Peter
McLaren’s Critical Pedagogy: A Look at
the Major Concepts brought attention to several cultural issues that can
relate to teacher candidates. One aspect of the reading that caught my
attention was the “hidden curriculum”, which referred to the unintended results
of the schooling process.
The
hidden curriculum explores the displacement of superficial education ideas and
goals of the classroom teacher and the unintentional procedures used with
specific groups of students. Critical education theorists perceive that
curriculum represents not only the program of study, text and the syllabi but “it
represents the introduction to a particular form of life” (74)It went on to
explain that certain curriculum favors certain forms of knowledge for select
groups of students over other groups. McLaren’s explains that teachers
unconsciously give more intellectual attention and academic help to males over
females. An idea that really stood out to me in this section was that “When
boys call out comments without raising their hands, for instance, teachers
generally accept their answers; girls, however, are reprimanded for the same
behavior” (75). After reading this I began thinking about my own classes as
well as the observation class I am in, and whether I am guilty of this. The
article states that it is subconscious, so the teacher is not aware they are
doing it. One instance I remember in my observation classroom was a female and
male student both blurting out the same answer at the same time, and I treated
the behavior equally and called on a different volunteer instead.
I
appreciate that each of the readings that we have experienced are in some way attached
to each other, in this instance the idea of oppressive outcomes. Although the
hidden curriculum has its challenges in the educational settings, the point is
to identify the structural and political assumptions and to attempt to change
the institutional arrangements of the classroom in order to offset oppressive results.
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