Teaching in America - Critical Pedagogy

Sema Culhaci                                                                                            EWU Summer school 2010       
Responsive Essay                                                                                            Teaching in America
7/30/10                                                                                                               Sean Agriss


                                                   About the hidden curriculum


In your experience in education, describe a situation where you have seen aspects of critical pedagogy employed.

Dealing with aspects of critical pedagogy made me reflect on the various impacts it might have on teaching and learning within the four walls of a classroom. Personally, I have never thoroughly considered  the so called hidden curriculum - the " [...] unintended outcomes of the schooling process"  (McLaren, 212) - and the way it can manipulate both teachers and students.

Interestingly, the author points out that even stereotypical gender-specific behaviour are closely related to the operations of the hidden curriculum since they make us behave according to those beliefs we hold on to. The author illustrates his point by referring to classroom sexism; for instance, "[...]men speak more often and interrupt women." (cf. ebd.: 213). When teachers internalize such thinking patterns about typical behaviour, they act accordingly and the hidden curriculum becomes obvious.

All this made me think of an incident I had as a 9th grader at a German High school, when my teacher must have had certain beliefs about females in classroom. Indeed, I have always been a very out-going and impulsive student. Whenever i dealt with something I was personally interested in, I passionately discussed about a topic and I was actively involved in classroom interaction.This was espacially the case in my German and English and French as a foreign language classes.  In my maths class, however, it was different since I stuggled with the topics and I could not handle the complex tasks. I believed myself to naturally incapable to do well at maths because I could not think logically and that just boys could excel in maths. My math teacher never encouraged me to questions my doubts about this and he has always asked a student sitting next to me to help me out since he was doing good at maths. My classmate Kathi was an expert on maths and she always participated with as much passion as I did in my language classes. When she wanted to help me with a task, the teacher would tell her that a male classmate should be giving me some advice since the task would be very complex and hard to handle. I remember that I agreed to the teacher even though I was aware of her talent in maths; nevertheless, I prefered the help of the male student. Today I know, that this must have been an effect of the hidden curriculum because both the teacher and me had internalized the belief that girls do not excel in maths.

Another time I felt that classroom sexism was obvious. In my maths classes, I was rather reserved since I was afraid of being asked to come to the whiteboard in order to present my results. Sometimes, I would talk about everything but not maths with my friend and this would disturb all the others. My teacher never saw that it was me who talked incessently but rather he would warn the student sitting next to me to stop talking.

He knew that I was calm but actually it was the guy sitting next to me who did not talk very much. Nonetheless, he was always warned. I think this refers back to the stereotype that boys talk more frequently than girls and my teacher did not expect me to disturb classroom interaction.

This experience shows that i have to think critically about my own beliefs and the aspects of the hidden curriculum for the sake of my future students who might suffer from that.