Schools are often viewed as neutral institutions that cater solely to the purpose of educating young adults and preparing them for the larger society in general. However, a deeper analysis of education as an enterprise exposes the political aspects embedded in it. Educational institutions like schools can then be seen as a fertile ground for power, control and conflict to form a nexus and hence, spreading certain implicit values, norms in students. This I believe underlies the successful hegemonic dominance of one group over the other. 

It is to investigate these ‘unintended’ consequences of the education system that one requires a heuristic tool like a hidden curriculum. Hidden curriculum can be defined as 

In this paper, I attempt to utilise my understanding of hidden curriculum in order to look at production of meanings in classrooms. The purpose would be to look at teacher-student interactions and make sense of the everyday in terms of typification of knowledge, teachers and students. For this purpose I will be drawing experiences from a Zilla Parishad school in Khargar, Mumbai. 

The relevance of hidden curriculum has increased in recent times all the more due to the interface between economy and education. As the market grows stronger, and begins wielding greater influence on education, the curriculum and pedagogies get shaped in a manner as to cater to the demands of the education system. The dominant links which get forged between the education sector and economy remain unregulated by concerns of equity, liberty, social justice etc. This is a situation that can’t be studied by assuming a one to one relation between various stakeholders of the education system like educator, student, classroom, knowledge. These exist together as a complex whole, that need to be critically engaged with. To social theorists like Michael Apple, this issue is a structural one; where one is looking at the relation between education and economy and knowledge and power. To quote him:

“In broad outline, the approach I find most fruitful seeks to “explicate the manifest and latent or coded reflections of modes of material production, ideological values, class relations, and structures of social power—racial and sexual as well as politico-economic—on the state of consciousness of people in a precise historical or socio-economic situation.” (Apple)

This implies that economic relations of production, ideological values and other structures of social power seem to have an impact on the consciousness of people and on their day to day cultural lives. Schooling is a part of this every day and hence, must inevitably be coloured by the influence of these structures of power. Therefore, there is a need to interrogate this process of education, schooling, curriculum formation etc. 

Apple does refer to the significance of economy in looking at education as a political enterprise. The significance of reproduction of economic relations of production were rightly shown by Bowles and Gintis in their work ‘Schooling Capitalist America’ explain how schooling reproduces class inequalities. The perpetuation of the class structure requires that the hierarchical division of labor be reproduced in the consciousness of its participants. The educational system is one of the reproduction mechanisms through which dominant elites seek to achieve this objective. By providing skills, legitimating inequalities in economic positions, and facilitating certain types of social intercourse among individuals, U.S. education patterns personal development around the requirements of alienated work. The educational system reproduces the capitalist social division of labor, in part, through a correspondence between its own internal social relationships and those of the workplace.

Though he does acknowledge the importance of reproduction of economic relations of production he is of  the view that to be able to successfully analyse the complexity of education one must focus on the relation between cultural and ideological definitions and the material conditions of existence, and also the unequal society and consciousness of people that follows from it.

“Thus, the cultural sphere is not a “mere reflection” of economic practices. Instead, the influence, the “reflection” or determination, is highly mediated by forms of human action. It is mediated by the specific activities, contradictions, and relationships among real men and women like ourselves— as they go about their day-to-day lives in the institutions which organize these lives… The control is vested in the constitutive principles, codes, and especially the commonsense consciousness and practices underlying our lives, as well as by overt economic division and manipulation.”(Apple, 2004)

Therefore, Apple lays emphasis on the relation between CULTURE, ECONOMY, IDEOLOGY and CURRICULUM. This relationship answers to larger structural questions of the source of knowledge and ideas and the politics behind their entry into school curriculum and commonsense. 

