says many people don't understand this and that often the cultural values of children's homes don't match the cultural values of school - particularly middle class white school. So... this unit tackles these issues as well.

Reading assignment:
We have two essays to read in this unit. The first is from a book by Lisa Delpit called Other People's Children - the chapter is called The Silenced Dialogue. Read it carefully and consider what it has to offer. The other chapter is called The Hidden Curriculum in Social Studies and deals explicitly with what isn't taught directly in schools - but what nonetheless gets rewarded. See if you can identify hidden curriculum issues in your subject matter.

Discussion questions:

  1. Think very carefully about your own school experience. What constituted the hidden curriculum in your school? Think carefully about your own subject matter specialty. What constitutes the hidden curriculum there? How have you seen subject matter teachers ignore or surface the hidden curriculum in their area? What will you do as a teacher to address issues of the hidden curriculum? Be as specific as you can. Is the hidden curriculum even a problem - or is it just something we deal with?
  2. What is the culture of power? Where do you see it in your own school experiences? Give specific examples if possible. What is cultural capital and how do you get it? How is this stuff taught? What does it allow you to do? How do we teach how to be successful in one culture without diminishing another? Are there particular passages or examples that Delpit uses that are particularly powerful for you? Again, is any of this a problem or is it just part of the way it is?

Given these questions, proceed to the discussion board - the questions will also be posted in the discussion area.

Also, here's a couple of interesting essays I found on-line that are related to these topics - and others. The authors are two of the bigs in educating for social justice. Check them out and feel free to draw on them in your conversations as well.

Here's the links:

http://www.greens.org/s-r/05/05-10.html

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/reviews/cd-sleeter.html

 

Mark