The Hidden Curriculum in High School Education
he concept of a "hidden curriculum" became popularized about a decade ago in medical education. As I understand it, the "hidden curriculum" is the idea that the dominant values of Western medicine (a focus on disease, pathophysiology, and patient compliance) are what is "really taught," despite small fringe efforts to teach about say, climate change and health, nutrition, or racial justice.
In high school education, I've never heard of anyone talk explicitly of "hidden curriculum." In fact, in my experience, the purpose of a curriculum never comes up. "It's to prepare students for college," or "it's to prepare students to enter the workforce." are the usual responses to why we are doing anything we do in the classroom.
One tough pill to swallow is that the more I repeat these platitudes to high school seniors, the more they believe them. The hidden part has become invisible to all -- we show up, turn in work, take tests, and hope this translates to a better life somewhere in a far off future. At the same time, students are actually quite more astute than this. When I put up the Mark Twain quote "Don't let school get in the way of your education," some students gave perplexed looks (where else do you get an education other than at school?) while others used it as an opportunity to open up about the "real" education outside of the school walls.
So what is this "real" education? What are we as schools avoiding talking about, in favor of "hard skills" of note-taking, test-taking, and behavioral compliance?
Who are we responsible to other than ourselves?
What does friendship mean?
What does it take to stand up for something you believe in?
What would you spend time learning about if you designed your own curriculum?
What does it mean to have a "good" conversation?
I'm sure there are dozens more. What I'm dancing around, and trying to make explicit is that I hope we as teachers make space to engage students in discussing ethics, virtues, and what matters.