Another major function of schools apart from their function of (a) imparting technical knowledge and (b) socialising students is that of making students a-critical. That is, it made everything look natural at the level of culture, polity and economy. Let me illustrate the sae via example:

For instance, most of the textbooks in school while showing a pictorial depiction of a family, wherein there is a  heterosexual couple, and the woman spends time keeping home for her working husband and school going children. In another example, students are socialised into becoming citizens of their country over and above any other identity, via textbook content (especially in political science books) and other co-curricular activities on the occasion of Independence Day, republic day or the annual concert. The emphasis of these activities is primarily on the greatness of the nation and the need for its citizens to submit to the same. Consider another example: right from pre-primary to higher secondary level, students are encouraged to take up white collar, high paying, and prestigious positions in the job market. How many students are actually encouraged into taking up agriculture or other technical jobs after graduating a question to ponder at! Despite these occupations being extremely functional to the society’s sustenance, schools never train students for those occupations; even if the students being taught come from agricultural background and have the potential to contribute better to the same. The underlying assumption is that one enrols into modern schooling system with an aim of getting a secular, modern and economically lucrative job.  

“A society based on technical cultural capital and individual accumulation of economic capital needs to seem as if it were the only possible world. Part of the school’s role, in other words, is to contribute to the distribution of what the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School might call purposive-rational patterns of rationality and action.” (Apple,2004)

The crucial idea here is that there is a hegemonic discourse that saturates the beings of people to a deep level, so that educational, economic and social world we see and interact with and the commonsense interpretations we put on it, simply becomes the world, the only world. Hence, hegemony refers not to collection of meanings that reside at an abstract level somewhere in our minds. Rather, it refers to an organized assemblage of meanings and practices, the central, effective and dominant system of meanings, values and actions which are lived and entrenched deep as part of our self.

This is where hidden curriculum theorists play a role. Hidden curriculum inquiries are a more productive way of enquiring what schools actually do, interrogating the technocratic views of schools. This paradigm enables researchers to look at schools as fertile ground for intersection of economy, polity and society. It enables researchers to study how schools transmit covertly dominant ideas and symbols in a seemingly a-political and neutral fashion. Hence, hidden curriculum theorists provided a theoretical impetus for breaking out of methodological quagmire in which schools are merely viewed as black boxes. The ‘black box’ paradigm induced researchers to view schools in terms of objective input-output model, making it devoid of any transparency as to the agency of teachers and students. Therefore, the daily processes of schools, the politics behind them, the meanings interpreted off them are not looked at, as the schools being ‘black boxes’ assume opaqueness. While this view of schooling may seem commonplace, it is actually problematic because the process of schooling is inherently a political act and must be enquired into. 

Giroux, in the article Schooling and Politics of Hidden Curriculum links the changing economy to changes in curriculum and pedagogy of schooling. He believes that recent times (1980’s onwards) has seen a rise in interference of the market in the education system. The market is increasingly becoming stronger and wields increased influence on the education sector. Education becomes more rational, measurement oriented and instrumental in nature. The links between the market and education system are mostly unregulated by concerns of equity and social justice etc. Hence, what ensues is a reformulation of the curriculum, largely on the lines of the demands of market. Schools then must be viewed as nexus of power, control and conflict.

Giroux provides three perspectives on Hidden Curriculum: 

• Traditional Approach: answers to the question that ‘what makes this society possible?’ it is believed that education plays fundamental role in maintaining stability in society.  It is largely non-critical of the relation that exists between schools and the larger society. The transmission and reproduction of culture and values is accepted as positive function of education. Hence, the political and economic angles of education are taken for granted. 
•  
• Liberal Approach: deals with assessment of power and social order in classrooms. It believes knowledge is something to be critically engaged with. The core concern is how meanings get produced in classrooms.  Therefore large chunks of research are done on interaction between teacher-student, importance of seeing education in terms of commonsense categories typification of knowledge etc. Seeks to expose the taken for grantedness of certain positivistic assumptions in education and learning and highlights the imp of interpersonal relations between imp stake holders in the process of learning 
•  
• Radical Approach:  seeks to explain political function of schools in terms of class dynamics and domination, point to structural factors outside of classrooms responsible for influencing classroom activities. The question at the core of the radical approach is ‘how the process of schooling functions to reproduce and sustain the relations of dominance, exploitation and inequality between classes’. While earlier halves of it concentrated on a political-economy perspective on schooling, with theorists like Bowles & Gintis, Carnoy and Levin explaining the reproduction of economic relations of production (as mentioned in an example above). Apart from political economy approach there was the approach of Neo-Marxists like Michael Apple and King that focused on how a variety of mechanisms in schools reproduced the ethos and structure of capitalist society, concentrating on culture, ideology, hegemony etc. Apple for instance locates the scant attention paid to issues of conflict in classroom academics. He believes that the way issues of conflict are handled in class, can lead to a culture of quiescence and dormancy amongst young adults. Schools project a ‘consensus oriented’ image of the society, therefore those who choose conflicting groups are often viewed with contempt in popular culture.  

