The Hidden Curriculum
Encyclopedia
The Hidden Curriculum is a book by Benson R. Snyder, the then-Dean of Institute Relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart the students' ability to develop independently or think creatively. These obligations, unwritten yet inflexible, form what Snyder calls the hidden curriculum
. He illustrates his thesis with psychological studies and other research conducted at both MIT and Wellesley College.
as a socialization process; Snyder elaborates upon this thesis with studies of particular institutions. In the first chapter, "The Two Curricula", Snyder advances the proposition that
Snyder then continues to address the question of why students — even or especially the most gifted — turn away from education. Even honest efforts to enrich curricula frequently fail, says Snyder, thanks to the importance of the tacit and unwritten understanding. He observes that while some students do not realize there is a disjunction between the two curricula, almost all students must resort to ploys and stratagem
s to cope with the requirements they face. For example, within the first month of classes, many (or perhaps most) students discover they cannot conceivably complete all the work assigned them; consequently, they must selectively neglect portions of the formal schoolwork. Attempts to beat the "competitive game", such as compiling "bibles" of solutions to be passed from one generation to the next, often only worsen the situation. Professors become locked into the competition, and only a determined effort can change the behavior pattern on either side.
No part of the university
community, writes Snyder, neither the professors, the administration nor the students, desires the end result created by this process.
In the second chapter, Snyder investigates the question of "selective negligence
" more deeply, using a psychological study which began in 1961. He reports the (pseudonymous) comments made by five students, discussing their career at MIT. For Moore, MIT is a "huge beast", where competitive social roles lead professors into "wreaking [their] vengeance" on his classmates' grades. He notes that, when his friends make even trivial mistakes in class, they respond by shutting off their senses of wonder and curiosity. He used the terminology of game theory
to describe his attitude, and that of his classmates, to the stressful life they led. Jones, also aware of the unwritten demands placed upon him, perceived less irony in the situation, and his high grades became "very nearly the most important basis" of his individual self-worth. His only (relatively minor) academic troubles were with a freshman humanities subject and an unstructured, experimental engineering class he took as a junior, classes where it was more difficult to tell which answers the professors considered "correct".
By contrast, Smith was an example of academic failure. He had performed admirably well in high school, exerting almost no serious effort, but at MIT he began to fail quiz
zes. During an exam in his freshman year, his memory blanked after half an hour and he froze. He then placed his faith in osmosis
, sleeping with books under his pillow. Eventually, after two years, Smith was academically disqualified and left MIT. In his interview, Smith revealed aspects of his personal and family history which prompted Snyder to write, "Only a relatively few students have problems as extreme as this, but many have passed through a period in which they respond in such a manner. However, Smith's case does not explain the bulk of withdrawals from college. Most are not caught up in such extreme distortion
or such severe neurotic restriction in their adaptive choices."
Other students managed to adapt. One such student, Brown, hailed from the Midwest. In both the school's estimation and his own, he was one of his class's lower-ranking students; in fact, on the basis of his College Board
test scores, he expected to be denied admission. By mastering selective negligence, Brown was able to raise his grades and make the dean's list
. The last student, Robertson, began with the belief that by learning scientific skills at MIT, he would benefit humanity at large. "The necessity for becoming a 'ruthless' competitor posed a special threat to his image as a 'good person.'" He responded by moving across the Charles River
to a fraternity
, where he could direct his energy into helping his younger fellows to adapt.
The third chapter, written by Martin Trow of the University of California, Berkeley
, discusses patterns of stress in the MIT lifestyle, and describes some reforms instituted to ameliorate these problems. Trow notes that MIT's nature is inherently conflicted or paradox
ical, for it is at once a university for scientists — who must learn ingenuity and creativity
— and a professional school for training engineer
s, who must focus on technical competence. These two roles, not entirely distinct, reflect themselves in conflicting demands which the students must resolve. Even though "it is really quite impossible" to train a good engineer in four years, Trow observes, the sheer mass of knowledge which the students are expected to learn tyrannizes over their lives, robs their leisure
time and prevents them from exploring other interests, even those not far removed from professional training.
The professors, too, are distracted and pressured, whether by the need to maintain institutional prestige or by the sheer frenzy of activity interrupting their creative cycles.
