J.

Curriculum Studies

ISSN: 0022-0272 (Print) 1366-5839 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tcus20

Beyond Hidden Curriculum?

Catherine Cornbleth

To cite this article: Catherine Cornbleth (1984) Beyond Hidden Curriculum?, J. Curriculum
Studies, 16:1, 29-36, DOI: 10.1080/0022027840160105

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027840160105

Published online: 29 Sep 2006.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 968

View related articles

Citing articles: 11 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tcus20
J. CURRICULUM STUDIES, 1984, VOL. 16, NO. 1, 29-36

Beyond Hidden Curriculum?

Catherine Cornbleth
University of Pittsburgh

Introduction

In school, students seem to learn much that is not publicly set forth in official
statements of school philosophy or purpose or in course guides and syllabi. This
learning, which includes information, beliefs, and ways of behaving in one's society,
is often attributed to a 'hidden curriculum' of schooling.1 With few exceptions, this
hidden curriculum is portrayed as a powerful, detrimental force that undermines
the professed commitment of the schools to foster intellectual development and a
democratic community. Attention to a hidden curriculum is often associated with
critiques of the authoritarianism and inequities of primary and secondary schooling
in politically democratic societies.2 But, while 'hidden curriculum' is an intuitively
attractive phrase, one that gives the appearance of accounting for the complexity of
how schools affect students and why schools resist change, it tends to label more than
to explain.
It may be that the usefulness of the concepts of hidden curriculum as a vehicle
for criticism depends in part on a degree of amorphousness that precludes close
scrutiny. The possibility of a pernicious hidden curriculum, however, demands
careful attention to its operation and influence. And when we give it this attention,
the questions of interest are not so much whether a hidden curriculum is hidden—by
whom, from whom, or how—but what is to be found and what difference it might
make for the experience and study of schooling.
The phenomena referred to as constituting the hidden curriculum are tacit in so
far as their presence is implied and often taken-for-granted rather than directly
acknowledged and examined—for example, the segmentation of the school day and
programming into fixed time periods for supposedly separate subjects. These
phenomena also appear to be both complex and changing, with varying features and
messages, academic and social, across time and place.3 In addition, the phrase,
'hidden curriculum', implies some sort of conspiracy—for which the evidence is not
at all compelling. As Vallance suggests, 'the hidden curriculum became hidden by the
end of the nineteenth century simply because the rhetoric had done its job'. 4 By the
turn of the century, the schools' explicit 'assertive socialization' function had become
sufficiently established that it could be taken-for-granted; upon rediscovery, it was
assumed by many to have been hidden. For these reasons, it would seem more
appropriate to consider the implicit curricula of schooling rather than a hidden
curriculum.
Implicit curricula consist of the messages imparted by the classroom and
school environment. In a McLuhanian sense, the medium is a large part of the
30 JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM STUDIES 1 6 : 1

school's message, perhaps the predominant message. And the messages of implicit
curricula might complement, contradict, or parallel the formal, manifest curriculum
of reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, and other subjects.
Among the outcomes attributed to implicit curricula messages are individual and
societal effects that foster conformity to national ideals and social conventions while
maintaining socio-economic and cultural inequalities. Individual students are
assumed to acquire prevailing world views, norms, and values as well as predefined
and usually subordinate roles in authority relationships. Collectively, such effects
are seen as serving a social control function by perpetuating existing social structures
and the standards that support them. The elements of implicit curricula identified as
exerting these influences range from features of texts and other curriculum materials
to teacher-student relationships and school policies and routines. 5 But, while there is
diverse evidence suggesting the presence and operation of implicit curricula,
documentation of specific effects on students remains sketchy. Implicit messages
have tended to be equated with effects.
The major value of the notion of implicit curricula is that it calls attention to
aspects of schooling that today are usually only vaguely recognized and remain
largely unexamined, particularly the schools' pedagogical, institutional, and social
environments and their interrelations. Thus, although the term, implicit curricula, is
more descriptive of these phenomena than is hidden curriculum, it seems preferable
to forego both labels and directly examine the constraints and opportunities as well
as the seemingly contradictory messages that are communicated by the school milieu
and how they are mediated by students. My goal in this essay is to begin such an
examination. Schools are enmeshed in such a web of contradictions that any notion
of hidden or implicit curriculum serves to flatten, rather than to reveal phenomena
we should be exploring.

