Our children will spend most of their time at school, during the time, they are exposed to hidden and manifest curriculum, explicit and implicit. Of course, we know that schools will provide Math, Geography, Sociology and etc to them from the curriculum, as subjects for them to learn but importantly, and indirectly, soon we will realize that they learn other things as well as they are a part of the structure of those places. Embedded inside, cultural practices, do’s and don’ts and etc. Whatever it is, teachers play important roles as well because indeed teachers shape the content of what students are going to learn. This is the belief of Jackson in contrast to Vallance that believe text materials can assist in determining particular school’s cultures. Eisner wrote something on initiative which I could not make sense and relation to text materials that Vallance explained before, but I realized that his intention is to prove that schools indeed teach far more than they advertise.
As teachers do provide important roles as it involves expectation, it also plays role in assisting and providing teachers expectations as well in fostering compliant behavior. Teacher targets their students will read more, so what do they do is providing a program that can achieve their objective( students to read more) and at the same time providing presents/rewards. It can be done as long as mutual needs are accomplished. However, this kind of program must be carefully done as it has backwash effect if extrinsic rewards are not accomplished for particular target group. Their motivation will be very low. Interesting enough, we don’t want to create “reward junkies” to next generation. Main concern here is any program that try to implement something to the students must not interfere with schooling primary purposes.
What is schooling primary purposes? Do we have to check back the culture of Anglo-Saxon middle class as most United States schools stand on that ? Most of the culture, I think we will be based on preparing the students for the outside world.
I am not sure what is the intention of this writer when he said that competitiveness is being implemented at school sometimes on the expense of others. Very obvious analogy, if there is the best student, there must be another failure. I will clarify this later to my professor as I am confused now. I am thinking that the writer notices school nowadays do not follow/have the cultivation of imagination which make it stuck rather try to emphasis on something that can be learn outside school. I like to quote him saying this:
learning is a humble thing compared with teaching. to teach puts one in a superordinate position, to learn in the position of a subordinate. leaeners are seldom philanthropists. but who would the poet rather learn from: not Einstein, or Marx, or Darwin but from a bird. and what would he rather learn: to understand the universe, to be able to turn dross into gold, to be able to create atomic fission? no. he rather learn to sing. He’d rather learn to do something that gives joy to life from one of the most fragile of god’s creatures than to teach the largest bodies of our universe itself how not to dance
He wrote about few reasons that make different status between universities exist because of the general culture that pervades these schools, as well as because society recognizes qualities and guide their children to places whose implicit curriculum is compatible with their values and with the levels of social, economic, and academic achievements to which they aspire, important enough to mention structured forms of education.
NULL Curriculum: A curriculum that does not EXIST
To identify it, first, we must look at intellectual process that school emphasizes and neglect and secondly the content or subject areas that are present and absent in school curricula.
Another interesting points that he made:
I am trying to point out that certain subkect matters have been traditionally taught in schools not because of a careful analysis of range of other alternatives that could be offered but rather because they have traditionally been taught. we teach what we teach largely out of habit and in the process neglect areas of study that could prove to be exceedingly useful to students.
Tags: anglo saxon, cultural practices, curriculum, education, expectation, extrinsic rewards, middle class, next generation, objective students, sociology, target group, united states schools