Chapter 4 broadens the conclusions beyond MIT by comparing that school's situation to Wellesley, a liberal-arts college which at the time had just under two thousand female students. Unlike at MIT, the professors at Wellesley described education as "cultivation", "providing nutrients" for intellectual growth, monitoring the "bad seeds" — heavily agricultural
imagery. In a deeper sense, Snyder observes that change was viewed as cyclical, rather than progressive, in a way reminiscent of agricultural societies. He found that both students and faculty interacted with politeness, containing anger or directing it inward. Students facing academic difficulties mocked the image of the student as a cultivated plant, he observed, but they reinforced it by blaming their own mentality before blaming the college.
Examining the 10 percent of the students who consulted the campus psychiatrist
, Snyder found that their sense of depression frequently stemmed from harsh judgments inflicted upon themselves, which were reinforced by faculty and classmates.
A large group indicated that their self-worth was based on knowing some aspect of culture in depth, and then in communicating that depth to others. "Many students said explicitly that their function in life was to provide the continuity of tradition
."
In both environments, students seeking the psychiatrist's services reported depression
as the most frequent problem. At Wellesley Snyder found harsh self-deprecation within the troubled students, and at MIT the primary cause seemed often to be students' placing expectations far beyond their reach.
The final three chapters are the most overtly "political", and they are the least cited by later publications. These chapters explore the role of education in the broader world, where ever-accelerating rates of technological change combined with the 1960s' social upheaval make "education for complexity" a crucial requirement. Snyder addresses the breakdown of trust between students and faculty, from militant movements to the failure of students to grasp a seemingly simple demonstration of probability
— a failure brought about because the class was too fixated on finding the "trick" to the problem. The epilogue
concludes with a warning: increasing numbers of students view their education as an exercise in gamesmanship, a study in alienation
. Because the hidden curriculum is so resistant to change and exerts such a strong influence on the effectiveness of education, it must be examined thoroughly if higher education is to have any relevance at all.
dorms and male guests in female rooms seem less relevant in most, but certainly not all, colleges. It is also perhaps telling that Snyder describes all of his pseudonymous test subjects as male.
On the other hand, some passages about MIT in particular read almost like a satire
of the Institute in later years. Snyder's epilogue, for example, describes how since 1961 the tightly interwoven stresses of the freshman year had been loosened. "Now a freshman has pass/fail with specific comments from the faculty," but in 2002 the pass/fail grading was reduced to the first term of freshman year. A little later, he remarks that most of the students visiting the Psychiatric Service turned out to be "reasonably healthy individuals" who were seeking a neutral forum for working out their personal issues. , MIT Mental Health is proverbial among students for sending depressed patients to McLean Hospital
, and for occasionally refusing to let them return after McLean's staff believes they are healthy. This habit has drawn both commentary and derision .
In November 2001, the "Mental Health Task Force" released a report describing the psychological condition of the student population . The Task Force report relates a survey, conducted in the spring of 2001, whose results they found troubling:
Interestingly, Snyder reports that in the early 1960s only about 10% of the student body sought out the Mental Health services during their time at MIT.
In 1992, Todd Riggs published a survey on the interactions between doctoral students and their thesis supervisors . After interviewing four MIT professors, he concluded,
Trow's contention that MIT is in some way inherently paradoxical foreshadows an observation James Burke
would later make in the book and television
series The Day the Universe Changed
. In the series' first episode, "The Way We Are", Burke argues that when human beings find they enjoy or appreciate some aspect of life, they "institutionalize" it and protect it from further change. What was once a rational response to social need becomes a ritual, performed without regard to its origins. This leads to a puzzling contradiction when a society learns that it can benefit from technological change: scientific discovery becomes a kind of ritual. In this view, scientific research laboratories are the institutionalization of change; they are the facilities set up so that "tomorrow can be better than today". (Burke's show Connections
illustrates the point with the DuPont
motto: "Better things for better living through chemistry
.")
Other education commentators such as John D. Wilson have summarized Snyder's observations, noting that no matter how hard a first year MIT student may be prepared to work, the expectations of staff usually exceed a student's capacity to fulfill them.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart the students' ability to develop independently or think creatively. These obligations, unwritten yet inflexible, form what Snyder calls the hidden curriculum
Hidden curriculum
Hidden curriculum, in general terms, is “some of the outcomes or by-products of schools or of non-school settings, particularly those states which are learned but not openly intended.” However, a variety of definitions have been developed based on the broad range of perspectives of those who study...
