I was given an assignment last semester in one of my education classes- the goal was to classify all of the knowledge I had into some sort of learning tree. I was almost through, having listed subjects like mathematics, humanities, sciences, arts, etc, when I realized I was missing a huge chunk of information. It was not the kind of knowledge that was taught at school, but rather the skills and information needed just to live life: walking, speaking to people, eating, dressing, driving. The more I thought about it, the more topics started to fall into this new category, and I realized that most of the information that I have, I did not learn at school. I learned it just growing up in America. The same goes for any person in any culture. It often does not occur to us how much of who we are is effected by the culture that we live in. This cultural knowledge is applied to every level of our lives, even traditional education. This is called the hidden curriculum, and it can mean the difference between a successful classroom and a failed one.…show more content… Judith was an elementary teacher during her second year on the island. Having a class made of both American and Yapese children, she was able to see first hand just how the hidden curriculum effected a classroom. Lingenfelter was able to watch as her American students dutifully raised their hands and worked independently, while her Yapese students sat together and collectively worked on projects (Lingenfelter, 2003, 14). As she did so, she realized the reason that she had struggled to teach a group of inner city kids in the year
