Home

Hidden Curriculum

When we, as sociologists, look at the education system and, in particular, the things that happen "inside schools", we normally make a distinction between:

• The formal curriculum - which consists of the things schools are formally constructed to teach - and the
   
• Informal - or hidden - curriculum which consists of those things that are not formally taught but which are, nonetheless, important aspects of the schooling process.

In this section we can look at a slightly-unusual example of the hidden curriculum in the form of an article (The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher) written by an award-winning American schoolteacher - the unusual part being that the writer - John Taylor Gatto - offers a frank and very revealing dissection of his work...