Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 17, No.

2, I983

207

David Gordon

Rules and the Effectiveness of the

Hidden Curriculum

Introduction
Every pupil encounters each day at least three different aspects of hisher school environment:
(1) the physical environment; (2) the social environment, made up of the people within the
school, the relationships between them and the social structures they create; (3) the symbolic or
cognitive environment, made up of the ideas, problems and information the pupil grapples
with both on his own, in reading, and in discussion with other pupils and with teachers in class
and other official activities. Each of these three aspects of the school environment has
associated with it a hidden curriculum (Gordon, 1982). My concern in this paper is with the
hidden curriculum associated with the social environment. From this point onwards this will
be referred to as the SHC (social hidden curriculum). The literature on the hidden curriculum
has been dominated by concern for this SHC. Some writers have even defined the hidden
curriculum in such a way that the SHC can be the only hidden curriculum (e.g. Dreeben,
1976). I have argued elsewhere (1982) that this is unacceptable. However, there is no doubt
that the SHC is a very central part of the hidden curriculum and well worth detailed scrutiny.
I will be addressing two different but related topics in this paper. First I will examine one
aspect of the SHC which, although it has been related to implicitly (Dreeben, 1967; Durkheim,
1961; Jackson, 1968; Kohlberg, 1970), has never been addressed directly, as far as I know. This
consists of the lessons the social environment teaches about the nature of rules by means of
the SHC. Schools are clearly organisations in which rules are very pervasive. The variety of
these rules, the insistence of the school staff that rules be obeyed, the range of school activities
for which rules are relevant, all suggest that pupils may learn in school not only specific rules
but also a great deal about rules in general. Of course the family is also a social unit in which
rules (explicit and implicit) are operative. However, these are, in most cases, not impersonal
rules and thus the school can be regarded as the first important institution in which people
learn about rules which are, objectively speaking, impersonal ones. This doesnt mean that the
way these rules are taught need highlight this impersonal aspect. Straughan (1982) has in fact
argued that very often school rules are taught as if they were personal commands of particular
teachers. This leads him to the conclusion that the pupils have been, in a sense, mistaught. I
think Straughan is correct, but this doesnt require us to say that pupils have not been taught

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about the nature of rules. All it means is that they have been taught something wrong about
rules.
The theoretical perspective which I will use to analyse the hidden curriculum concerning
rules derives from the philosophy of law. It is a sad comment on the lack of interdisciplinary
cross-fertilisation that the philosophical literature on legal rules has been so little used in the
social sciences (and particularly in sociology) in discussions of rules, norms and related
concepts [l]. It seems to me that legal philosophy, and particularly the work of Hart (1961)
and Dworkin (1977) suggests a most fruitful way of looking at rules, even in contexts which,
strictly speaking, are not legal ones.
Hart and Dworkin will supply the backdrop for my analysis of the nature of rules, but they
do not help us with regard to the question of mechanism. How does the SHC teach about
rules? I will examine a fascinating and problematic mode of functioning of the SHC which can
be characterised as the ignoring of conceptual distinctions. This mode of functioning is
particularly relevant to teaching about the nature of rules.
The second topic of this paper is the effectiveness of the SHC. There is an implicit
assumption in the literature that hidden curricula are very effective-at any rate more effective
than the schools manifest curricula. As a general assumption this is understandable. It
certainly would be very odd to undertake research on something both hidden from view (and
therefore difficult to discover) and also ineffective (and thus probably unimportant). Therefore
it is interesting that there are two very powerful arguments relating particularly to the SHC
which purport to show that this aspect of the hidden curriculum is ineffective. These
arguments cannot be used to show that the hidden curriculum in its entirety can have an
impact on pupils. Thus they do not constitute a radical critique of the notion of a hidden
curriculum. However, because of the centrality of the SHC in the literature on the hidden
curriculum, they do seriously limit the claims we can make.
In the second part of the paper then I will present and discuss the arguments mentioned
above for the ineffectiveness of the SHC. How is this related to the first part? I will show that
the SHC concerning rules manages, by and large, to avoid the difficulties raised by these two
arguments. Since the latter are very powerful arguments, this means that the hidden lessons
about rules are among the few parts of the SHC that probably are effective.