Classroom in Zila Parishad schools

I attempt to observe the classroom interactions between teachers and students in the Zilla Parishad School at Khargar, Mumbai. In doing so, I am bringing the process of meaning formation in classrooms under critical lens. 

The school in question here is a zilla parishad school, situated in the interiors of Khargar. A vertically extending, four storey building with a tiny courtyard before it, if not for school uniform wearing children running around the premises, one would probably mistake it for being any other building but a school. It holds classes from standard one to standard five and is funded by the local district authorities. The school, like other zilla parishad schools, provides free education, free books and stationery and mid day meals to its students. The student population of the school mostly consists of working class students from across the locality. Incidentally, most of these students also belong to educationally and socially backward communities. Also, a lot of these students are first generation learners with little or no background of formal education in their respective households. 

As per interpretative approach to hidden curriculum, interactions and everyday lived experiences play important roles in shaping classroom discourses. Each child and each teacher must,therefore, be viewed as entering the classroom with their own set of significant symbols, meanings and interpretations he/she has internalised in their interaction with others. Hence, contextualising them in their definite socio-political-economic locations becomes essential to make sense of their performance and attitude in school. Only then can critically and sociologically analyse the commonsense typifications, categorisations individuals use in their everyday lives. Therefore, much of the empirical research conducted under this paradigm has emerged around questions concerning: 

“(a) actual and hidden content of schooling; (b) the principles that govern the form and content of teacher-student interaction; (c)importance of seeing educational knowledge as commonsense  categories and typifications selected from larger culture and society that teachers, students and researchers use to give meanings to actions.” (Giroux, 51)

Giroux is drawing our attention to the inherently political nature of classroom discourses. Even in case of the Zilla Parishad School the identities of students that exist outside classrooms may trickle into the classrooms; after all most of these children belong to the same neighbourhood and often the same community and share kinship networks. Also, the teacher is most likely to be aware of the community a student belongs to. These may in turn affect the interaction process within the classroom. Krishna Kumar in ‘Learning to be Backward’ explores how the social background of students affects their response to educational texts by looking at experiences of a tribal boy in school. He observes a history teacher who is following a well established norm of questioning a pupil to check if he has learnt what she taught in class. It just so happened that the questions were regarding tribals and tantricism and the boy being questioned was a tribal. It often happens that teachers might forget to link objective facts taught in class to present day problematic that impact the everyday of various students depending on their social location. 

“Neither curriculum policy nor teacher training acknowledges the impact the composition of a class, in terms of students’ social background, has on teacher-pupil interaction and on meanings generated in the interaction” (Kumar, 63)

As schooling becomes part of the everyday lived reality of students, teachers and peers become important agents in the process of interaction. The process of education then becomes an issue that must be critically engaged with. 

According to interpretivism, the process of education must be viewed as a ‘social interaction’ where interactions take place between actors. It is essential that the observer views individual actors as thinking beings, whose actions play upon the response of the person (other) before him. The actor in question views the acts of the other (he is in conversation with), identifying significant symbols and gestures, interpreting it (as per his universe of symbols, gestures and interpretations) and ultimately reacting to it.

“The human being must be understood as a thinking being. Human action is not only interaction among individuals but also interaction within the individual. It is not our ideas or attitudes or values that are as important as the constant active ongoing process of thinking. We are not simply conditioned, we are not simply beings who are influenced by those around us, we are not simply products of society. We are, to our very core, thinking animals, always conversing with ourselves as we interact with others. If we want to understand cause, focus on human thinking.” (Charon, 2010)

To be able to understand the interaction process of students in a classroom situation, one must attempt to locate the generalised other and the significant other for students within these processes. 

The concepts of ‘generalised other’ and ‘significant other’ are inimical not only while looking at interaction process within classrooms but also while looking at the development of self concepts of students. According to G.H Mead, the self lives in an individual’s ability to account for himself as a social being. This also requires a person to account for the role of the other as well as how his or her actions could affect a group. Hence, while the generalised other represents a collection of roles and attitudes that people use as a reference to figure out how to behave and react in an interaction process.

