Curriculum Studies in the Time of the Anthropocene

Abstract

If curriculum studies as a field of thought has been concerned with the subject of time, then a type of time that has been described with numerical precision is life in classrooms. In his conceptualization of a hidden curriculum that demands “institutional conformity,” Jackson (1968/2013, p. 123) explicates the amount of time children spend at school upon completing elementary education. “The magnitude of 7,000 hours spread over six or seven years of a child’s life is difficult to comprehend” (p. 118). To understand the meaning of all those hours logged, Jackson juxtaposes them with other familiar reoccurring activities. Those who attend religious services for one hour a week would need to devote “150 years…inside of a church” (p. 119) in order to become as acquainted with it as a twelve-year-old is with the inside of a school.