Howard Becker
("Social Class Variations in the Teacher - Pupil Relationship")

In his study of Chicago High Schools (the equivalent of our secondary schools), Becker outlined a significant aspect of the hidden curriculum by showing how teachers classified and evaluated their pupils against the standard of the "ideal pupil".

Becker found that those pupils who came closest to the ideal were mainly drawn from middle-class backgrounds, whilst those who were furthest from the ideal were mainly from working class backgrounds.

The main point to note here (apart from the relationship between teacher labelling and social class) is the fact that, by attempting to categorise students in this way, teachers actually created problems within the classroom.

When a teacher had labelled a child as "far from the ideal" they behaved towards that child in terms of the mental label they had created. In short, they interpreted the behaviour of the "non-ideal" students (lack of interest and motivation, misconduct and so forth) in the light of the label they had created for that child. This, according to Becker, set-up a self-fulfilling prophecy (for both the teacher and the student) that each found difficult - if not impossible - to break (with all the attendant educational consequences for the student...)