“The organized community or social group which gives to the individual his unity of self may be called “the generalized other.” The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community. Thus, for example, in the case of such a social group as a ball team, the team is the generalized other in so far as it enters—as an organized process or social activity—into the experience of any one of the individual members of it.” (Mead, 1972)

 ‘Significant other’ as a concept was not handed down by Mead, however, it builds on mead’s idea of one’s self being a reflection our interaction processes with others. While the generalised other enables us to evaluate our self concepts on the basis of larger social expectations, norms and values; the significant other is one person or group of persons who wield a strong influence on one’s self concept. Archie O. Haller, Edward L. Fink, and Joseph Woelfel at the University of Wisconsin are credited with the first actual measurements of the influence of significant others on individuals. They studied the relationship between the educational aspirations of students and expectations of the significant other. Results of their research showed that the expectations of significant others were the single most potent influences on the students' own aspirations. 

Given the fact that teachers have the power to award grades and assess students it is important to discover the meanings which direct this process. Teachers, by virtue of their authority and centrality in a classroom gain significance over and above other actors in a classroom situation; that is, they gain the position of significant other in the lives of students. A teacher’s perception of her/his student can cause the student to view himself in a similar light. This may have a positive or a negative impact on the self concept of students of students; as according to G.H Mead, we have the ability place ourselves in the positions of others—that is, to anticipate their responses—with regard to our linguistic gestures. This ability is also crucial for the development of the self and self-consciousness. Therefore, interaction processes between teacher-student is a valuable entry point for hidden curriculum theorists. Howard Becker’s work on labelling of students by teachers and its implications exemplifies very well the significance of teachers in a classroom situation. Given the fact that teachers have the power to award grades and assess students it is important to discover the meanings which direct this process. Becker attempts to uncover some of these meanings  via his research wherein he interviewed sixty teachers from Chicago high schools and found that they tended to classify and evaluate students in terms of standards of ‘ideal pupil’. Teachers perceived students from non-manual working backgrounds as closest to this ‘ideal’. Becker argues that by simply perceiving students in a certain way teachers experience problems in working with them. He concludes that the meanings in terms of which students are assessed and evaluated can have significant effects on interaction in the class room and attainment level in general. 

In another instance, Labov attempts decipher meanings constructed by outsiders in the process of interaction in classroom situations. William Labov provides an interactionist explanation for the widespread failure of low-income Black-American students in education system. He believes that social situation is the most powerful determinant of social behaviour and that an adult must enter into right social relation with child if he wants to find out what that child can do. In his words ‘this is just what many teachers cannot do’. The more importantly it can be argued from an interactionist perspective that success and failure in schools is a product of interaction situations, meanings created out of them etc. I will Labov’s study further in this paper to help understand the concept of Hidden Curriculum better.

Looking at the above examples one can say that these sought to challenge the assumptions made by theorists of cultural deprivation. Cultural Deprivation theory holds that some groups, such as the lower social classes, have inferior norms, values, skills and knowledge which prevent them from achieving in education. Inferior language skills and the fact that working class parents do not value education are largely to blame for working class underachievement, rather than material deprivation. 

“The basic premise of the culture deprivation or deficit theory was that students from marginal communities do not possess cultural resources (cognitive, linguistic and others) necessary for school success” (Jain, 2012)

In another statement Ogbu claims:

“since the second half of the 60’s, this theory of cultural deprivation has been very influential in generating compensatory education programmes… the aim of such programmes is often to change the culturally deprived child so that he or she will perform in school like the middle class child” (Ogbu, 1978) 

Post the 60s sociologists of education began to look for reasons of failure in educational performance of marginalised groups not within the community but in structures and locations outside of it. The classroom and the social interactions that place within it are one such site. One such theory was given by Ogbu under the name of ‘cultural ecology theory’. In Ogbu’s words:

“the cultural ecology theory posits that the academic disengagement and performance of minority students are influenced by two set of factors:(a) the system, and (b) community forces. The system includes societal or community educational policies, the treatment or mistreatment of minorities in schools and classrooms, and how the community rewards minorities for their academic achievements. The factors that make up community forces are the frames of reference or comparison of the minorities, their instrumental educational beliefs and behaviours; their relationship with educational system and the schools and their expressive beliefs and behaviours, including how they interpret and respond to cultural and language differences because of their collective identity; and their educational strategies.” (Ogbu, 20003)