Contradiction and mediation

Contradiction and normative variation is inherent to schooling as it is in other social

institutions. Schools proffer contradictory messages and possibilities for interpret-
ation and action. Among the contradictions of contemporary schooling are discrep-
ancies within and between curriculum 6 and context, discontinuities among the
messages of schooling and other social agencies, and the paradox of the schools' role
in affording both liberating opportunites and constraints on personal autonomy.
Contradictions between curriculum and context are evident when, for example,
cultural (including political and intellectual) diversity is lauded by teachers or
textbooks as contributing to the vitality of a democratic society, but students are
rewarded, informally or with higher grades, for conforming to their teacher's notion
of the good student or citizen. 7 Curricular inconsistencies are apparent when, for
example, social studies texts laud freedom of speech as a hallmark of political
democracy but ignore or denigrate contemporary dissenters. More broadly, schools
and curriculum are often seen as the agency for mitigating historic social and
economic inequities by providing all individuals with equal opportunity for 'life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'. Yet equal opportunity often means unequal
treatment, for example, tracking, pull-out compensatory programmes, differential
provision of seemingly similar programmes within and across schools. In addition,
variation in contextual messages regarding what constitutes appropriate adult work
BEYOND HIDDEN CURRICULUM? 31

roles and relationships to authority have been found to differ with the perceived
socio-economic status of the school community in ways that could perpetuate status
differences.8 Variation is also evident within schools. In one classroom, for example,
the message might be that students are to think for themselves, while in another
students are effectively free only to agree with the authority represented by the
teacher or textbook.
Normative variations and contradictions extend beyond the school to discont-
inuities among the messages communicated by schools and other social agencies.
Concurrent influences on students and teachers include family, peers, and media. 9
Contradictions are obvious when, for example, school curriculum and context
communicate the value of compliance with authority while television and film
portray heroes who flout convention and established authorities. Not infrequently,
schools communicate particularistic local values in conflict with more cosmopolitan
national ideals. 10 In this regard, the social control exercised by American schools
may serve less as 'the handmaiden of industrialization' than to maintain 18th- and
19th-century rural notions of community and moral virtue against the perceived
diversity and corruption of urban-industrial society. 11 Consistent with this view are
the recurrent movements in the United States to restore 'local control' of schooling,
and part of the present movement in the US for changes in schooling appeals to the
restoration of a narrow morality and patriotism as protection against the degrad-
ation of encroaching 'secular humanism'. It would seem that the potency of the
curriculum and context of schooling depends in part on their compatibility with the
messages communicated by other social institutions and personal experience.
The literature which is critical of schooling tends to focus on those aspects that
might constrain and control individuals and thereby contribute to legitimating and
maintaining existing social structures. But there are also aspects of the curricula and
contexts of schools that are potentially liberating. In so far as they enable students to
develop socially valued knowledge and skills, i.e. cultural capital, or to form their
own peer groups and subcultures, they may contribute to personal and collective
autonomy and to possible critique and challenge of existing norms and institutions.
However, student groups whose values and norms conflict with those dominant in
middle-class schools and serve to moderate their impact, 12 or to obviate it
altogether, 13 may, in effect, serve to sustain economic and gender inequities and
dominant social interests. Schools are neither the all-powerful instruments of
cultural and economic reproduction that some have claimed them to be nor the prime
sources of emancipation as others have promised. Yet, while schools are neither, they
provide opportunities for both, i.e. for domination and for resistance or
transformation. 14
These examples of contradiction point to more profound social contradictions
of which the curriculum and context of schooling are an integral part. At issue are
questions of the relation of individual and society, as well as questions of cultural
transmission versus cultural creation and of equity and justice. Thus, contradictions
in the relation of individual and society are realized in the competing conceptions of
individuality and individualization of schooling that underlie classroom practice. 15
Individual differences are constituted and played out in social circumstances;
context, in effect, defines individuality. It is ironic perhaps that, in schools that
profess to celebrate the individual, the individual student has little voice in the
determination of what differences matter, how they are to be assessed, or how
assessments are to be interpreted and acted upon.
32 JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM STUDIES 16:1

