From epistemology to hidden curriculum: Critical vs. 'commercial' pedagogic perspective

Abstract

Knowledge or, more precisely, its power is one of central themes in critical pedagogy. Since they are interested in school as the site of social critique, aimed at social transformations, critically oriented pedagogues pay special attention to the relation of knowledge and power or, to simplify it, the function of knowledge in the reproduction of the existing (often oppressive) social relations. Not recognizing school as a mere site of social, economic or cultural preservation, they often study epistemology on which modern school is founded (positivistic epistemology) and its hidden curriculum who function so that they legitimate social reproductive function of the school in a continuous cycle of self-justification. Since a certain understanding of knowledge and its function reveals the hidden curriculum of a certain educational philosophy, and since this consequently changes school into a site of social transformation or social transmission, viewed from the critical position this is the subject of the analysis of our paper. By final sublimation and contrasting the opposite positivistic and critical positions we conclude that the hidden curriculum of the first is the curriculum of the soliloquies while the curriculum of the second, critical tendency is entirely of a dialogue nature. It is clear that uni-directedness of the hidden curriculum formed according the postulates of positivistic epistemology can contribute only to positivistic transmission and regeneration of the existing social order, while the discursivity of critically oriented school defines the relation towards society as two-way, transformational, active and emancipatory.

Keywords

• knowledge
• power
• critical epistemology
• hidden curriculum
• school