For Assignment 1, I have decided to write about the Hidden Curriculum with main regards to Jean Anyon’s work regarding the hidden curriculum in various social classes. Anyon’s work focuses on several fifth grade classrooms and their homework, be it in the classroom or take home, and how it is related to their social class or status. It is important for one to understand how social class is defined in this work, as Anyon defines it as “a series of relationships… by the way that person relates to the process in society by which goods, services, and culture are produced” (Anyon, p.68). After understanding these relationships and how they tie into education, one can then begin to “assess how student work in each social setting in the light of a theoretical approach to social class analysis. It is suggested that there is a ” hidden curriculum” in school work that has profound implication for theory – and practice – in education” (Anyon, p.67).

Of Course, there are hidden curriculums in other areas of education as well. Ingrid E. Castro and Mark Conor Sujak explored the hidden curriculum and how it impacts students that are members of the LGBTQ+ community through their article, “Why Can’t We Learn About This?” Sexual Minority Students Navigate the Official and Hidden Curricular Spaces of High School. This article assesses the abstinence based education students receive in education, as well as how anything beyond abstinence is regarding heterosexual, cisgender relations. There are no topics that discuss safe sex between same sex partners for students, and that is a growing issue for today’s youth.

However, one must also recognize how the hidden curriculum is struggling to stay in its place in education. This idea is explored thoroughly in Alexander B. Pratt’s work, Curriculum in conflict: how African American and Indigenous educational thought complicates the hidden curriculum. As Canada moves as a collective nation on a journey towards Truth and Reconciliation, it is absolutely vital that Indigenous ways of thinking, knowing, and being become present and taught in educational institutions. Additionally, it is also important to understand how the hidden curriculums within these educational institutions have conflicted with Indigenous narratives and views. One can look at residential schools and the horrors that occurred within them, and then look to social studies curriculums were the experiences of the Indigenous students of those schools were not discussed, leaving students to be stuck in a period of not fully understanding the experiences of the Residential school survivors. It is now time though that this is being challenged, and the hidden curriculum may be coming to an end.