HIGHER EDUCATION DECONSTRUCTED ITSELF.

Inside Higher Ed's Steven Mintz might have stumbled across ... bourgeois norms.  "College’s hidden curriculum’s essential role in preparing students for life post-graduation."

I've written about that so many times I should come up with a way of trademarking it!  "It took a long time for the academy to align itself so completely with a bundle of bad ideas. It will take a long time for better ideas to overturn the dominant paradigm."

Professor Mintz has not yet found his way to that restoration, but he might be grappling with it.

This hidden curriculum consists of terms and unwritten rules undergraduates are expected to know, the presumed rules of conduct, and the implicit assumptions and tacit rules that faculty members expect students to recognize.

No one signs up for the hidden curriculum, but it’s just as important as the academic curriculum. It exists alongside the courses that students take and the requirements they are expected to meet.

Some of those elements might have been inculcated in kindergarten, that is, before deconstructing bourgeois norms became part of the kindergarten curriculum.  Their disappearance, however, is a part, perhaps the most important part, of higher education's deterioration from a critical institution, respectful of norms, to an adversarial institution, turning "critical thinking" into "deconstruction".

The term “hidden curriculum” was introduced by the University of Chicago professor and president of the American Educational Research Association Philip W. Jackson in a 1968 book entitled Life in Classrooms. He argued that one of the tasks students face in college is to master a series of implicit values, beliefs, norms and expectations.

Of course, as psychiatrist D.P. Birkett observed in his review of the Margolis book mentioned below, “It has long been known that schools for children did more than teach reading, writing and arithmetic, but this used to be considered a good thing—building up character or teaching citizenship or whatever.” But increasingly, the hidden curriculum came to be viewed more negatively—as an obstacle to student success, and something much worse: as a way to privilege certain attitudes and modes of behavior and force students to fit into certain prescribed molds.

Psychiatrist Benson R. Snyder, then an MIT dean and previously chief of psychiatric services at MIT and Wellesley, built on Jackson’s concept in a 1970 study entitled The Hidden Curriculum. Dr. Snyder, like his colleague social psychologist Kenneth Keniston, was interested in the reasons why a significant number of gifted, privileged college students became profoundly alienated during their undergraduate years and viewed the university with cynicism. Dr. Snyder attributed this to “a major cause of campus conflict: the overwhelming, nonproductive mass of unstated academic and social norms that divert the student from creative intellectual effort and from the attempt to define and reach” their goals.

Privilege is civilization, and that alienation talk might have been calling attention to the failures of the Technocratic Apparatus of the American High.  Those "penetrating and ecstatic" modes of inquiry were in part an objection to the Vietnam War, yes, but do today's youngsters grasp what "I am a student.  Do not bend, fold, staple, spindle, or mutilate" (Berkeley, early Free Speech Movement) might have also referred to?  That part Professor Mintz recognized.

Many undergraduates regarded college as little more than a worthless game rather than as an intellectual rich experience and growth opportunity.

Snyder’s argument—that campus unrest and protest were, in large part, a response to the failure of colleges to tap into students’ idealism and their yearning for an education that is relevant and meaningful—is, of course, especially timely today.

From there, though, the Inclusion Fetish becomes a logic bomb that deconstructed higher education itself.

In his 2001 book, The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education, sociologist Eric Margolis, went further. His edited collection discusses the way colleges and universities produce race, class and gender hierarchies and reproduce conservative ideology.

I can't help but suggest, as I read on, that this era's new matriculants might not have been well-served by elementary pedagogy that no longer inculcates those bourgeois habits, and pretends it's being inclusive.

An important 2014 book, Mentoring At-Risk Students through the Hidden Curriculum of Education by sociologist Buffy Smith, describes how a fear of appearing stupid or a sense that they don’t belong in college discourages low-income, underrepresented and first-generation college students from getting the kind of support and mentoring that they need or taking advantage of the kinds of opportunities that colleges offer. As she points out, academic advising “is important, but it’s not enough.” To master the hidden curriculum requires mentors to show students how to overcome various psychological barriers to success and advocate for themselves.

A recent study—Dr. Rachel Gable’s 2022 The Hidden Curriculum: First Generation Students at Legacy Universities—examines experiences of first-generation students on elite campuses. Gable, now an academic administrator at the College of William & Mary, draws on in-depth interviews at Harvard and Georgetown universities to describe the disorientation that many first-gen students experience when they encounter the unspoken academic norms and social rules at these institutions and the “roller-coaster” ride that they undergo during their college years as they struggle with the expectation that they will acculturate to upper middle-class cultural norms and strive to figure out whether they are adequately prepared to succeed in the most demanding college majors.

Gable’s book emphasizes the diversity of first-generation students, notes the similarities in the experiences of first-gen and non–first-gen students’ experiences, and disputes the argument that these first-generation students face severe problems “fitting in” to these institutions. But like Rob Henderson in his raw, unvarnished account of his experiences at Yale, who decries the “luxury beliefs” and class blinders of his more privileged classmates, Gable does argue that these campuses could do much more to work with students on all sides of the class, ethnic, gender and racial divides.

I cringe, as that column continues to patronize first-generation, non-traditional, returning adult students as somehow deficient; and yet I nod at that invocation of luxury beliefs.  In Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance raised the same observation, noting how all his fellow Yalies took for granted what "the Cape" meant and why that's different from "the Vineyard."  Still I wonder: to what extent has an inclusive education, starting with kindergarten, set those first-generation students, irrespective of race, class, or creed, up to fail.  The Smart People might posture like radicals, yet they live like Rotarians.  Student Affairs, though, well, it's all teddy bears and therapy dogs.

I should note that many of the more recent books on the hidden curriculum target those on the autism spectrum or those with sensory processing issues, providing advice about how to navigate social interactions, avoid social blunders, understand unsaid social rules and present oneself publicly.

To be sure, some colleges offer noncredit College 101 workshops that discuss study skills and test-taking strategies. But the hidden curriculum involves much more than those things. It’s also about self-advocacy, self-presentation, juggling multiple responsibilities, coping with frustration and failures, and building meaningful relationships with faculty members.

Yes, and sometimes that might include credit or non-credit courses on such things as interview etiquette or business golf etiquette.  The Pedagogy of the Oppressed might sound good in the classroom, particularly if augmented with big words stolen from French philo(sopher)s.  It also sets improperly socialized youngsters up to fail.

It might be that higher education recognizes there's a problem.

A diploma is not just a symbol, a token, a placebo, or a piece of paper. Yes, you don’t need a diploma to signify innate intelligence or practical wisdom or innate cleverness. But the reality is that a college diploma represents several deeper accomplishments and attributes.

It signifies that a degree holder has successfully acquired specialized knowledge in various subjects taught over the course of their study. Beyond theoretical and disciplinary knowledge, a college education helps develop critical skills such as analytical thinking, research capabilities, problem-solving and effective communication.

Earning a diploma also demonstrates that an individual has the persistence and dedication to complete a long-term goal. This includes managing deadlines, collaborating with peers and fulfilling all requirements set by the educational institution. In addition, the college experience, ideally, provides a valuable environment for socialization and maturation.

A college education isn’t simply about academics—courses, majors and graduation requirements. Yes, a graduate has learned discipline-specific knowledge. But college is about more than that. It’s ultimately about becoming a professional and a mature, sophisticated adult.

I've long been hoping for the end of social-constructivist attitudes toward tradition.  If contributors to the house organ for all wokeness, all the time, in higher education are twigging to the problem of improperly socialized troublemakers demonstrating their incompetence not being the best advertisement for the universities, perhaps we might see a restoration of a state of good repair, in the curriculum and in the culture.