These contradictions and resulting tensions might be viewed as disenabling to

students and others trying to makesense of school experience or to determine which
messages are operative in a particular situation. Alternatively, contradictory
messages might cancel each other out, effectively communicating little except
ambiguity and uncertainty. Some students might learn that they cannot trust what
others say and do, that throughout life they will experience contradictions and that
there is little or nothing they can do to resolve such contradictions to their benefit.
The conventional wisdom suggests, for example, that more schooling provides
access to better jobs. When better jobs—or no jobs—are available, students are likely
to see through the schools' facade and become more cynical. Other students probably
do not take the schools'' messages very seriously and thus are not bothered by
contradiction. For them, the school already Jacks credibility compared to the street,
their homes or work. Textbook notions of human freedom or dignity, for example,
are easily dismissed as unrealistic or irrelevant. Cynicism borders on learned
helplessness in so far as these students expect and accept that just the opposite—
constraint and indignity—are 'the way it is' and likely to be in their foreseeable
future.
It is also possible that contradictions are seen as a normal aspect of human
experience and, as such, offer choices regarding which messages to act on or even
opportunities to create one's own interpretations. Whether contradictions within
schooling and its relation to the wider society become impetus to critical redefinition
and reconstruction depends, in part, on how contradictory messages are mediated by
teachers, students, and other school personnel. By mediation I mean the interpreta-
tive process by which people make sense of or create meaning from experience.
Mediation is an intervening and linking process between messages on the one hand
and meanings and actions on the other.
In schools, mediation occurs in at least two interrelated ways, one institutional
and the other individual. Schools as institutions mediate between community social-
cultural values and the experiences that are planned for students. External interests
are thus filtered through institutional arrangements. Institutional mediation,
however, does not directly shape students' school experience and learning. Nor does
it completely shape the further mediation by teachers as professionals and
individuals and by students as individuals and group members. An adequate account
of schooling would accommodate both forms of mediation and the dynamic relation
between them.
Neither functionalist nor structuralist conceptualizations are adequate to this
task. Implicit in both functionalist and structuralist social theory are the assump-
tions that schools reflect the larger society and that the schools' messages are
transmitted in such a manner that they are accepted by most students. Nominal
messages are taken to be effective, and, by implication, students are viewed as passive
receptors or helpless victims. However, not all messages are effectively transmitted,
and students differentially mediate curriculum and context, 16 both individually and
collectively. Underlying the concept of mediation is the assumption that people,
including students, are active participants in the creation and interpretation of
their social environments and actions. But students are not independent agents; they
are shaped by history and culture, through prior personal experience in that history
and culture, and by the immediate social relations and practices of schooling. The
relationship of individual, history, and setting is a dynamic one that is neither
mechanistic nor predetermining.
BEYOND HIDDEN CURRICULUM? 33

