Relationships and Processes That Occur During School Time

Hidden Curriculum

The hidden curriculum involves messages and ideas that schools do not directly teach but occur through the normal routines and procedures in the organization.

It involves norms, values and beliefs that should be learnt when being socialized by their parents. It is transmitted through:

• The management that places whites and generally males at the top and females and ethnic minorities near the bottom. Pupils are at the very bottom of the hierarchy.
• Wearing uniform which hides individuals identities
• The setting that occurs by age and ability as soon as children enter school
• The organization of the classroom with teachers standing up whilst students sit down so that they can look down upon them
• The expectations that teachers have about particular categories and ethnic minorities of children

All together these elements can produce particular outcomes which are sometimes positive, although for others can be negative and even challenging

Pupil Subcultures

Pupil Subcultures are when some people accept the rules of school and the authority of teachers. Others may devote all their times to rule breaking, avoiding work and getting attention from the teacher. Male Subcultures include macho lads who dislike school authority and learning, the academic achievers who are of mostly skilled manual working-class backgrounds, the new enterprisers who saw academic curriculum as a waste of time but accepted the new vocational ethos and real Englishmen who were middle class students that rejected teachers and saw themselves and their culture as superior to them. Female Subcultures include girls who see themselves as a potential marriage market (more often lower class girls) and some called mobile girls who saw careers, independence and achievement as most important. Griffin (1985) studied white working class women and saw that they all wanted the same three things which they could follow at the same time:

• The labour market, securing a job
• The marriage market, acquiring as permanent male partner
• The sexual market, having sexual relationships while at the same time maintaining their reputation

Labelling and the Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Teacher’s expectations of pupils can sometimes create self fulfilling prophecies, this can happen in 2 different ways:

• Pupils accept the label teachers give them as being true and internalize it as part of their self concept
• They react against the labelling process and thus confirm the negative assumptions by exhibiting poor behaviour or underachievement

Teacher-Pupil Relationships

Teachers prefer to tech students who are well mannered, motivated and compliant. They tend to reward such pupils more often with praise and good marks. Such pupils tend to be middle class and white not because of prejudice but because teachers tend to judge them by their own cultural standards. Gillborn and Youdell (1999) suggest that teachers discriminate against working class pupils by failing to recognise their intelligence because they do not exhibit it in the right way. Instead they use their judgement to allocate the working class students to lower sets and foundations tiers as they feel they cannot cope with the harder work. Differential treatment by teachers towards particular ethnic minority pupils can have negative effects on them and they can feel angry that they are singled out for punishment when a white pupil may be just as guilty.