By By: Oyem, Israel Ekene
Beyond teaching of subjects like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and other related subjects which is great, at every academic level — particularly secondary school, there is also an hidden curriculum that we are either aware of or not, but as educators, we have been teaching our students. To make it worse, many educators are unaware of the knowledge they are transferring to the students, whether bad or good. We are all teachers of the hidden curriculum. This article discusses this hidden curriculum as it pertains to all areas in our students’ academic, moral and social life.
One of this aspect of this hidden curriculum is the life of the teacher. How do we model ourselves? Many times, we look at the excellence of our delivery in subjects but fail to check and vet the decency in our delivery of this hidden curriculum. The life of the teacher is another curriculum that the students studies. The teacher is a book on its own and every teacher has the hidden curriculum to deliver, whether good or bad. Now to the billion dollar question — what’s the quality of your delivery as an educator in this hidden curriculum? Have you been transferring negative knowledge or a positive one?
Many times, we wonder why the world is the way it is. Teachers are really world shapers, because we are “life sculptors;” we are life builders. Amongst those who should be questioned about the possibility of having a better nation are the teachers. We have the lives of leaders of tomorrow in our care, and it’s the knowledge we transfer that would help them stay true and remain great in virtues even outside the walls of the institutions.
Many teachers seldom gave the thoughts about the bad communication skills that their students possess, but they fail to check their mode of communicating with the students. Let’s not forget that a student is a product of what (s)he sees, reads and hears. As teachers, we are also being studied by the students — this is the hidden curriculum. How do you talk? How do you dress? How do you coordinate and carry yourself as a teacher? What are the informal and abstract knowledge and/or lecturers you give to your students? Your students will most likely copy and reproduce what they see you do. It is saddening that some teachers in the same school even do a public display of being in love with each other right in the glare of the students. Little wonder we see students lusting after one another. This is very wrong. Even if you’re lovers, it shouldn’t be ostentatious within the school environment. Maintaining the colleague-to-colleague relationship.
In conclusion, teachers should be very careful about what they do and say because students learn from these things, and it eventually becomes their characters and way of living. We are part of the books they read and if we are giving them negative knowledge of how life could be lived we won’t be safe to say that tomorrow would be in safe hands. In all, professionalism and morality should be the order of our day as teachers.
