Anyon Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Schooling



"In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical , involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance. "

"In math, when two digit division was introduced, the teacher in one school gave a four minute lecture on waht the terms are called (which number is the divisor, dividend, quotient and remainder). The children were told to copy these names in their notebooks. Then the teacher told them the steps to follow to do the problems, saying, "This is how you do them." The teacher listed the steps on the board and tehy appeared several days later as a chart hung in the middle of the front wall:"Divide, Multiply,Subtract, Bring Down.The children often did examples of two-digit division. When the teacher went over the examples with them, he told them what the procedure was for each porblem,rarely asking them to conceptualize or explain it themselves:"Three into twenty two is seven; do your subtraction and one is left over."

"One of the teachers led the children through a series of steps to make a 1-inch grid on their paper without telling them that they were making a 1 inch grid or that it would be used to study scale. She said "Take your rule. Put it across the bottom Now make a mark at every number. Then move your ruler down to the bottom. No, put it across the bottom. Now make a mark on top of every number. Now draw a line from..." At this point a girl said that she had a faster way to do it and the teacher said, "No, you don't;you don't even know what I'm making yet. Do it this way or its wrong."After they had the lines up and down and across, the teacher told them she wanted them to make a figure by connecting some dots and to measure that, using the scale of 1 inch equals 1 mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, "Don't cut it until I check it."

COMMENTS

When thinking about how we can change "This" referring to the problems with our recent educational system, my answer is "impossible for one person to change." We can all preach and say things such as "Everyone can make a difference one person at a time (TRUE) but realistically i find it incredibally hard to believe that people will make the change.The educational system we have today has evolved over years and years, it cannot be fixed in a day or maybe not even in the equivalent amount of time that it took to evolve.Perhaps if i were born in a different era, I could have made a difference in which it might be implemented in todays society. Who would maintain such a structure? Sounds rediculous but seriuosly, I don't see it happening. During my own education I've had teachers tell me how extraordinary i was at writing then literally the next semester my teacher completely shut me out and marked all my essays like a two year old wrote them. One teacher is taught to teach one way and the other another way.
 Regardless I think that a teacher is going to teach however way they want to.