Alternate Routes Articles The Hidden Curriculum in Schools: Implications for

Since the inception of public schools, curriculum has been a source of ongoing debate and disagreement. Educational bureaucrats, school board administrators, principals, vice principals, teachers, parents, community organizations, and even students weigh in on discussions about what stu-dents should learn in class, how learning is best facilitated, and how to measure and evaluate such learning. Textbooks, teaching practice, projects, homework, examinations, report cards, and the like, are the purview of the formal curriculum. However, students learn in ways that lie beyond the boundaries of the formal curriculum through what is known as the hidden curriculum (Jackson, 1968). The hidden curriculum as a theoretical construct is conceptually problematic. As does the "formal " curriculum, the hidden curriculum defies definitional consensus. Nevertheless, the hidden curriculum will refer here to student learning that takes place within the perimeter of a school that is not recorded or reflected within the official curriculum. Theorists are not unanimous about the effects of the hidden curricu-lum on students and on teaching practice. The phrase "the hidden curric-ulum " explicates its defining characteristic, namely, that it is hidden. Unlike the official curriculum, the hidden curriculum does not make ref-erence to tangible, constituent materials and outcomes measurable though standardized procedures or established protocols. By compari-son, the hidden curriculum is a concept that seems ambiguous. Some 1.Gerald Walton is a PhD Candidate at Queen's University and will de-fend his dissertation in 2006