The Hidden Curriculum and Systemic Racism
The hidden curriculum of school is a well-known concept to all who delve into alternative education and its history. I first learned about it when I started work at Growing Without Schooling magazine in 1981 and educators continue to write about it.
The hidden curriculum is not what is taught in school, but what we learn through our experience of school. Our school attendance conditions us to accept unspoken assumptions about the meritocracy of school, such as if you fail it is your fault, not school’s; a school degree is important for everyone, but degrees from wealthier schools are more important than others. Recognizing this in my own schooling and in my experience raising three daughters, I didn’t have to struggle with the concepts that schooling was not the same as education and that learning is ultimately the result of the activity of the learner, not the teacher. However, I’m humbled to learn that I never recognized the hidden curriculum outside of school settings until Black Lives Matter called my attention to structural racism.
Systems are created by humans, so human assumptions about how the system should operate and be controlled are automatically baked into the system. Even high-tech systems are not immune to this human frailty. In the field of artificial intelligence, unspoken assumptions about gender, race, test scores, wealth, and other metrics imbue the final software product and skew its functioning. If human bias occurs in software development, why wouldn’t it also occur in the development of our laws and customs? As I reflect and learn about Black American history the more I see the social and legal structures and unspoken assumptions that favor whites over minorities throughout society.
As a young man, I could easily see the need to address systemic bias and authoritarianism in the school system but not outside of school. Though I developed a different view of race relations than my parents and the culture of middle-class households I grew up in, I realize how stunted my understanding of race still is.
As a young man, I would often be around the adults invited to our home, at my dad’s office, or at a restaurant, and their conversation would veer into jokes or smears against Blacks, Jews, or other ethnic groups. I would laugh along with them, but when I entered my teen years and met more Black people as I worked, played, and went to school in the Bronx I slowly realized how mean those jokes and comments were. I also realized that many of the men and women who used those slurs were part of the professional classes in our neighborhood. Though a young man was in their presence, none ever spoke out that those sorts of jokes and comments were beyond the pale for polite society; no one was chastised for using racial slurs in their conversation. Instead, I received the message that polite society spoke and laughed exactly like that.
I can’t remember a single sermon at church or any teacher in my parochial and public school experiences who tried to make us aware of the Civil Rights Movement, or the unfair treatment of minorities in America. There were subtle mentions of the unrest and politics by some of my more daring high school teachers, but nothing really challenging or memorable to me. We were often admonished to help the poor through church donations, but the poor were often presented as those in other countries. It’s possible that I don’t remember an adult discussing race issues with me because they wanted to protect my youthful innocence, but there’s that hidden curriculum again. One learns from silence and omission, too.
In my twenties, as I grew into my work at Growing Without Schooling magazine I also grew in my understanding about how minorities are especially mistreated and ill-served by our public and private school systems. Building on John Holt’s example, my colleagues and I sought and sold books and materials through the Holt catalog about Blacks, indigenous people, and other minorities living and learning without, or despite, going to school.
After I was married and had children, our daughters dated Black and Brown men and we encouraged their relationships, though we worried about telling their grandparents about their boyfriends. We give money to causes that help minorities, supported Obama’s presidency, and that seemed like enough.
Now I know it is not enough.
I am humbled, again, by how many blind spots I discover in my education. Just as I didn’t connect structural racism to the hidden curriculum until recently, I also didn’t grasp how interconnected slavery, education, and policing are.
Throughout my childhood in the 1960s, I saw the police beating Blacks and war protestors on television, radio, and in the newspapers, while hearing from the adults near me that the troublemakers were making the police beat them up. Since then, police brutality against minorities has gotten worse. The NAACP notes:
Despite the fact that more white people have been killed by police, Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately impacted. While white people make up a little over 60% of the population, they only make up about 41% of fatal police shootings. Black people make up 13.4% of the population, but make up 22% of fatal police shootings. This does not take into consideration other forms of police brutality, including non-lethal shootings.
Black Lives Matter has also led me to learn about the history of the police in the United States and their origin as patrols to intimidate and capture slaves. Historian Jill Lepore has a short, strong article about the invention of the police.
The number of African American and Latinx people in American jails and prisons today exceeds the entire populations of some African, Eastern European, and Caribbean countries.
The horrible, and increasingly visible, amount of police brutality against Blacks in America needs to end, and the United States must come to terms with the stain of slavery we inflicted on ourselves in 1619. Western civilization needs to reckon with the stain of slavery, too.
Ancient Greek and Roman political philosophy, which is revered and taught in our schools, is based upon the assumption that an elite group of men can and should command, control, and exclude people considered unworthy of citizenship, such as women, foreigners, prisoners, and freed slaves. Creating a vibrant democracy from such a constrained vision of democracy is impossible unless we confront the truth that slavery is still influencing our relationships, our laws, and our economy. It is baked into our economic, political, and legal systems.
The Empire is striking back as I type this; it won’t be an easy way forward. The racist dog whistles are no longer subtle and White supremacy is clearly visible in the politics of today. But Black Lives Matter is making us view things in a more objective, historical frame of mind. Statues of Confederate warriors, among other things, can no longer be seen as quaint, interesting relics from the past; they are also symbols of intimidation and grievance towards emancipated Blacks.
If the people inspired by Black Lives Matter continue to march and swell their numbers with new supporters and if, individually, we continue to learn about the history of slavery and its reach into our social, political, and economic systems, we stand a chance to contain the stain of slavery and expand the promise of shared prosperity for all Americans.