The Nature of Rules and the Hidden Curriculum

Rules and the Philosophy of Law: Hart
In his classic The Concept of Law, Hart (1961) develops a number of central distinctions
concerning rules. Of these, three are important for us. First, he distinguishes between habits (or
convergent behaviour) and rules. A general habit of the members of a society is something
most people do as a rule. One example he gives is the habit (at the time of writing of the book,
at any rate!) of going to the cinema once a week. This is different from obeying a social rule.
Hart suggests three differences: (1) deviation from a rule always engenders criticism and
pressure to conform, whereas with habits this need not occur; (2) deviation from a rule is seen
as a good reason for criticising behaviour. Criticism is legitimate: this is not so for a habit; (3) a
rule has what Hart calls an internal aspect which habits need not have. The members of the
society (or at least some of them) must have a critical, reflective attitude to the patterns of
behaviour relevant to a rule. Certain such patterns must be seen by them as a common
standard which guides their conduct.
A second distinction Hart makes is between primary and secondary rules. Primary or basic
rules are those that require people to do or abstain from certain actions. They impose duties.
Secondary rules are rules about rules. They are rules concerning the recognition, changing or
modifying of primary rules. They confer powers. In Harts view only when a society has

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developed this distinction between primary and secondary rules can it be considered to have a
proper legal system.
This leads us to a third distinction-that between a primitive or pre-legal society and a
modem society with a developed legal system. In a pre-legal society there only exist primary
rules. In other words there are no officials who enforce and interpret the laws in the modern
sense (the creation of officials being one of the by-products of the existence of secondary
rules). Also these primary rules, which constitute the legal system of the society, are
conceived internally by most members of the society.
In the simpler (decentralized pre-legal form of social) structure, since there are no
officials, the rules must be widely accepted as setting critical standards for the
behaviour of the group. If, there, the internal point of view is not widely disseminated
there could not logically be any rules (p. 114)
In contrast, in a modern society there are secondary rules, and thus there are officials. In
addition, and this is a fascinating logical consequence of Harts analysis, no members of the
society except the officials need regard the rules of the society from the internal point of view.

. . . Those rules of behaviour which are valid according to the systems ultimate
criteria of validity must be generally obeyed,. . . (also the systems) rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication
must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behaviour by its
officials. (The obeying of valid rules of behaviour) is the only (condition) which
private citizens need satisfy: they may obey each for his part only and from any
motive whatever; though in a healthy society they will in fact often accept these rules
as common standards of behaviour @. 113).
As we will see, this distinction between a pre-legal society and one with a proper legal
system becomes central when we consider the hidden curriculum concerning the nature of
rules. So it is important at the outset to point out certain difficulties with Harts argument.
First, it is never quite clear whether he is making an empirical, sociological claim-that
societies can, as a matter of fact, be differentiated as he suggests-or whether he is only
suggesting that the differences are logical ones which follow from the concept of a rule itself.
If his claim is sociological, I think he is clearly wrong. Both in primitive and modern
societies divergence from general habits of the community is often reacted to as if a proper
rule had been broken. Also in modern societies most people have never even given a thought
to the difference between primary and secondary rules, and so it isnt really clear in what sense
this distinction could be said to exist within the legal system. To put this in another way: the
distinction Hart draws between pre-legal and legal societies doesnt seem to express itself in
the ways Pre-Legal Societys Man in the Street (Village?) and the Legal Societys Man in the
Street conceive rules.
If Hart is making a logical claim he is on much safer ground. However even here there is
one problem. The concept of a primary rule obtains its significance by being compared to a
secondary rule, in a similar way that the meaning of the word hot derives from the contrast
between hot and cold. Thus when the same term primary rule is used to describe the rules
of a pre-legal society in which these are the on& rules, then the concept primary rule has
changed its meaning. (In a language in which only hot existed, hot could not mean the same
as it does for us.) It seems to me to be much better to talk of the rules of a pre-legal society as
conflating primary and secondary rules. The rules of such a society have the content of what
we call primary rules, but are accorded the importance and absoluteness of secondary rules.
Continuing this line of thought leads me to suggest the following adaptation of Harts
thesis. One can distinguish between two prototypical societies. In the first, which in order not
to complicate matters I will continue to call a legal society (although I suspect this may be