Illustrations of student mediation of school experience are abundant, including

their differential interpreation of the relative importance of school subjects, the
appropriate roles of men and women, and the meaning of particular teaching
behaviours. Teacher praise, for example, may be experienced as rewarding and to be
sought after by one student and as embarrassing and to be avoided by another. Most
students appear neither- to adopt intact nor completely reject the various messages of
schooling. Between the extremes of commitment and rebellion are options ranging
from detached acceptance and accommodation to resistance, redefinition, and
subversion. As Waller has convincingly argued, some conflict between students and
their teachers and schools is inherent in 'the condition' of compulsory, mass
instruction. Even in 'the orthodox school, old-style', students:
inevitably attempted to establish their own social order independently of
teachers ... The social order which the teacher worked out in advance and
attempted to establish could never be quite complete ... In the interstices
... there sprang up spontaneous life of students. There was always a
loophole, and life always found the loophole ... The conflict that always
arose between the teacher definitions and the pupil definitions ... was
made more severe by the fact that the students never quite accepted the
teacher-ordained social order as one of the unalterable facts of life.17
Many students, for example, seem to become adept at 'playing school', that is,
keeping up appearances and seeming to go along in order to gain advantage without
internalizing the school's values or views of the world.18 Others may develop
sophisticated forms of defiance, enabling them to avoid both subordination to school
norms and getting into trouble with school authorities. They approach their school
situation in ways not unlike the speeding motorist on the lookout for radar traps;
instead of becoming more law-abiding, they become more adept at law-breaking.
Given that schooling is only one of several influences on students and that these
influences are mediated by students, how they differentially filter and act on
messages conveyed by social context of schooling cannot be ignored in assessing
school processes and effects.

The irony of context in isolation

It has been suggested that school experience is complex and dynamic, comprised of
contradictions and tensions, and always mediated by students and others within their
socio-historical circumstances. This conception has compelling implications for
inquiry and interpretation, several of which are briefly explored here.
What are needed are ways of understanding the contradictions inherent in and
the mediation of school experience—ways that enable us to comprehend the
multidimensionality and dynamics of curriculum and social context and curriculum
as context. To examine curriculum or context in isolation from each other is to use an
inappropriate lens, with the possibilities of spurious conclusions—not unlike
someone examining an interstate highway with a microscope and concluding that it
does not go anywhere. An escape from the irony associated with studying context in
isolation suggests contextualized inquiry rather than inquiry into context per se.
Social context is considered in relation to and interacting with phenomena of
34 JOURNAL OF CURRICULUM STUDIES 1 6 : 1

interest. External relationships as well as internal patterns are examined. What is

background in one instance may be foreground in another.
Neither conventional empirical-analytic nor qualitative paradigms seem adequ-
ate. The pitfalls of abstracted empiricism have been well documented. 19 Studies of
school phenomena out of their context of time, place, and individual experience—
history, social structure, and biography—can be misleading. Similarly, a reduction
of social context to discrete variables such as demographic characteristics or dyadic
interactions tends to be distorting. It is not sufficient merely to substitute social
'traits' for psychological ones. Social class, for example, is not simply a category
representative of the distribution or possession of factors associated with occupation
and income; it might superficially describe, but it does not explain. To categorize
people in this way is also to suggest permanence and attribute status to the
individual, obscuring the influence of history and social conditions and the
possibility of change. The value of the concept of class lies in its indication of a
differential and dynamic relationship among people and their social situations. It is a
complex relationship of relative power and autonomy, which involves, for
example, not only the reproduction process (through the nature of one's work) but
also other institutions, including schools, and the use of goods, services, and culture.
Similarly, gender is much more than an independent variable with various
correlates. It is 'a pattern of relations among people . . . an extensive and complex
pattern, woven through all the institutions they live in . . . and shapes their lives at
every level'. 20 The schools' explicit and implicit contributions to the perpetuation or
dismantling of disabling sex-role stereotype are clearly more complex and subtle
than matters of textbook content or athletic opportunities.
The presupposition that schooling is embedded in a context of contradictions
necessitates modification of conventional notions and study of causation. Complexity
and mediation preclude neat causal laws and prediction. Explanation must be sought
in terms of reasons. Explanatory inquiry would take into account historical
processes, structural conditions and relationships, patterns of social activity, and the
actions of individuals as they contribute to the perpetuation or alteration of social
situations, specifically school experience. Such inquiry is both historical and rooted in
concrete experience as it seeks to uncover social structures that shape human
relationships, actions, and meanings.
Our methods (i.e. concepts and procedures) of inquiry also need to be critical—
to question or make problematic those aspects of schooling commonly accepted as
normal or natural so as to reveal layers of meaning that are not usually part or our
everyday awareness. In other words, our inquiries ought to probe beneath the veneer
of supposedly self-evident and self-justifying assumptions and practices and enable
us to expose the contradictions and possibilities inherent in historically- and
culturally-formed school circumstances. Such inquiry is necessarily interpretative
as well as material, incorporating participant conceptions and our own values. What
is called for, then, is interpretative inquiry that is sensitive to context and
contradiction, including meanings to participants, and critical of prevailing school
practices and illusions that impede realization of human potential and social justice.
A hidden curriculum is not merely to be made visible but is to be interrogated as to
its nature and function. The embeddedness and reciprocity of curriculum and
context are made accessible with a focus on features of schooling that can be altered
to enhance satisfaction of human needs and spirit. Existing conditions are not taken
as the limits of what might yet be.
BEYOND HIDDEN CURRICULUM? 35

