PDF (Whole Thesis) - USQ ePrints - University of Southern ...

kind of private property handed down from the academic ‘discoverers’ for the teacher to
distribute or ‘transmit’” (1988, p. 28).
2.2.2 Reproduction of social values and norms through official knowledge as a
form of social control.
What is accepted as social norms is not a result of organic growth as argued by, for example,
Apple (2000), Fiske (1991), Fiske, Hodge and Turner (1987), Karier et al., (1973), and
Young (1971, 1988). Rather, culture is “a producer and reproducer of value systems and
power relations…” (Fiske et al., 1987, p. x). Young, drawing on Williams, “...suggests that
curricula changes have reflected the relative power of the different groups over the last
hundred years” (1971, p. 29). The hidden curriculum is sometimes referred to as the
reproduction of the social values and norms that are expected of citizens in the wider
community and society generally. In more recent times, the term has been “reformulated as
‘curricular substructure’” (Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery & Taubman, 2002, p. 248). This hidden
curriculum generally does not refer to the explicit content of the curriculum in particular
subject areas, but rather the (usually) unspoken expectations of behaviour and processes that
are acceptable and expected for students to adopt. By highlighting the omissions, discourses
that emerge from analysis of History textbooks will determine the unstated ideologies present
in the curriculum. The hidden curriculum, then, is made visible.
An example of governments using schools as sites for the reproduction of social values can
be viewed through the interest of the Australian Federal Government in school education
during World War II. Although in Australia education is the responsibility of state
governments, the Commonwealth Department of Information was established which,
amongst other activities, provided government endorsed teaching materials (Spaull, 1982).
David Spaull describes the reason for its establishment and subsequent influence on
schooling was, “…to act as an important, indirect source of ideas and material for the
creation and maintenance of a war ideology in the schools…” (pp. 38-39). Some of the
efforts of this Department were thwarted however by state education authorities due to their
own curriculum requirements; especially as they were at times inconsistent with materials
supplied by the Department of Information; and to maintain their control of the state-based
curriculum. The interest the federal government had in schools in guiding ideologies
continued even after the end of World War II. Therefore it can be seen that education
departments have long been aware of the influence curriculum content has on the learning of
20