Schools As Cultural Institution

Schools as Cultural Institutions
“A person should be just cultured

enough to be able to look with
suspicion upon culture.”
--Samuel Butler
Schools: cultural institutions
• Culture: (T.S. Eliot):
All the
characteristic
activities and
interests of a
people.
Cultural eras:
Modern: Postmodern:
• European male social • Direct challenge to narrow
and cultural tradition Western definition of
legitimate knowledge
High culture:
• DaVinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Bach

Popular culture:
• Rock music, hamburgers,
television, world wide web, and . . .
Schools attempt to
introduce students to:
• most noble, meaningful of

human creation
• usually high culture

Schools (subtly, overtly) socialize students . . .
• to respect culture
• to become functioning members of society
Evidence: The DepEd Mission statement:
“Students learn in a child-friendly, gender sensitive, safe

and motivating environment”
“Family, Community, and other stakeholders are actively

engaged and share responsibility for developing life-long
learners.
Emile Durkheim observed:
• Education:
“Systematic
socialization
of young
generation.”
Culture question:
• Whose culture is being passed on by schools?

1800, 1900, 2000, 2100 a.d.
Historically, the U.S. has been:
• Racist,
sexist,
discriminatory
culture.
Cultural capital:
• Curriculum reflects the realities of power and
influence within our culture.
• Curriculum selection is a cultural and political

act—whether or not one is conscious of it.
Cultural capital
• The language
teachers use,
• the curricula they
employ,
• the values they hold
can be described as
cultural capital.
Cultural capital
Education distributes and legitimates certain forms of:
• knowledge
• language
• practices
• values
• ways of talking
• acting,
• moving,
• dressing,
• socializing.
Schools: not merely instructional sites,

Sites: where culture of dominant society institutionalized.
Education:
• Embodies specific values and
purposes.
• Not neutral or apolitical.
• Subject to the personal needs and

interests of those in power.
Cultural conservatives
• Argue for a model of
literacy that focuses the
attention of children on a
common western cultural
heritage.
• E.D. Hirsch: What Your

First (Second, Sixth
Grader) Needs to Know .
Cultural Conservatives argue:
• Cultural literacy constitutes the only sure avenue of
opportunity for the marginalized.
• Lest they remain the same as their parents.

Western cannon:
• valuable body of knowledge
• not the only body of cultural
knowledge children need to
know
• Many of its assumptions need to

be challenged if we are to
achieve a more just and equitable
society.
Critical multiculturalists:
• Respect earlier insight.
• Display their respect by continuing to question the
work of their intellectual ancestors.
No curriculum is neutral.
Formal curriculum:
The explicitly stated goals and
objectives of education.
Hidden curriculum:
• Unintended outcomes, subtle
influences, and outcomes of
school.
• The many things which are
taught in school besides the
formal subject matter.
Examples: Students learning how to behave in class;

rules of conduct, classroom organization, informal
activities such as brown nosing, being polite, deciding
who and what was cool, and so on.
Null curriculum:
• The curriculum that does not exist
• Did not make the cut
• The hole in the middle of the doughnut
• Something that is there but does not

exist
• We teach things by excluding them

from the curriculum—by not teaching
them.
• What schools do not teach may be as important as what they
do teach.
• Ignorance is not simply a neutral void;
• It has an important effect on the kinds of options one is able
to consider, the alternatives one can examine, and the
perspectives from which one can view a situation or problem.
• If one of the purposes of schooling is to foster wisdom,
weaken prejudice, and develop the ability to use a wide range
of modes of thought, then we ought to look carefully at what
the schools do not include in the curriculum.
• “On the rare occasion that someone introduced
another (non-Western) tradition, I dismissed it
as secondary—as not holding up to the
substance of the works of the Western cannon.
Much of what I understood about the world
was the result of what I had not been taught.”
--Provenzo
Resistance theory and learning:
• Students rejecting the
traditional curriculum
• not because they are not
smart enough to succeed in
the work,
• but because they see this
education as not
representing their family
or cultural values.
• For many disadvantaged
students, success in school
means a type of forced
cultural suicide.
Critical pedagogy:
• (from pedagogy—the work or function of a teacher)
• Understanding the role of education in the culture in which it
functions;
• Concerned with the realities of what goes on in the classroom;
• The connections between the school and the society, media,
families, and the society education serves.
• A pedagogy that rejects the notion of culture as an artifact

immobilized in the image of a storehouse.
• Instead, a set of lived experiences and social practices developed

within asymmetrical relations of power.
• What is taught more often than not
reflects traditions of power, authority,
and domination in the culture.
• Effective teaching must take into

account the fact that education,
pedagogy, teaching, and instruction are
cultural and political acts.
• No such thing as neutral education

exists.
Critical pedagogy:
• Developing pedagogical practices informed by an

ethical stance that contests racism, sexism, class
exploitation, and other dehumanizing and
exploitative social relations as ideologies and social
practices that disrupt and devalue public life.
• Who creates knowledge?
• Who is empowered by it?
• How are different groups subordinated, marginalized, and
excluded in U.S. education and culture?
• What are the possibilities for resistance?
• What are the possibilities for achieving a more just and
equitable society through the act of teaching (and
learning)?
• These are questions that must be asked by those working
(and studying) in postmodern schools and classrooms.
Discussion questions:
Can you think of examples of

cultures competing with each
other in our community?
Discussion questions:
Give examples of hidden

curriculum from your own
experience as a student.

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Schools as Cultural Institutions

“A person should be just cultured

• DaVinci, Michelangelo, Picasso, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Bach

• most noble, meaningful of

• usually high culture

Evidence: The DepEd Mission statement:

“Students learn in a child-friendly, gender sensitive, safe

“Family, Community, and other stakeholders are actively

• Whose culture is being passed on by schools?

• Curriculum selection is a cultural and political

Schools: not merely instructional sites,

• Not neutral or apolitical.

• Subject to the personal needs and

• E.D. Hirsch: What Your

• Lest they remain the same as their parents.

• Many of its assumptions need to

Examples: Students learning how to behave in class;

• Did not make the cut

• The hole in the middle of the doughnut

• Something that is there but does not

• We teach things by excluding them

• A pedagogy that rejects the notion of culture as an artifact

• Instead, a set of lived experiences and social practices developed

• Effective teaching must take into

• No such thing as neutral education

• Developing pedagogical practices informed by an

Can you think of examples of

Give examples of hidden

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