Позитивные изменения. Том 2, № 2 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 2 (2022)

THE HIDDEN CONTENT OF EDUCATION

"Education is determined by the specific atmosphere at the educational institution, the 'school spirit' as much as it is by the set of academic subjects, specializations, the volume of material taught, etc.

The essence of this phenomenon is revealed by the term "hidden curriculum," used by many Western researchers. To me personally, the term "hidden content of education" seems quite acceptable. It can be accepted as a working definition precisely because in the very process of revealing its theoretical and practical content, we will inevitably come to answering the question of what is actually taught and what should be taught in school.

I side with the researchers of this hidden content in that it should include the following phenomena of school organization:

• various kinds of differentiation of students by to their abilities, including our domestic invention of recent years — remedial classes and special classes for gifted children (the "fools' classes" and the "nerds' classes", as children themselves refer to them);

• the real power structure in the school (totalitarian or hierarchical, democratic or liberal);

• the language of a class or school (not formally, of course, but by the actual semantics, tone, style, and volume of vocabulary in use);

• the established practice of telling the teacher what he or she expects vs. what the student actually thinks;

• ability to act in the situation of a test or exam (not the cultural forms of behavior in a test situation, but the established rules of cheating, peeking, guessing, etc.);

• the actual distribution of study time (not by curriculum or schedule, but by the time actually used by the student — some students really have 12 hours of study time a day, while others don't have even half an hour)."

Tubelsky, A. N. The way of school life — the hidden content of education // Voprosy obrazovaniya. — 2007. — Issue 4, pp. 177–181.

Alexey Semyonychev commented on the connection between the hidden content of education and soft skills development as follows: "Without even noticing, a child is taught other skills besides knowledge. When the teacher enters the classroom, everyone must stand up. Students talk to their teachers exclusively on formal terms and by their full names, while teachers talk to the kids informally, addressing them by first name only. Students must obey the teacher, no matter what he or she says. Students in class have no right to express their opinions. This results in a child raised into obedience, into "my opinion can wait" attitude. There is no need to learn to negotiate, because the teacher has the last word; you are not allowed to get creative during the class as you may get an «F» for that. Do the tests, nothing else, creativity is not required."

Table 1. The Big Five domains and their facets