The Hidden Curriculum

 

As I spend more and more time talking, playing and watching my kids, I can see that there is no end to learning nor is there an end to the different ways of learning. In the past one year I have noticed how my younger daughter who at present is about 5 years old has been ‘educating’ herself silently.

Here is a recent incident. A couple of months back when virtual classes began, my older daughter was having difficulty in managing her online classes and her ‘me’ time. So, we decided to sit together and work out a routine that would help her manage her day well without compromising her other interests. As we were busy in our conversation my younger daughter was silently playing with her toys in the same room. A couple of days later she came up to me and asked me to help create a routine for her as well. As I sat with her, to my amazement, I found that she already had a fair idea of how to plan her activities through the day! I realised that all that time when we were sitting with her sister, she had been silently assimilating all that we were saying. And by the time she came to me for help she had already worked out her plans for the day.

Another such instance is when I would often find her sitting quietly and colouring in the same room where her sister and grandma were having a playful look at the globe. And then one day I find her looking very intently at the globe. On asking her what was she looking at, she started pointing out all the continents and countries to me. When I asked her how she came to know them she told me she had watched and observed her grandma and sister with the globe and she picked it up from there.

What is education or learning about? To me it is about assimilating information to be used when required. And the process of assimilation may not always be visible and it may not involve a direct verbal communication either, but only silent presence. Take for example in the natural world- animal cubs watch their parents hunt and gather food, storing all that they see and use it when they are old enough and on their own. In the olden days of Guru-Shishya tradition a lot of learning was through silent observation alone.  Many home-schoolers have gatherings where children are silent observers to the sessions. They are learning and assimilating knowledge in a manner which is unlike routine classroom teaching. Children in their everyday life are silently learning from their parents by observing how they communicate and behave with others. Nothing is new about silent learning but we always prefer verbal dialogue or one to one interaction when it comes to education. 

I use this method a lot at home, especially with my younger daughter. She is a silent observant of a lot of conversations between me and my 10-year-old daughter. I let her be present in the room playing, colouring or just pretending to do these! She is silently listening to our conversations on topics such as menstruation, media insensitivity, issues related to body shaming, absurdity of cosmetic and fairness cream ads, cyber-crime and internet safety, safety in public spaces. Though she might not have been directly exposed to these issues yet, they are getting stored in her memory bank, to be thrown up as and when she does come across them soon in the future. It is there in her memory and she will be able to recognize these issues and not be taken by surprise. It is a great way to initiate her into thinking and behaving otherwise from an early age.

Schools too can initiate silent learning. Some progressive schools are doing this. Aurinko Academy in Bangalore, for instance, has a system they call the “Hidden Curriculum”.  Younger kids sit silently and observe classroom activities of older kids. Knowledge assimilation is happening but invisible to our eyes. Recently my daughter shared with me that when her teacher, in her new school, introduced the topic of friction she instantly recollected having heard about friction in one of the hidden curriculum classes she had attended in a lower grade when she was in Aurinko. She was able to understand all about friction partly as a memory already stored in her and partly from what she was learning now. It made her learning process easier.

Another interesting way in which silent learning can happen in schools is having open classrooms. Younger children benefit from this type of learning spaces because they are able to recollect and use the information later on. In Aurinko Academy, for instance, classrooms do not have walls. Children sit with their teachers in groups and learn with their own peers as well as have the opportunity to observe other peer groups.

Some progressive learning schools have a system where children of mixed age groups sit together. Children get to observe and hear more diverse conversations, more diverse views. All this fuels their natural curiosity.

Education and learning to me is all about assimilating knowledge, storing the information like a data bank in our memory and then using it when it is most needed. This assimilation can happen silently and need not always require verbal dialogue. Our higher intelligence knows when and what to use from the vast information that is being assimilated by us. So, let’s give our natural curiosity and our higher intelligence the space to evolve and take us to our highest potential.