. He illustrates his thesis with psychological studies and other research conducted at both MIT and Wellesley College.
Summary
The Hidden Curriculum is a book in seven chapters. The title is a phrase coined by Philip Jackson in a 1968 essay entitled "Life in Classrooms". Jackson argues that we must understand educationEducation
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
as a socialization process; Snyder elaborates upon this thesis with studies of particular institutions. In the first chapter, "The Two Curricula", Snyder advances the proposition that
- The assignments given in the classroom and the rewards for superior work are not limited to the formal curriculum. While many tasks are cast in explicit terms — "Do problems 1 through 8 on page 67," "Read Chapter 3 and be prepared to discuss the period 1792-94 in French politics" — there is another set of less obvious tasks which bears a most interesting and important relationship to the formal curriculum. The question for the student is not only what he will learn but how he will learn, and when he will learn. These covert, inferred tasks, and the means to their mastery, are linked together in a hidden curriculum. They are rooted in the professors' assumptions and values, the students' expectations, and the social context in which both teacher and taught find themselves.
Snyder then continues to address the question of why students — even or especially the most gifted — turn away from education. Even honest efforts to enrich curricula frequently fail, says Snyder, thanks to the importance of the tacit and unwritten understanding. He observes that while some students do not realize there is a disjunction between the two curricula, almost all students must resort to ploys and stratagem
Stratagem
Stratagem may refer to:* Confidence trick, an attempt to swindle a person which involves gaining his or her confidence* Ruse of war, an action taken to fool the enemy.* HMS Stratagem , an S class submarine...
s to cope with the requirements they face. For example, within the first month of classes, many (or perhaps most) students discover they cannot conceivably complete all the work assigned them; consequently, they must selectively neglect portions of the formal schoolwork. Attempts to beat the "competitive game", such as compiling "bibles" of solutions to be passed from one generation to the next, often only worsen the situation. Professors become locked into the competition, and only a determined effort can change the behavior pattern on either side.
No part of the university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
community, writes Snyder, neither the professors, the administration nor the students, desires the end result created by this process.
In the second chapter, Snyder investigates the question of "selective negligence
Negligence
Negligence is a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in like circumstances. The area of tort law known as negligence involves harm caused by carelessness, not intentional harm.According to Jay M...
" more deeply, using a psychological study which began in 1961. He reports the (pseudonymous) comments made by five students, discussing their career at MIT. For Moore, MIT is a "huge beast", where competitive social roles lead professors into "wreaking [their] vengeance" on his classmates' grades. He notes that, when his friends make even trivial mistakes in class, they respond by shutting off their senses of wonder and curiosity. He used the terminology of game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...
to describe his attitude, and that of his classmates, to the stressful life they led. Jones, also aware of the unwritten demands placed upon him, perceived less irony in the situation, and his high grades became "very nearly the most important basis" of his individual self-worth. His only (relatively minor) academic troubles were with a freshman humanities subject and an unstructured, experimental engineering class he took as a junior, classes where it was more difficult to tell which answers the professors considered "correct".
By contrast, Smith was an example of academic failure. He had performed admirably well in high school, exerting almost no serious effort, but at MIT he began to fail quiz
Quiz
A quiz is a form of game or mind sport in which the players attempt to answer questions correctly. In some countries, a quiz is also a brief assessment used in education and similar fields to measure growth in knowledge, abilities, and/or skills.Quizzes are usually scored in points and many...
zes. During an exam in his freshman year, his memory blanked after half an hour and he froze. He then placed his faith in osmosis
Osmosis
Osmosis is the movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, aiming to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides...
, sleeping with books under his pillow. Eventually, after two years, Smith was academically disqualified and left MIT. In his interview, Smith revealed aspects of his personal and family history which prompted Snyder to write, "Only a relatively few students have problems as extreme as this, but many have passed through a period in which they respond in such a manner. However, Smith's case does not explain the bulk of withdrawals from college. Most are not caught up in such extreme distortion
Distortion
A distortion is the alteration of the original shape of an object, image, sound, waveform or other form of information or representation. Distortion is usually unwanted, and often many methods are employed to minimize it in practice...
or such severe neurotic restriction in their adaptive choices."
