Response to Eisner, "The Three Curricula That All Schools Teach"

 The experience of reading Elliot Eisner's chapter, "The Three Curricula That All Schools Teach," when one is some 27 years beyond the completion of high school is a somewhat surreal one. From what I could find, Eisner wrote the book (at least the original edition) in 1994, the year before I entered high school in the U.S. So "spot on" for me are his reflections that he might as well have been talking about my own school and educational experience.

My first "stop" when reading Eisner's chapter came in his discussion of competitiveness as part of the implicit curriculum that schools often teach, specifically as that competitiveness is "fostered by the differentiation of classes into ability groups" (p. 91). This is precisely how my high school was structured. Being a capable student, I was in all the "honours" classes. And Eisner is precisely correct: I felt "honoured" by being in the honours classes. My parents and teachers celebrated this fact, not just because I had worked hard, but because it seemed to mean I was worth more as a person. The best teachers at our school had the honours sections. The newest calculators were available for the honours sections. Special privileges were afforded to the honours sections (no "hall passes" required for us to go to the bathroom - I'm not kidding). We even met in designated areas of the school that had nicer classrooms! Why? Because I was "worth it" as a student. I was trusted and thought of as more responsible because I was "smart" - or at least, more able to achieve in a way that impressed my teachers. And while my school didn't have the weighted GPA system Eisner describes, one could not be considered for valedictorian or salutatorian unless one had taken certain upper-level honours classes. All of this impacted me deeply; I came to view myself as "better than" those students who were in the "normal" sections. Not just smarter, but better. I have had to spend years of my life undoing this way of thinking. (And as a result, it is my hope as a math teacher to work with students who have chosen the "workplace" and "foundations" tracks in the BC curriculum, not just those who are in the "pre-calculus" track. I'm thankful it's not called the "honours" track, but I'm sure some of the same associations are present.)

My second "stop" is also in the part of the chapter address implicit curriculum, this time when Eisner discusses school architecture and the design of school furniture. He writes, "Most school rooms are designed as cubicles along corridors and have a kind of antiseptic quality to them...They speak of efficiency more than they do of comfort" (p. 96). How accurate this comment is in my own experience! I can remember no colours being present in my high school. There were few green plants anywhere. Our desks chairs were hard plastic and "one size fits all." I can still feel the sound the chairs made scraping against the flooring. And yet, Eisner is again correct, it seems to me: the message all of this sent may have been unintentional, but neither was it questioned. We were there to learn, and learning was disconnected from our physical and even our emotional selves (Eisner takes this issue up when he discusses the "null curriculum" as well). "Comfort" seemed like an indulgence, perhaps even an inhibition to learning. Any serious school would eschew such frivolous considerations so as to train its pupils to focus the mind! Needless to say, my views have radically shifted over the years. Eisner writes, "Schools are educational churches, and our gods, judging from the altars we build, are economy and efficiency. Hardly a nod is given to the spirit" (p. 97). The way I would put it is this: we are to be about educating wholistically. If we fail to see our students as whole human persons and build/design our classrooms to support them as whole persons, we will fail to deeply educate them. I am left pondering this question: what can I do as an educator to create a space that supports my students as whole persons, even if I find myself in one of the "sterile" contexts Eisner describes?

I do not yet know enough about the BC curriculum to assess how it addresses - or even if it addresses - some of the implicit and null curriculum issues Eisner raises in this chapter. But even if it does move in some of those directions, it seems to me that the main takeaway from this reading is that as teachers (and in some cases future administrators), we cannot rely on a formal curriculum to address all that it means to educate our students. Perhaps we need to define "curriculum" less along the lines of content to be taught and more along the lines of the impact of what is learned in a given high school setting. As Eisner points out, what is learned is far more than the academic content on offer. It will include some subset of that academic content, to be sure, but perhaps a school "curriculum" is something more like a worldview, or a value system. Nothing a school does and no decision a teacher makes could then be considered outside of the "curriculum" received by its students. 

I am grateful to have the chance to reflect on this question as a teacher candidate!