Schooling, the Hidden Curriculum, and Children's Conceptions of Poverty

©1997 Society for Research in Child Development. All rights reserved. This Social Policy Report synthesizes several streams of research bearing on the problem of poverty in the United States today. Four themes are developed: (1) American society is characterized by rising income inequality; (2) our schools provide an arena for reproducing, resisting, and reconstructing an inequitable economic and social order; (3) a hidden (and not so hidden) curriculum transmits dominant ideological messages about society; and (4) children increasingly with age ascribe to societal beliefs that perceive the poor as responsible for their condition. These conceptions relate the cause of poverty to individual deficiencies (that is, they “blame the victim”), downplay other more important factors, and as a result hamper the design of antipoverty policy. A number of implications drawn from the discussion pertain to the conduct and funding of research on (1) the messages conveyed to children by schools; and (2) children’s beliefs about poverty derived from other sources. The various streams of research reviewed here are merely suggestive inasmuch as they represent rather disparate, loosely related bodies of work. The purpose of the discussion is to point out the need for further research to establish their connections. Socialization occurs via many pathways. Although none of the studies reviewed examines the source of children’s ideas about economic privation in our society, it is not unreasonable to propose that schools play a crucial role.