Whereas conventional research naively aims to be apolitical, critical inquiry is

explicitly normative. T h e former tends toward reification and, consequently, a
conservatism that is accepting of the status quo and at least implicitly supportive of its
continuance in the interest of technical control or practical understanding. In
contrast, the interest of critical inquiry holds the potential of being emancipatory. To
see through the facades and pretensions of schooling can be liberating, enabling us to
'reduce our collaboration with the accidents of birth and circumstance. To invent
such vantage points changes and enlarges our perception of the whole and our
relationship to it'. 21 Critical inquiry can thus serve as a catalyst for change, not only
to explain but also to reveal inherent contradictions in the social order of schooling
and how repression or dissatisfaction can be alleviated by altering underlying
structural conditions. 22
The assumptions underlying our paradigms have implications for how we come
to understand the social world and envision possibilities for acting within and on it—
the questions we raise, how we pursue them, and the interpretations we give to our
findings. If concern with the anti-intellectual and undemocratic features of
schooling is to be more than a wringing of hands or inspirational oratory, then
prevailing notions of hidden curriculum are better put to rest. Beyond hidden
curriculum, we might well engage the complexity and contradictions of the social
context of schooling with critical studies of school experience and enlightened
action.

Acknowledgement

The development of this essay has benefited considerably from conversations with
colleagues who have offered thoughtful, critical comment and encouragement,
especially Tom Popkewitz.

References and notes

1. Although PHILIP W. JACKSON is acknowledged as the first to use the term 'hidden curriculum' in the
Unites States in Life In Classrooms (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1968), the presence of what
has become known as hidden curriculum was identified earlier by others. In Experience and Education
(Macmillan, New York, 1938, p. 48), for example, JOHN DEWEY referred to the 'collateral learning' of
attitudes that occurs in schools that may have more long-range importance than the explicit school
curriculum. While ELIZABETH VALLANCE (Hiding the hidden curriculum: an interpretation of the
language of justification in nineteenth-century educational reform. In Bellack, A. A. and Kliebard,
H. M. [eds.] Curriculum and Evaluation [McCutchan, Berkeley, 1977]) has provided historical
perspective regarding its origins, the hidden curriculum of contemporary schooling remains a notably
elusive phenomenon. See also DREEBEN, R. The unwritten curriculum and its relation to values.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 8 (1976), pp. 111-124: MARTIN, J. R. What should we do with a hidden
curriculum when we find one? Curriculum Inquiry, 6 (1976), pp. 135-151; VALLANCE, E. The hidden
curriculum and qualitative inquiry as states of mind. Journal of Education, 162 (1980), pp. 138-151.
2. For example see GIROUS, H. A. and PENNA, A. N. Social education and the classroom: the dynamics of
the hidden curriculum. Theory and Research in Social Education, 7 (1979), pp. 21—41.
3. See ANYON, J. Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Education, 162 (1980),
pp. 67-92; ANYON, J. Social class and school knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry, 11 (1981), pp. 3-42;
APPLE, M. W. and KING, N. R. What do schools teach? Curriculum Inquiry, 6 (1977), pp. 341-358;
DREEBEN, R. On What Is Learned in School (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1968);
FIELDING, R. Social education and school change; constraints of the hidden curriculum. In
Morrissett, I. and Williams, A. M. (eds.) Social/Political Education in Three Countries: Britain, West
Germany and the United States (Social Science Education Consortium, Boulder, Colorado, 1981);
HENRY, J. Docility or giving the teacher what she wants. Journal of Social Issues, 11 (1955), pp. 33-41;
36 BEYOND HIDDEN CURRICULUM?