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question begging), members distinguish clearly between habits, primary and secondary rules.
In the second, which I will continue calling a pre-legal society, these distinctions are collapsed.
The members are not aware of the different logical status of habits, primary and secondary
rules. All rules are one. Of course these two societies are simply abstract ideal cases never in
fact realised. However what we can say is that modern societies seem to be closer to the legal
type than to the pre-legal type, whereas for primitive societies the opposite seems to be the case
(Hayek, 1973; Jenkins, 1980). What we have in fact is a distinction in legal terms that more or
less parallels classic sociological distinctions like Gemeinschaff/Gesellschaff or mechanical
solidarity/organic solidarity [2].
Apart from definitional matters, what further differences between legal and pre-legal
societies can be stipulated? Perhaps the most important difference is that in legal societies the
obligatory nature of rules is less insistent than in pre-legal societies. By this I do not mean that
rules need not be obeyed in legal societies. Rather I am claiming the following. (1) Only the
secondary rules of the society are uncontroversially and absolutely obligatory. Habits of course
are not obligatory at all. The primary rules do require obedience, but they are subject to
revision and can also be examined and criticised in the light of the secondary rules. It is
possible to claim that a particular primary rule is invalid. Thus even if today I am obliged to
obey such a primary rule, I am aware that objections to this rule could lead to its revocation.
(2) Social cohesiveness can be maintained even if a relatively large percentage of societys
members do not adopt the internal stance towards most rules. In fact we have seen that from
the logical point of view only the legal officials need necessarily adopt this internal stance. In
contrast, in pre-legal societies stability would seem to require that most members adopt the
internal stance towards the rules.
Rules and the Philosophy of Law: Dworkin
Dworkin (1977) suggests a number of further distinctions to those appropriated from Hart. I
will concentrate on two of these. The first is the distinction between rules and principles. In
Dworkins view, rules and principles are two logically distinct kinds of standards which direct
decisions in different ways. Rules are applicable in an all-or-nothing fashion. As Dworkin puts
it:
If the facts a rule stipulates are given, then either the rule is valid, in which case the
answer it supplies must be accepted, or it is not, in which case it contributes nothing
to the decision (p. 24).
Principles guide us differently. They do not set out automatic consequences. They suggest
reasons that argue in one direction but need not necessitate a particular decision. So when we
say that a particular principle is a principle of, say, law:
All that is meant.. .is that the principle is one which officials must take into account,
if it is relevant, as a consideration inclining in one direction or another (p. 26).
In Dworkins view it makes perfectly good sense to claim, for example, that our law respects
the principle that no man profit from his own wrong even if there are cases where the law does
permit a man to profit from wrongs he commits. All this shows is that in these sorts of cases
the principle has not been the only one taken into account and other principles have been
given greater weight.
Let me add Dworkins distinction between rules and principles to those derived from Hart
and modify the way I have characterised legal and pre-legal societies. A legal society is one
whose members distinguish between habits, primary rules, secondary rules and principles. A
pre-legal society is one whose members collapse these distinctions. The only problem with this
suggestion is that the notion of collapsing the rules/principles distinction is ambiguous. Does

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21 1

the resulting hybrid principle-rule retain the all-or-nothing nature of rules or does it lead to
the flexibility (with regards to weight) of principles? I will interpret the notion of principlerule in pre-legal societies as retaining the all-or-nothing nature of rules. A pre-legal society is
thus one whch, among other things, relates to its basic moral principles as absolute, inflexible
rules.
The modifications of the notions pre-legal and legal societies strengthens the claim that
in legal societies obligation is less insistent than in pre-legal societies. This follows from the
fact that principles do not guide us in an all-or-nothing fashion. Thus applying them requires
the use of discretion, at least in the weak sense (Dworkin, 1977, p. 31) that application
demands the use of judgment.
Let us now turn to a second distinction that Dworkin invokes-that between conventional
and concurrent morality.
A community displays a concurrent morality when its members are agreed in
asserting the same, or much the same, normative rule, but they do not count the fact
of that agreement as an essential part of their grounds for asserting that rule. It
displays a conventional morality when they do. If the churchgoers believe that each
man has a duty to take off his hat in church, but would not have such a duty but for
some social practice to that general effect, then this is a case of conventional
morality. If they also believe that each man has a duty not to lie, and would have this
duty even if most other men did, then this would be a case of concurrent morality
(P. 53)Three things need to be pointed out about this distinction.
(1) Dworkins conception of conventional morality is similar to but not identical with
Kohlbergs (1971) use of the same term. For Kohlberg conventional morality covers his third
and fourth stages in moral development-the good boy and law and order orientations,
which stress conformity to rules for its own sake. These two orientations would be included
under Dworkins notion of conventional morality. However Kohlbergs fifth stage, which in his
terminology, is post conventional, is a contractual or legalistic view of obligations and this
would also be regarded as a conventional morality by Dworkin [3].
(2) Consider Dworkins churchgoing example. Imagine a churchgoer who, although continuing to display a conventional morality (in Dworkins sense), feels that for some reason or
other he cannot continue taking his hat off in church. It seems to me that this would probably
result in his discontinuing going to church. In other words, when we have a conventional
morality then the rules of a community in a sense define the community. Inability to conform to
the rules will lead to estrangement from the community.
(3) In pre-legal societies, social morality will be conventional whereas in legalsocieties it will
be concurrent. This follows logically from two considerations: (a) in pre-legal societies habits
and rules are conflated; (b) in legal societies, members are aware of the distinction between
rules and principles, and are guided in part by principles (which must be applied with
judgment and not simply by conforming to accepted practices).

