Presentation: Hidden Curriculum: Process

Karley’s presentation today was a good continuation of the topic of hidden curriculum. She discussed the process of the hidden curriculum to help the class understand the interactions that students engage in that implicitly teaches them how to act. Simple things such that we take for granted on a daily basis such as raising hands, hygiene, conformity, competitiveness, and obedience to authority figures are rules/ideas that teachers convey to their students on a daily basis. She specifically looked at Socialization in Early Elementary Education.

Her presentation was interesting, as once again, I haven’t ever looked at things such as these. Unlike with content, some of these implicit messages that we are passing onto our students are valuable to them and do set them up for life in the ‘real world’. I liked how she not only demonstrated and explained what these implicit rules were, but she also broke it down for us with things that we have previously learned in the semester. She discussed how functionalists, conflict theorists and interactionsists would react to these implicit meanings.

Margaret Mead believed that socializations help children to gain knowledge of the generalized other and help them learn the rules that society has put forward. The transition from home to school is a very difficult one because unlike before, not everything is about them anymore. It was interesting to bring up that Barry Mayall compared the lives of children in schools to the roles that women used to live with, which is actually quite depressing when you think of it that way.

Literature is definitely a way that teachers are able to reproduce dominant values of society. Karley showed use a few books that in my opinion were not that implicit, but that did try to teach students how to act in school, engage with other students, etc.

She also mentioned that Kindergarten classes are slowly transitioning to be more academic. Whether or not this is because they think it will be an easier transition for students from home, I’m not sure. They have included more math, science and literacy, there is more testing, and they are trying to make them into full days instead of half. Could you imagine a 4/5 year old sitting through a whole day of school? That would be very exhausting for them. At the end of class, Robert mentioned that everyone is trying to push these students for early literacy, and yet, studies show that the more you try to push them, the more likely they will fail later on. Let them work at their own pace. This reminds me of something personal in my own life. I have one niece (3 years old in January) and one nephew (18 months old). My niece, probably at about 12 months old, became very interested in books. She always wanted to be read to, and it is her favorite present to receive. I could not leave the house until I read her 50 books. She is still like that to this day. Each time I read her a book, she always asks for “one more”. She knows her abc's, a lot of 15 songs, can count to fifteen, etc. My nephew on the other hand, will occasionally ask for a book, but only if it is right in front of him. And he hasn’t learned that many words yet. They are like night and day. One day, my sister realized this and started freaking out and trying to read him books. She was worried that he was already behind. I guess looking at it from the perspective of them learning at their own pace is something that we need to take into consideration and also that everyone does learn at their in different ways. It is definitely interesting to watch though.

Overall though, I found Karley’s presentation very interesting. She did a good job presenting (especially since she was all alone). She also incorporated different things such as movie clips, and a game!