Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

1. "The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance"

When I read this quote I immediately thought about how this would be completely unacceptable in today's schools, or at least in the schools that I went to. By the time I reached middle school, nearly every assignment we completed had 'Standards' and GLE's printed on the top of them. Teachers were expected to explain to us why we were doing what we were doing, and we were expected, as students, to understand why as well. This made me wonder if this practice still goes on in Working Class/any schools even though teachers are now supposed to have standards and give reasons why they are expecting their students to complete each assignment.

2. "Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps."

The article made this seem like it is a bad thing for teachers to grade students on, but I honestly do not find that much wrong with it. In order to arrive at the correct answer to a math problem, a student must first be able to correctly perform each step of the equation. If any step of the process is done wrong, the answer will be wrong, and so it seems right to me that it would be necessary to get steps right. Throughout my years of math (and sometimes certain science classes) in school most of my teachers gave us credit for performing the right steps even if we got the answer wrong. Arriving at the right answer is obviously important, but I think mastering the right steps is equally important as well.

3. "During the week that two-digit division was introduced (or at any other time), the investigator did not observe any discussion of the idea of grouping involved in division, any use of manipulatives, or any attempt to relate two-digit division to any other mathematical process"

I can't believe these teachers expect their children to be able to learn in this type of environment. Even in my math 143 and 144 classes my professor constantly used manipulatives to demonstrate different ideas, such as division, and we are grown adults. If we need these hands on approaches, obviously children learning it for the first time do as well. It makes me wonder what type of training these teachers received, and how they graduated from a college teaching program without knowing how to integrate some of these rudimentary techniques into their classroom.

This article truly shocked me. I can't believe that there are such vast difference between schools that are nearby in the state (New Jersey) in not only the way teachers present the material but the curriculum itself. I also can't believe that the principals of some of these schools actually encourage the teachers to only instruct in certain ways. It is as if they want less fortunate students to grow up to be nothing better than their parents, they knowingly give them limited knowledge which is quite frankly, sickening. I wonder though, do you think this still goes on as much in schools now that there is No Child Left Behind and the use of Standards? Have you seen these types of things in the schools you do your Service Learning?