HENRY, J. Attitude organization in elementary school classrooms. American Journal of Orthopsychia-

try, 27 (1957), pp. 117-133; JACKSON, P. W., op cit. (see Note 1); OVERLY, N. V. (ed.) The Unstudied
Curriculum: Its Impact on Children (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development,
Washington, D.C., 1970); SNYDER, B. R. The Hidden Curriculum (Knopf, New York, 1971).
4. VALLANCE, E. (1977), pp. 601-602 (see Note 1).
5. For a review see CORNBLETH, C. Negotiating implict curricula in social education. (Unpublished
paper presented to the annual meeting of the Social Science Education Consortium, East Lansing,
Michigan, 1982).
6. 'Curriculum' is used here to refer to the manifest or official school programme.
7. See CORNBLETH, C , GAY, G. and DUECK, K. G. Pluralism. In Mehlinger, H. D. and Davis, O. L., Jr.
(eds.), The Social Studies, 80th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1981).
8. See ANYON, J. (Note 3); KAPFERER, J. L. Socialization and the symbolic order of the school.
Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 12 (1981), pp. 258-274; WILCOX, K. Differential socialization
in the classroom: implications for equal opportunity. In Spindler, G. (ed.) Doing the Ethnography of
Schooling: Educational Anthropology in Action (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1982).
9. See CONNELL, R. W., ASHENDEN, D. J., KESSLER, S. and DOWSETT, G. W. Making the Difference:
Schools, Families, and Social Division (George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1982).
10. For example, PESHKIN, A. Growing Up American: Schooling and the Survival of Community
(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1978).
11. FRANKLIN, B. Social control and curriculum change: a reconsideration. (Unpublished paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, 1983).
12. For example, CONNELL, R. W. et al., op. cit. (see Note 9); CUSICK, P. A. Inside High School (Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1973).
13. For example, WILLIS, P. E. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs
(Saxon House, Teakfield, UK, 1977).
14. See GIROUX, H. A. Theory and Resistance in Education (J. F. Bergin, South Hadley, Massachusetts, in
press).
15. POPKEWITZ, T. S. The sociological bases for individual differences: the relation of solitude to the
crowd. In Fenstermacher, G. D. and Goodlad, J. I. (eds.) Individual Differences and the Common
Curriculum, 82nd Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part I (University of
Chicago Press, Chicago, 1983).
16. See MCNEIL, L. H. Negotiating classroom knowledge: beyond achievement and socialization. Journal
of Curriculum Studies, 13 (1981), pp. 313-328.
17. WALLER, W. The Sociology of Teaching (Wiley, New York, 1932), pp. 309-310.
18. On 'strategic compliance', see LACEY, C. The Socialization of Teachers (Methuen, London, 1977).
19. MILLS, C. W. The Sociological Imagination (Oxford University Press, New York, 1959); MISHLER, E.
G. Meaning in context: is there any other kind? Harvard Educational Review 49 (1979), pp. 1-19.
20. CONNELL, R. W. et al., op. cit., pp. 33-34 (see Note 9).
21. POPKEWITZ, T. S. Paradigm and Ideology in Educational Research: The Social Functions of the
Intellectual (Falmer Press, London, in press).
22. See FAY, B. Social Theory and Political Practice (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1975) on the
relation of critical theory and practice.