Rules and the Hidden Curriculum

Let us now return to schools and the SHC. As I have already stressed in the introduction, in
most cases schools are rule-inundated institutions. There are rules telling kids how to behave,
where to be at different times of the day, how to answer questions, how to write in their
exercise books, how to sit, how to dress, how to talk-very little that goes on at school is not
subsumed under some rule or other. It is surely reasonable to assume that this ruleimpregnated atmosphere teaches a hidden curriculum about what rules are.
The question is: what lesson about the rules does the SHC teach? What conception of the

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nature of rules is embodied in the way rules are presented? In order to answer this question we
must first answer the preliminary one: how are rules presented? The answer I suggest is
deceptively simple: rules are presented as rules. By this I mean that, apart from (1) simply
telling or reminding the pupils at appropriate times what a particular rule is and (2) implying
the existence of certain rules by virtue of their behaviour, the school staff in most schools do
not present rules in any special way at all. I feel a little uncomfortable writing this. After all I
am making an empirical claim of sorts, and yet I am not producing any direct evidence for it.
Indirect evidence is available. For instance in the chapters on rules in Hargreaves, Hester &
Mellors Deviance in Classrooms (1975), the authors point out the apparent absence of
conceptual distinction in members accounts of rules (p. 34) and the fact that in giving
accounts of (classroom) rules, the members did not possess a coherent framework in which
they were able to talk about rules (p. 45). This is evidence of a sort, but it is very indirect. The
point is I dont quite see how I could produce direct evidence because I am in effect arguing
for the existence of a non-event [4]. Over the years I have spent thousands of hours in schools
and, except for a few rare cases, I have never come across any real attempt to differentiate
between rule-types or go beyond the simple stipulation of relevant rules. At best, teachers
sometimes try to show that a particular rule makes some sort of sense and thus perhaps teach
the distinction between arbitrary and sensible rules [5]. Over and beyond this-a rule is a rule.
However, as the discussion of Hart and Dworkins analyses of rules show, we must not
conclude from this that the schools do not teach a hidden curriculum about rules. On the
contrary, what follows is that they teach a very clearly defined hidden lesson. In brief they
teach the c o n q t i o n of rules appropriate to a pre-legal society. This is my major thesis in this
article.
Three conclusions follow immediately if we take into account the previous discussion of
the distinctions proposed by Hart and Dworkin.
(1) The schools hidden curriculum presents a conventional morality (in Dworkins sense).
(2) Recent research findings (which I will discuss in the next section) may show that the
hidden curriculum is not very successful in teaching kids to conform to rules. But if the hidden
curriculum presents a conventional morality, it teaches a very specific lesson about what
conformity means. What is taught is that disagreement with the rules of a community is
equivalent to estrangement from that community. In other words, the hidden curriculum
radicalises non-conformity by equating it with alienation.
(3) The pre-legal conception of rules and the associated conventional morality are being
taught within societies which are far closer to being legal than pre-legal ones. Such societies
would seem to require a concurrent rather than a conventional morality. What one makes of
this tension probably depends on ones attitude to functionalist explanations in sociology. All I
wish to do here is point out that tension.
So if my major thesis is correct and if, in addition, this hidden curriculum about rules is
not only taught but also learned (i.e. this is an effective part of the hidden curriculum) then it
seems we are talking about something with extremely important ramifications. Therefore I
turn now to the question of the effectiveness of the hidden curriculum in general and the SHC
in particular.