Other students managed to adapt. One such student, Brown, hailed from the Midwest. In both the school's estimation and his own, he was one of his class's lower-ranking students; in fact, on the basis of his College Board
College Board
The College Board is a membership association in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board . It is composed of more than 5,900 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations. It sells standardized tests used by academically oriented...
test scores, he expected to be denied admission. By mastering selective negligence, Brown was able to raise his grades and make the dean's list
Dean's List
A Dean's List is a category of students in a college or university who achieve high grades during their stay in an academic term or academic year. In secondary schools, or high schools, the term Consistent Honor List or Honor Roll is more common, but Dean's List and Consistent Honor List are...
. The last student, Robertson, began with the belief that by learning scientific skills at MIT, he would benefit humanity at large. "The necessity for becoming a 'ruthless' competitor posed a special threat to his image as a 'good person.'" He responded by moving across the Charles River
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
to a fraternity
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
, where he could direct his energy into helping his younger fellows to adapt.
The third chapter, written by Martin Trow of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, discusses patterns of stress in the MIT lifestyle, and describes some reforms instituted to ameliorate these problems. Trow notes that MIT's nature is inherently conflicted or paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
ical, for it is at once a university for scientists — who must learn ingenuity and creativity
Creativity
Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...
— and a professional school for training engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
s, who must focus on technical competence. These two roles, not entirely distinct, reflect themselves in conflicting demands which the students must resolve. Even though "it is really quite impossible" to train a good engineer in four years, Trow observes, the sheer mass of knowledge which the students are expected to learn tyrannizes over their lives, robs their leisure
Leisure
Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....
time and prevents them from exploring other interests, even those not far removed from professional training.
The professors, too, are distracted and pressured, whether by the need to maintain institutional prestige or by the sheer frenzy of activity interrupting their creative cycles.
Chapter 4 broadens the conclusions beyond MIT by comparing that school's situation to Wellesley, a liberal-arts college which at the time had just under two thousand female students. Unlike at MIT, the professors at Wellesley described education as "cultivation", "providing nutrients" for intellectual growth, monitoring the "bad seeds" — heavily agricultural
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
imagery. In a deeper sense, Snyder observes that change was viewed as cyclical, rather than progressive, in a way reminiscent of agricultural societies. He found that both students and faculty interacted with politeness, containing anger or directing it inward. Students facing academic difficulties mocked the image of the student as a cultivated plant, he observed, but they reinforced it by blaming their own mentality before blaming the college.
Examining the 10 percent of the students who consulted the campus psychiatrist
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
, Snyder found that their sense of depression frequently stemmed from harsh judgments inflicted upon themselves, which were reinforced by faculty and classmates.
A large group indicated that their self-worth was based on knowing some aspect of culture in depth, and then in communicating that depth to others. "Many students said explicitly that their function in life was to provide the continuity of tradition
Tradition
A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes , but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings...
."
In both environments, students seeking the psychiatrist's services reported depression
Clinical depression
Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...
as the most frequent problem. At Wellesley Snyder found harsh self-deprecation within the troubled students, and at MIT the primary cause seemed often to be students' placing expectations far beyond their reach.
The final three chapters are the most overtly "political", and they are the least cited by later publications. These chapters explore the role of education in the broader world, where ever-accelerating rates of technological change combined with the 1960s' social upheaval make "education for complexity" a crucial requirement. Snyder addresses the breakdown of trust between students and faculty, from militant movements to the failure of students to grasp a seemingly simple demonstration of probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
— a failure brought about because the class was too fixated on finding the "trick" to the problem. The epilogue
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
concludes with a warning: increasing numbers of students view their education as an exercise in gamesmanship, a study in alienation
Social alienation
The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
. Because the hidden curriculum is so resistant to change and exerts such a strong influence on the effectiveness of education, it must be examined thoroughly if higher education is to have any relevance at all.
Commentary
Some of Snyder's descriptions of college life sound dated in the early 21st century. For example, the issues of co-educationalCoeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...
dorms and male guests in female rooms seem less relevant in most, but certainly not all, colleges. It is also perhaps telling that Snyder describes all of his pseudonymous test subjects as male.