Hence, if one were to observe and evaluate the performance of working class, marginalised students at the Zilla Parishad school, keeping in mind the politics of hidden curriculum, one would see what Ogbu calls system operating in the form of structural processes and constraints while the community forces would include interaction patterns, symbolic beliefs, interpretations and meaning formation among others. Structural constraints exist in their lives in the form of lack of motivated teachers, poor infrastructure of school premises, lack of subsidized study material etc. one of the most significant structural issues is also the treatment of these students outside of school, mostly in the form of barriers.. These barriers are instrumental discrimination (e.g., in employment and wages), relational discrimination (such as social and residential segregation), and symbolic discrimination (e.g., denigration of the minority culture and language).


One of the most prominent structural constraints in the lives of working class and marginalised students of the Zilla Parishad School is that of the economy. Since, most of these families are hand to mouth, there is a constant pressure of dropping out of school to make ends meet, or taking up menial jobs instead of continuing higher education. If one were to dig deeper, and investigate the contribution of community forces in retarding the performance of such students becomes evident. Here, interaction process and interpretations in the everyday of teachers and students plays an important role. For instance, David Hargreaves’s study is based upon interviews with teachers and observations made in two secondary schools.  Initially the only information a teacher has regarding a pupil is what catchment area they originate from.  Hargreaves and his colleagues, Hester and Mellor distinguished that there are three types of classification and typing - speculation, working hypothesis and stabilisation.  The seven main criteria’s on which initial typing was based by the teacher in their opinion of the pupil were their appearance, conformity to discipline, enthusiasm for work, how likeable they are, their relationship with other pupils, personality and whether or not they showed signs of deviancy.  Hargreaves argues that teachers make sense of, and respond to pupils in terms of these types.

Let us take the case of Labov’s work The Logic of Non Standard English, he compares three interviews involving an adult and a boy. In the first, a friendly white interviewer presents a black boy with a toy and asks him to describe it. To which the boy responds in the form of long silences and monosyllable words. Though this situation can be interpreted as the boy’s inability to describe the toy in question due to lack of a fit culture at home, Labov explains it as the boy’s interpretation of the situation as hostile. In the following two interviews, the interviewer is black, raised in the same town, carries potato chips etc with him to ease the environment. The change in response is dramatic, as the boy is now enthusiastic and articulate. 

In this paper he seeks to examine critically approaches to language and intelligence of populations labelled ‘verbally deprived’ and ‘culturally deprived’.  He makes linguistic competence of students the vantage point in order to look at the ‘less obvious’ and covert aspects of the life black students of Harlem. The apparent linguistic incompetency of black students is often conveniently relegated to the confines of their homes and communities. Certain theorists of cultural deprivation theory believe that a lower class child’s verbal response is a clear representation of his verbal deficit and that this is a major cause for a child’s poor performance in school. Since, middle class children do better in school, middle class speech habits are seen to be necessary for learning. It is important to note here that that which group’s language and style would be the dominant and desirable one is once again determined by structural factors in the form of state policies, market orientation etc. in most situations, the middle class is the ideal category due to its robust involvement in the market, the social and cultural capital they posses in the form of ‘right taste’, networks, aspirations etc. 

However, through experimentation Labov attempts to show that it is the social situation created between the child and the adult that determines verbal behaviour of the child. Hence, from an interactionsist perspective it can be argued that success and failure in schools is a product of interaction situations. That is, despite the fact that in school, students from all backgrounds are apparently put on an equal platform and are hence expected to perform equally well, it might so happen that each student depending upon his social location finds himself in a different social situation, engages in distinct forms of interaction with the teacher and pupil. 

“The essential fallacy of the verbal deprivation theory lies in tracing the educational failure of the child to his personal deficiencies… said to be caused by his home environment” (Labov, 55). 

