A hidden curriculum is a set of lessons "which are learned but not openly intended"[1] to be taught in school such as the norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in both the classroom and social environment.
Since then, several educational theories have been developed to help give meaning and structure to the hidden curriculum and to illustrate the role that schools play in socialization.
Various aspects of learning contribute to the success of the hidden curriculum, including practices, procedures, rules, relationships, and structures.
"[7] While the actual material that students absorb through the hidden curriculum is of utmost importance, the personnel who convey it elicit special investigation.
[10] Laws such as "No Promo Homo" that prohibit the mention or teaching of LGBT identities are considered to reinforce the hidden curriculum of heteronormativity.
[14] C. J. Pascoe said policing takes place through the use of bullying behaviors such as the use of words such as "fag, queer, or dyke" which are used to shame students with identities outside the norm.
[17] Although the hidden curriculum conveys a great deal of knowledge to its students, the inequality promoted through its disparities among classes and social statuses often invokes a negative connotation.
[18] Since the hidden curriculum is considered to be a form of education-related capital, it promotes this ineffectiveness of schools as a result of its unequal distribution.
This method of imposing educational and career paths upon students at young ages relies on a variety of factors such as class and status in order to reinforce socioeconomic differences.
Children tend to be placed on tracks that guide them towards socioeconomic occupations similar to that of their parents, without real considerations for their personal strengths and weaknesses.
Counts claimed that Dewey hypothesized a singular path through which all young people travelled in order to become adults without considering the reactive, adaptive, and multifaceted nature of learning.
[26] Shortly after Jackson's coinage of the term, MIT's Benson Snyder published The Hidden Curriculum, which addresses the question of why students—even, or especially, the most gifted—turn away from education.
Starting with Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1972, through the late 1990s, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire explored various effects of presumptive teaching on students, schools, and society as a whole.
Meighan wrote, "The hidden curriculum is not taught by the school, and by any teacher...something is coming across to the pupils which may never be spoken in the English lesson or prayed about in assembly.
Haralambos wrote, "The hidden curriculum consists of those things pupils learn through the experience of attending school rather than the stated educational objectives of such institutions."