Public Education's "Hidden Curriculum"

A sociological pov on education:

www.sociology.org.uk...

I always felt like I was being pressured to conform

btw, here's more stuff if your interested:

www.sociology.org.uk...

Wow. That took the words right out of my mouth. I remember virtually everything mentioned in there taking place at my school, e.g. helping out "intelligent" students and shunning "dumb" ones...

In fact, this happened constantly. The division of students, middle-class and working-class was very common. Great find!

I can't believe that someone actually put down my thoughts on paper! I have been saying this for quite a while now, that the main goal of public school is not to teach you english, math, and science. Those are just the cover story. No, the main goal is to teach you to conform, and inhibit freedom of thought. If you deviate in anyway you are punished. By the time you get to the University level you think you have been taught to think for yourself; but in reality you have only been taught to believe what your teacher tells you. It is the perfect system to get people to do what you want them to do. Luckily this place allows for freedom and non-conformity of thought and expression.

Great read on the first article, but I did notice the author seems to have a war against the letter 'z'. Many times he would use the letter 's' where a 'z' was supposed to be..... not sure if that was intentional...

If it was then: LOL!!! I guess it's his way of non-conforming, I love it.

It's actually off of a British sociological website, so for example: "civilisation" with an "s" instead of "civilization" with a "z" the American way.

Very nice link. I've read most of the pdfs on there now and I must say that they're pretty close to the way my school works too.

Agree with above replys.
Robert Kiyosaki has a great book on this subject.

Oh yeah, IMO, our educational system is really messed up. We need to move to an environment where actual learning is the main emphasis.

Originally posted by the_individualist
Oh yeah, IMO, our educational system is really messed up. We need to move to an environment where actual learning is the main emphasis.

Yet some believe that "learning" ( stuffing "dead" info into the head ), like "water is H2O", only nerrows ones thinking...

Education is not just teaching you facts or useless data to fill up your mind. Education is also teaching one a diciplined method of connecting the facts to a result useful to the individual..not group think and a emotional jag.
Real learning is often a difficult diciplined process in which one has to stow ones emotions in order to get a specific result in ones life. Not a emotional jag or a feeling where one passes this off as learning and dicipline.
In Education ..there was a time in this world where one would be asked what dicipline are you working to master. In what dicipline are you schooled ?? A educated person was considered a diciplined person. Not any more. You hardly hear this concept anymore.
Open books that are 70 or 80 plus years olde and look at the grammer. The difference is immediately noticable. These people could read and write.
I am currently groping my way through a copy of Cicero's Orations bought at a flea market copyrighted in 1899. To my shock when I got to sit down and read this book it was in Latin with small portions in English. However ..even the English portions while perfectly legible and understandable are in a English style far superior to todays scholarly English at a newspaper level. I will continue to grope my way through this book...the English portions.

Not to be to hard on any particular individual but watch people today. Their experiences are so second hand...their education levels so lacking they can only express themselves trough some emotion or worse yet ..some movie they have seen. They have no real experiences of their own. I see this often. People cannot express a lesson or a idea outside of some movie concept. This is their concept of reality. Second hand...vicarious...even their emotions. This is that for which our educations have gelled down ..the lowest of common denominators and second hand at that. Many of them are watchers ..not doers.
Something for you folks to think about.

Thanks,
Orangetom

lol lol shows you how much musing I was doing.
I forgot to insert this in my last post.

Muse..to think ..ponder...contemplate

Amuse... a...without ..muse...thinking....without thinking..amuse.

Today Amusement often passes for excellence not thinking. Much of our visible world is to keep us from thinking and only along the lines of automatic thinking which means fun stuff..anything to keep us from real thinking.
Amusement is to keep us from thinking and to cater to our emotions..even our basest emotions like wild animals..the very opposite of diciplined. Very few people even catch this in the etymology of the word Amuse. We can look at the origins of many words in etymology and realize one thing about those people who could think and read..even back to the ancient Greeks...they were educated....thinkers.
Those of you who can think ..remember this when you sit in front of the tube or go to a movie to be amused. Watch them appeal to your basest instincts to keep you on the treadmill. When you begin to think for yourself..you decide when and where you want to get off.

food for thought ,
Orangetom

This is news? I thought every highschool student was aware of this stuff (except maybe the really stupid ones). I was referring to school as "societal bootcamp" since I was in 8th grade. It's not even very well masked.

Let's elaborate a bit on the "respect for authority" aspect.

Ever notice how needlessly bureaucratic a school can be? That's preparation. It establishes a blind, unresponsive, osstensibly inept bureaucracy as a norm. My angle is that it's not actually inept at all, they're just teaching you that you have no control over the authorities which govern you.

The PA thing was always a little spooky to me too, especially from the ASB. Completely unneccessary banter over a monotone loudspeaker telling you things you already know. Training you to accept micromanagement and the hollow addresses of powerless officials elected from "among the people" who always seem to be exactly the people the teachers would have hand picked.

Really the very environment- cramming a large number of people into a small area, and putting them under a rigid schedule with only small bursts of free time. If we didn't have highschools we'd have to invent them just as a sociology experiment. Maybe my experience differs from other peoples, but it was plain to see where I was that the social order during school hours was almost completely unrelated to its off-campus alter-ego. Some of your friends aren't your friends except in that environment. Not all of your enemies are your enemies away from there. You get out of highschool and a lot of the clique/subculture affiliations vanish.

