Product Description
Institutions of higher education are not immune to the problems of the rest of the world: racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. This text includes original essays which focus on every aspect of the hidden curriculum, from management schools’ biology departments to dissertation committees. It also includes interviews with academics, case studies which examine how schools differentially socialize certain classes of students, and studies of various educational sett… More >>
The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education
Tags: Curriculum, education, Hidden, Higher
#1 by D. P. Birkett on April 28, 2010 - 6:46 am
Apparently the term “hidden cirriculum” was introduced in 1968 by Philip Jackson. It has long been known that schools for children did more than teach reading, writing and arithmetic, but this used to be considered a good thing – building up character or teaching citizenship or whatever. Those who seek higher education might be expected to be better prepared to resist brainwashing but the book shows that they too can be indoctrinated in subtle ways.
The title led me to fear unintelligible prose of the kind I associate with words like “deconstruction” anf “post-modernist” and “structuralism” but it is quite well written and understandable. I suppose it would be asking for a different book to complain that there are no opposing views presented. Some conservatives believe that our campuses are hotbeds of radicalism and feminism and vegetarianism etc. Their views would have livened it up a bit. As it is the contributors battle an invisible opponent, but perhaps that fits in with the concept of the cirriculum being hidden.
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by another reader on April 28, 2010 - 8:12 am
I agree with the previous reviewer in that this book is very well-written and readable to a non-sociologist like me. There are articles on pretty much everything there is in university like the actual buildings on campus, along with how the classrooms and desks/tables are organised, how racism and sexism are perpetuated in society because of how schools are tacitly non-inclusive, to actual indoctrination and ‘obedience training’ in law and business schools. I go to a public university in Canada, and while I don’t think the hidden curriculum is as obvious or extreme here as these American sociologists say since they only looked at American schools, the situation would probably be roughly the same across the Western world. This book breaks new ground in that hidden curriculum hadn’t been studied in-depth before; it has only been highschools and elementary schools that have been studied before. It was good to have some of my suspicions confirmed by others by reading this book. I think it’s good that it’s acceptable to talk about this sort of thing openly, society has progressed far enough that we can do that I guess.
Rating: 5 / 5