The hidden curriculum and the nature of conflict

Abstract

There has been, so far, little examination of how the treatment of conflict in the school curriculum can lead to political quiescence and the acceptance by students of a perspective on social and intellectual conflict that acts to maintain the existing distribution of power and rationality in a society. This paper examines two areas—social studies and science—to indicate how an unrealistic and basically consensus-oriented perspective is taught through a "hidden curriculum" in schools. The argument centers around the fundamental place that forms of conflict have had in science and the social world and on the necessity of such conflict. The paper suggests that a greater emphasis in the school curriculum upon the ideal norms of science, e.g., organized skepticism, and on the uses of conflict could counterbalance the tacit assumptions being taught.