The Hidden Curriculum, Effectiveness and Rules

Resistance Theories

When Jackson (1968) coined the term a decade and a half ago, it seemed self-evident to many
that this hidden curriculum was an effective curriculum. As Bloom (1972) wrote:
The (hidden) curriculum is in many respects likely to be more effective than the
manifest curriculum. The lessons it teaches are long remembered because it is so

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pervasive and consistent over the many years in which our students attend school
(p. 343).
However, this effectiveness can be questioned and I wish to discuss two arguments for the
ineffectiveness of the hidden curriculum: (a) theories of resistance; (b) the school as enclave
argument. In this sub-section I will relate to the first of these. The structure of my presentation
will be as follows: first I will briefly characterise resistance theories; secondly, I will point out
some of the possible criticisms of such theories; thirdly, I will argue that these criticisms are
inapplicable to the SHC and thus that resistance theories can be interpreted as showing that the
SHC is ineffective. The following sub-section deals with the school as enclave argument and
the structure of my presentation is formally identical to that in the present sub-section. In
other words I reach the conclusion that this school as enclave argument does apply to the
SHC and thus supplies a further reason for claiming that the SHC is ineffective. The final subsection brings us back to the teaching of rules. There I will show how the hidden curriculum
concerning the nature of rules manages to avoid the charge of being ineffective, despite its
being part of the SHC.
Let us now turn to resistance theories. As Apple (1981) puts it:
For schools are not merely institutions of reproduction, institutions where the overt
and covert knowledge that is taught inexorably moulds students into passive beings
who are able to fit into an unequal society. This account fails in two critical ways.
First, it views students as passive internalizers of pre-given social messages. Whatever
the institution teaches in either the formal curriculum or the hidden curriculum is
taken in and is unmodified by class cultures and class (or race or gender) rejection of
dominant social messages. Anyone who has taught in working-class schools, in
schools located in our inner city ghettos, knows that this is simply not true. Student
reinterpretation, at best only partial acceptance, and often outright rejection of the
planned and unplanned meanings of schools are more likely (p. 30).
A considerable body of literature has appeared over the last few years which purports to
document the resistance. phenomenon that Apple claims exists (e.g. Anyon, 1981; Giroux,
1981; Willis, 1977). The evidence is impressive but that does not mean that resistance theories
are immune from criticism. Hargreaves (1982) points out a number of flaws in this predominantly Marxist literature. In his view, an ideological committment to social transformation has
led the advocates of resistance theories to an oversimplified view of resistance. They have used
the word as an undifferentiated general concept applying to many different kinds of disaffection with schooling, some of which cannot plausibly be regarded as resistance at all. They also
have not critically analysed their empirical data and other data from other research traditions
in order to determine the extent to which the phenomena they describe are really prevalent.
I would add a further criticism. Resistance theorists employ what seems to me to be an
extremely over simplified and at times loose conception of the hidden curriculum. Take Apple
for example, and consider the following sentences from a different article of his than that
quoted above:
The traditional literature on the hidden curriculum has. . . pictured. . . students. . .as
passive recipients of the norms and values which are embodied in the curricular and
social environment of the school . . . Is (this approach) accurate? Do students always
internalize these norms and dispositions unquestionably? There is evidence to suggest
that not all students simply take in this hidden curriculum; that students often
creatively act to control their school environments; and that, at least for certain
segments of the working class, they in fact expressly reject the norms of obediance,
respect for authority and so o n . . . (my emphasis) (Apple 1980/81, p. 7).
I wish to stress that all these sentences appear in the same paragraph, they are part of one
sustained idea. However, we see that during this passage Apple moves from seeing the hidden

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curriculum as being concerned with norms and values to being concerned with norms and
dispositions, to being concerned with the specific norms of obedience and respect for authority.
We also see that a distinction between the curricular and social environments in the first part
of the passage is collapsed into the school environment later on.
I do not believe that these are simply examples of a slip of the pen. Rather it seems to me
that Apple is simply dismissing as irrelevant a number of distinctions one could make about
the hidden curricula of the physical, social and cognitive environments, between things the
teachers did not intend teaching and those they did intend but did not openly acknowledge to
the students (Martin 1976), between hidden curricula messages directly related to the imposition of dominant class hegemony and hidden curricular messages whose relationship to such
hegemony is at best indirect. Yet surely it is reasonable to suppose that resistances to these
different facets of the hidden curriculum will vary and, with regards to some of these facets,
that the resistance will be minimal? Yet if we allow this, we have essentially accepted the
proposition that some aspects of the hidden curriculum are effective.
As a general critique of resistance theories this will do nicely. However, I do not think we
can use this critique to argue for the effectiveness of the SHC. Let us consider the classic
ethnographic depiction of working class resistance-Williss (1977) Learning to Labour. Willis
shows how a group of working class lads reject the schools culture and how this rejection,
ironically and tragically, results in their condemning themselves to remaining part of the
exploited working class labour force. The rejection of the school culture is the rejection of the
teachers, what they represent, the relationships they try to create, the tasks they set-in short, it
is a rejection of the SHC. And so if we are prepared to admit that Willis has captured
something true and vital about working class reactions to school (and this we must do-his
book is simply too good to be ignored), we must accept the fact that with at least a part of the
school population the SHC is not particularly effective. Resistance and the hidden curriculum may be terms used loosely by resistance theorists, but their analyses do seem to apply to
the SHC.
The School as Enclave Argument