On the other hand, some passages about MIT in particular read almost like a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of the Institute in later years. Snyder's epilogue, for example, describes how since 1961 the tightly interwoven stresses of the freshman year had been loosened. "Now a freshman has pass/fail with specific comments from the faculty," but in 2002 the pass/fail grading was reduced to the first term of freshman year. A little later, he remarks that most of the students visiting the Psychiatric Service turned out to be "reasonably healthy individuals" who were seeking a neutral forum for working out their personal issues. , MIT Mental Health is proverbial among students for sending depressed patients to McLean Hospital
McLean Hospital
McLean Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.It is noted for its clinical staff expertise and ground-breaking neuroscience research...
, and for occasionally refusing to let them return after McLean's staff believes they are healthy. This habit has drawn both commentary and derision .
In November 2001, the "Mental Health Task Force" released a report describing the psychological condition of the student population . The Task Force report relates a survey, conducted in the spring of 2001, whose results they found troubling:
- Of the students who responded to the survey (half undergraduate and half graduate), 74% reported having had an emotional problem that interfered with their daily functioning while at MIT, while only 28% had used the MIT Mental Health Service. Even more worrisome, 35% of students reported a wait of 10 or more days for their initial appointment with the service, and 80% of the students were not aware of the daily afternoon walk-in hours. While nearly two-thirds of students rated their experience with the MIT Mental Health Service as satisfactory to excellent, only half would recommend the service to a friend, and overall, students saw the service as having a mediocre reputation.
Interestingly, Snyder reports that in the early 1960s only about 10% of the student body sought out the Mental Health services during their time at MIT.
In 1992, Todd Riggs published a survey on the interactions between doctoral students and their thesis supervisors . After interviewing four MIT professors, he concluded,
- The parallels between what Snyder wrote and what my subjects commented upon, despite over two decades of time intervention, is stunning, astonishing, even frightening.
Trow's contention that MIT is in some way inherently paradoxical foreshadows an observation James Burke
James Burke (science historian)
James Burke is a British broadcaster, science historian, author and television producer known amongst other things for his documentary television series Connections and its more philosophical oriented companion production, The Day the Universe Changed , focusing on the history of science and...
would later make in the book and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
series The Day the Universe Changed
The Day the Universe Changed
The Day the Universe Changed is a British documentary television series written and presented by science historian James Burke, originally broadcast in 1985 by the BBC...
. In the series' first episode, "The Way We Are", Burke argues that when human beings find they enjoy or appreciate some aspect of life, they "institutionalize" it and protect it from further change. What was once a rational response to social need becomes a ritual, performed without regard to its origins. This leads to a puzzling contradiction when a society learns that it can benefit from technological change: scientific discovery becomes a kind of ritual. In this view, scientific research laboratories are the institutionalization of change; they are the facilities set up so that "tomorrow can be better than today". (Burke's show Connections
Connections (TV series)
Connections is a ten-episode documentary television series created, written and presented by science historian James Burke. The series was produced and directed by Mick Jackson of the BBC Science & Features Department and first aired in 1978 and 1979...
illustrates the point with the DuPont
DuPont
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company , commonly referred to as DuPont, is an American chemical company that was founded in July 1802 as a gunpowder mill by Eleuthère Irénée du Pont. DuPont was the world's third largest chemical company based on market capitalization and ninth based on revenue in 2009...
motto: "Better things for better living through chemistry
Better Living Through Chemistry
The phrase "Better Living Through Chemistry" is a variant of a DuPont advertising slogan, "Better Things for Better Living...Through Chemistry." DuPont adopted it in 1935 and it was their slogan until 1982 when the "Through Chemistry" part was dropped...
.")
Other education commentators such as John D. Wilson have summarized Snyder's observations, noting that no matter how hard a first year MIT student may be prepared to work, the expectations of staff usually exceed a student's capacity to fulfill them.
See also
- Activity theoryActivity theoryActivity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N...
- Distributed cognitionDistributed cognitionDistributed cognition is a psychological theory developed in the mid 1980s by Edwin Hutchins. Using insights from sociology, cognitive science, and the psychology of Vygotsky it emphasizes the social aspects of cognition. It is a framework that involves the coordination between individuals,...
- Dumbing Us DownDumbing Us DownDumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling is a book by teacher John Taylor Gatto. It has sold over 200,000 copies and consists of a multitude of speeches given by the author...
- Situated cognitionSituated cognitionSituated cognition poses that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts....
- John Taylor GattoJohn Taylor GattoJohn Taylor Gatto is a retired American school teacher with nearly 30 years experience in the classroom, and author of several books on education...