It is essential to enquire into the social and cultural and political obstacles to learning and the inability of the school to adjust to the social situation. In this process of unearthing the social, cultural and political aspects of schooling, hidden curriculum as a tool comes in handy, because it enables one to question the hegemonic domination of a standard form of English over above the NNE (Negro Nonstandard English), the perceptions, prejudices and beliefs that accompany the same. Such perceptions of success and failure of students often stick around as labels in the lives of students; problematising students rather than the method and content of education. It also enables theorists to look at negotiations of various structural processes in a classroom and observe how they might lead to construction of identities and ‘othering’ some from the rest. Recalling her experience in a school in india, Azra Razzak writes about the significance of her school days and interactions within  the school in consolidation of her religious identity. 

“According to Peter Berger, identity is always identity within specific socially constructed world one identifies oneself as one is identified by others… by singling me out on specific moments- my teachers, friends, peer group were much responsible in making me acquire a muslim identity, as probably the Maulvi Saheb” (Razzak, 3). 

In case of Labov’s research at Harlem, it is essential that the divide between standard and non standard negro English be maintained as that would ensure the presence of a set of binaries that exist in opposition and contention. The process of schooling helps in the perpetuation and accentuation of this divide, while expecting the lower class, black students to emulate language and behaviour of middle class students and devaluing their language altogether. 

Therefore, while looking at language in classrooms and assuming that the medium of instruction has been objectively chosen simply because of ease of instruction and to convey knowledge, it is essential that we look at the social situation with a critical lens. Knowledge, language, curriculum and evaluation are by no means neutral and objective in nature. 

Conclusion 

In the essay, Schooling and politics of Hidden Curriculum, Giroux highlights the need to redefine and resituate our pedagogical concerns. Giroux also outlines areas in the Hidden Curriculum theory that have the potential for change. Hidden Curriculum theory must integrate itself with a notion of critique that questions all underlying assumptions. Notions of hidden curriculum must be used to interrogate existing relations in classrooms and also existing structures and the ideological silences that shroud them. Lastly hidden curriculum must be seen as a heuristic tool to uncover all that is implicit in the process of education but it must not end at that it be linked to a notion of liberation and social justice. 

My problem with the theory of Hidden curriculum is that of its applicability in our society. In country like India, where education is viewed in its emancipatory potential, what is the significance of a theory like Hidden curriculum? The political economic climate of our society is such that the major concern in the field of education continues to be that of enrolling as many children as possible into schools and opening schools in remote corners. Given this situation, what is the scope of infusing the ability to critically analyse the enterprise of education and the wider society that it represents? The motive of parents behind sending their children to school is that of educating them in order to secure a source of employment. It is true that we as a people stand at a socio-political juncture that calls for making the masses aware of the concept of hidden curriculum in educating. But the larger question of incentive; how does one incentives awareness about hidden curriculum; while being aware of the social costs it begets!

The paper attempts to show how hidden curriculum provides theorists of education with an efficient tool to investigate into the system of education by looking at it as a political institution. It attacks the basic premise that views education as a neutral enterprise and portrays activities within school as objective, value neutral acts. By recognising the political character of education one can investigate and negotiate with various forms of knowledge produced, imparted and evaluated in the everyday of students, contributing to a successful hegemonic domination of the dominant class. 

Reference:

1. Apple, M. (2004). Ideology and Curriculum. New York. Routledge Falmer
2. Charon, J.M. (2006). Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, an Interpretation, Integration. Prentice Hall
3. Giroux, H. A. (2001). Theory and resistance in Education: A pedagogy for the Opposition. Connecticut.Greenwood Publishing Group
4. Jain, R. (2012). Situating Education of Minorities in the Sociology if Education Discourse: A Case Study of Muslims. Indian Journal of Secularism. Vol.16. 15-34.
5. Kumar, K. (1989). Learning To Be Backward. In: Kumar, K. Social Character of Learning. Sage Publications.
6. Labov, W. (1973). The Logic of Non Standard English. In: Keddie, N. ed. Tinker Tailor and the Myth of Cultural Deprivation. Penguin Education 
7. Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind Self and Society. Chicago and London. University of Chicago Press.
8. Ogbu.J.U & Simons, H.D. Voluntary and Involuntary Minorities: A Cultural-Ecological Theory of School Performance with Some Implications for Education. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp. 155-188
9. Razzak, A. (1991). Growing Up Muslim. Seminar 387. pp 30-34.