Discusses how many recent treatments of the hidden curriculum have overlooked historical antecedents of the early progressive curriculum literature. Shows how insights derived from John Dewey and others portray the hidden curriculum more positively than some of the ideologically laden interpretations in vogue today. The hidden curriculum can…

Technopoly rhetoric hypes computers in classrooms without considering costs, ultimate purposes, technology's place in the curriculum, and technology's effects on learners and learning. Developed by the military and modern corporations, computers concentrate more on efficiency, speed, power, and information than on sustained inquiry and genuine…

Summarizes a study exploring the effects of student confrontation on high school teachers' intended curricula. Examines the context of confrontation through 10 urban teachers' discourses. Teachers eliminated controversial content and even altered formal curricula to maintain control and avoid confrontation. Constructing a more meaningful learning…

Discusses distinctions between the formal, overt curriculum and the hidden or implicit curriculum that inculcates values and expectations not openly acknowledged. Before 1900, schools stressed homogeneity, efficiency, and obedience to ensure students' smooth transition from childhood to life in an industrialized society. These values became hidden…

World War II has been seen as a marker, not a period, in the history of education. This misconception persists in two recently published histories of U.S. school curriculum. Wartime curriculum history is a story of both change and prewar continuity in curriculum emphases, organizations, assumptions, and legitimations. Both change and continuity…