I wasn't always sure that it was conscious really, but it's nothing new to me that our education system teaches a heck of a lot more than the three "R"s. (good thing- only one of the three Rs even starts with a friggin R- doesn't say much for the "official" curriculum, now does it?)

Glad I send my kids to a private school.

Originally posted by orangetom1999
Education is not just teaching you facts or useless data to fill up your mind. Education is also teaching one a diciplined method of connecting the facts to a result useful to the individual..not group think and a emotional jag.

Yeah, that's what I meant, just forgot to specify. For example: Who cares when George Washington was born? You can always just look that up if you need it. What you can't always just "look up" is what he did and how it affected what and why it affected whatever the way it did, etc. This is what our schools need to teach, along with teaching how to look up info (which they already do the latter).

Originally posted by The Vagabond
This is news? I thought every highschool student was aware of this stuff (except maybe the really stupid ones). I was referring to school as "societal bootcamp" since I was in 8th grade. It's not even very well masked.

It's not really news, it's just a way of verbalizing it I guess. It seems most people (including me) know whats going on, but can't quite put their fingers on it and retell what's going on, so therefore they can't speak out against it or anything and work for change.

heres one for all you Star Wars/Star Trek types about thinking outside the usual boxes that tv and movies put us in without us being aware of it.

We were sitting around at work one night years ago..just a bunch of guys in a slack period drinking coffee and chatting. Events were going on in the news about at that time ..concerning the Hubble telescope and how much it would cost to fix the faulty lens. The story in the news was about how much this piece of equipment cost to put into space and now it was faulty etc etc etc. The cost was purported at that time to be in the billions of dollars.
One of the guys blurted out between sips of coffee. " You know what I cant figure out ....Why would the government spend billions and billions of dollars to put a piece of equipment into outer space to look even further into outer space....to a place no one will go to for hundreds of years. It wont pay off in any real usable information for hundreds of years."
No one really said anything for awhile..till another guy stopped and his eyes got very big... "Good Lord...they arent using it to look into outer space..to get it to pay off..they have to be looking down here where they can use the information more immediately. They only get us to think it is outerspace because they feed us alot of Star Trek and such ..we are pre groomed to accept this deception."
Several of us looked at each other and immediatelly realized this guy was correct. No one ..even this government is dumb enough to build such a expensive project without some more immediate payoff. Every now and then they will give you some picture from deep space of some intresting phenomonon to keep us on the treadmill but between this there is almost nothing shown.
NOw this guy who came up with this concept about the pay off could think outside the standard boxes.

Thanks,
Orangetom

Dude, that's creepy. It makes perfect sense though. I wonder what other things out there are like that. I'd like to know what they're spying on.

Originally posted by the_individualist

It's actually off of a British sociological website, so for example: "civilisation" with an "s" instead of "civilization" with a "z" the American way.

My bad! I always knew that the British spelled things differently, I just didn't know that was one of the ways. I learn something new everyday (generally at least 5 if I visit this website)! Thanks for the info the_individualist!

yes..it is creepy ..in a manner.

My point is that this is what happens to your thinking process when you learn to think outside the box of what passes for normal or passe nowdays.
This guy could do it and was not totally innundated by peer group think or cheap merchandizing/educational propaganda. A gift becoming more and more rare.

I have spent over 20 years building submarines and aircraft carriers in this shipyard...and when you see some of what is in these ships...combined with some level of non standard thinking you learn some things. Connect certain dots..to form a picture.

American spys on our friends as well as our enemys. Or conversely ..from another angle...there is no difference..in friends and enemys to this government. The American Government doesnt trust the American people anymore than they their enemys. Got the point.??? All they do in this senerio is establish prioritys ..in how they do this.
Dont worry ..this is way to deep for the average American and their prioritys... Hey how about those Cowboys..Tampa Bay....Nascar....Despirate Housewives.....Fear Factor...you know .important stuff in our daily lives.??? Any drivel ...to keep you from thinking about the nature of a thing...Any Drivel!!! Lol lol...Life in the fast food lane!!!!

Thanks,
Orangetom

to follow up my last post...once you understand this about enemys and friends ..there being no difference... Look at our educational system. What they teach and dont teach.. then think about who is their enemy???? Remember..in public schools ..who pays for the education??? The Government!! Think about it!! The very nature of a thing!!

Remember ..something..like this Hubble Telescope....most of the teachers dont even have a clue..and these are supposed to be educated peoples. It can be frightening!!

Thanks,
Orangetom

I've always thought about that(heh, a thirteen year old thinking independently). I mean, all the stuff they teach you, when will you use it in real life. I think that at schools they should have a list of "job classes". You pick a job that you want to be, and you take classes that teach you how to deal with that carrer. They could also have one core class that teaches you to handle certain real-life situations.

Here's an example. I have picked three carrers: Video Game Designer, Stuntman, Cop. For Designer, they could teach animation, motion-capture, scripting, all that. For stuntman, they could teach about correct falling, driving, and how to pull attacks. And for cop, they could have self-defense, arresting procedures, and safe weapons handling.

I know, it sounds like a sci-fi plot, but think of the advantages! Kids will learn how to really deal with their life, and don't learn things that won't apply to life like how to form a Conjuncture with verbs, or something like that(it's what I'm learning in English right now).