The Importance Of Social Class And The Hidden Curriculum

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Have you ever felt as though your educational experience was different during K-12 schooling based on the local income in your area versus the experience of those who attended a school in a “richer district”? I am not addressing the types of classes offered at those schools but rather the explicit understanding and knowledge gained in those core classes that were supposedly the same as yours. The reason for this division between schools of different social/ economical status is something called the “hidden curriculum”. The “hidden curriculum” can be defined as, “a side effect of education, an expectation that is learned but is not officially assigned such as the transfer of cultural norms, values, and beliefs in both the classroom and the social …show more content…

Anyon supports this claim of a “hidden curriculum” in her essay, Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of work. She states that, “The ‘hidden curriculum’ of school work is tacit preparation for relating to the process of production in a particular way” (89-90). Anyon shows that there is a parallel between the “hidden curriculum” and the workplace. I would like to clarify what by relating my own experiences in school to the “hidden curriculum”. Every year in at least one of my classes, I had a teacher who pushed me educationally. I had someone who personally took the extra time and wanted to see me succeed. Even though it was not written in the curriculum to push me harder than the other students, they did it; they had a “hidden curriculum.” Now imagine this scenario for an entire school despite the fact that their curriculum might be the same as the one my school used. My teachers went above and beyond what they had to do in order to give students the tools they needed to be successful both in the K-12 and post-secondary school …show more content…

For example in their essay Is that Paper Really Due Today?, Collier and Morgan write that, “a first-generation student or a student who has recently transferred from a two-year college to a four-year university may be unprepared when the expectations for written work go beyond good grammar to require the appropriate use of sources in addition” (429). In this passage, Collier and Morgan are supporting my claim that the “hidden curriculum” is in every school and that is the reason why not every school is the same in their expectations. However, we need to remember that not every student is the same as well, whether due to prior college experience or lack of post-secondary exposure. This exposure is important because, as a student who has attended a lower income K-12 school, I can testify that even if someone is a traditional student, in Collier and Morgan 's sense that both of their parents attended a university, they are still not as well equipped as those who attended a more elite school. Therefore, a more accurate conclusion is that if a student has not been exposed to high expectations, it can be difficult to understand those expectations without asking for some

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