Abstract:

In the broadest terms, socialization is defined as the process with which people acquire attitudes, values, and norms of a particular culture, as well as learn behaviours that are considered appropriate at the individual and social level.

School as an institution has a very important influence on the adoption of social and cultural patterns of the child’s behaviour. It is the place of adoption, selection, formation, and imitation of attitudes, values, and norms that the child/young person will bring to his or her society and culture in the future. If new generations do not adopt his way of life, society as such ceases to exist.

Each school represents a very specific social environment regardless of the common national curricula and the legal basis on which the functioning of the school as an institution rests. A school in which a positive culture prevails, together with encouraging atmosphere that promotes positive values, tolerance, understanding, partnership, cooperation, equality, appreciation... encourages the adoption of such qualities in students as well.

Many studies emphasize the importance of the hidden curriculum in the process of developing the students’ value system. The hidden curriculum is difficult to define explicitly because it depends on both personal impression and experiences, as well as the variability conditioned by constant social changes. The hidden curriculum assumes learning of attitudes, norms, beliefs, values, and assumptions, which is all often expressed in the form of unwritten rules, rituals, and regulations. It is reflected in the culture of school, the characteristics and behaviour of teachers towards students and each other, the values they promote as well as priorities and hierarchies they develop... Sociological as well as pedagogical-phenomenological research has pointed to significant correlations of pedagogical interaction with implicit education theories of individual teachers, their attitudes and values, rather than with the official curriculum (Jackson, 1968; McGutcheon 1988). The role of the hidden curriculum needs to be systematically and thoughtfully approached, questioned, and directed in the desirable direction. Although the hidden curriculum is often perceived as destructive, negative, and subversive, it can be both constructive and desirable. Many pedagogues note the space for its positive function (Tanner, Tanner, 1980; Wren, 1999; Chhaya, 2003; Jerald, 2006). They see the school as a harmonized and stimulating environment for learning and adopting values and attitudes.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the given field of study by reviewing the literature and to juxtapose the mechanisms within schools that help adopt attitudes and build a system of values for children and young people. Also, to think and aim to raise awareness of the relationships between a part of the educational process that pedagogical experts and teachers manage to systematize, prescribe, and control, and which belongs to the intentional education as well as the part belonging to the area of the hidden, implicit curriculum. In this context, the question of the socialization role of school in the formation of contemporary society’s value forms is emphasized, and this issue will be regarded in the context of the hidden curriculum.

Keywords:

Hidden curriculum, school, socialization, school culture.