Resistance theories can be bolstered by an argument which is perhaps even more powerful
because it encompasses all pupils, including those who do not reject the schools culture. This
argument is a consequence of Bernsteins (1977) theory of educational codes which, surprisingly enough, neither Bernstein nor those who have used his conceptual system seem to have
spotted. Bernstein maintains that the most typical educational codes (collection codes) are
characterised by strong classijication, i.e. contents are insulated from each other by clear-cut
and strong boundaries. Of these, one boundary pointed out explicitly is that between school
and everyday knowledge. Now, if this boundary is maintained, the school is transmitting a
hidden curricular message that school and life are, in some sense separate. The school is a
special, unique enclave. The point is: i f this message is transmitted effectively, then essentially a
whole class of other hidden curricular messages are rendered ineffective.
Take as an example the claim that schools, through their hidden curricula, teach pupils
that they should be docile. In actual fact, the hidden curricular message can only be: in
schools one should be docile. Those who claim that a more general docility results from this
are making the (implicit) assumption that some sort of transfer effect occurs. But if we are
talking about a school system with collection code, the hidden curricular lesson: In schools
one must be docile, is linked to another hidden curricular lesson: Schools are special
enclaves, and thus there is no reason to believe that the pupils actually learn: In general one
must be docile or: In the work place one must be docile. They may learn the skill of acting
with docility, a skill they can invoke at appropriate times, but they will not have developed a
predilection to be docile.

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At least two types of hidden curricular learning avoid the enclave difficulty. First, the
hidden curriculum teaches certain things about schools and also matters (mostly cognitive) that
are conceived in our society as part of the schools legitimate area of authority. In relation to
this aspect of the hidden curriculum, learning that schools are special places does not act as a
barrier. For instance, schools project a certain image of science (Cawthron & Rowell, 1978).
Seeing as science is part of school knowledge, in the sense that the school is regarded as the
institution whose job it is to see to it that societys members are scientifically literate, clearly
the fact that schools are seen as special enclaves will not result in pupils relating to the image
of science they have learned in the schools hidden curriculum as only being true in schools.
This doesnt mean that we can assume that pupils will regard science as something beneficial,
interesting or important. All I am saying is that they are likely to accept the school image of
what science is,
Secondly, the learnings of the hidden curriculum that remain unverbalised are also
untouched by Bernsteins analysis (and also, by the way, by the analyses of resistance
theorists). In order to see this, the notion of unverbalised learning must be elaborated. The
hidden curriculum teaches in such a way that the pupils are usually unaware of having been
taught anything. This is why we call it a hidden curriculum. However, the results of hidden
curricular teaching need not remain unconscious. I remember once teaching mathematics to a
class in a special mathematics track. Many of the pupils were convinced that the humanities
were nonsense because in the humanities anything you say is acceptable. This extraordinary
opinion was one they held perfectly consciously and was one they verbalised with great force,
even though they could not indicate where and how they had picked it up. On the other hand,
when Schwab (1962, p. 46) claims that one of the meta lessons of science teaching is that all
entities have the same ontological status, he is not suggesting that this is something pupils
could or do verbalise explicitly. It is clear that he is referring to a bit of tacit knowledge,
something that colours the way pupils look at the world, yet is something they are not only
unaware of having been taught but also are unaware they have learnt.
This second type of hidden curricular learning evades the school as enclave barrier
because its remaining unverbalised prevents it from being manipulated in thought in conjunction with other beliefs. Specifically, it is never juxtaposed with the belief school is a special
place in such a way as to result in the limiting of its range (as in the case of the one should be
docile example).
The above considerations lead me to the conclusion that, by and large, the hidden
curriculum of the schools cognitive and physical environments remain unaffected by the
argument I have derived from Bernstein. The hidden curriculum of the cognitive environment
is mainly linked to matters considered part of the schools legitimate area of authority, and
thus the learning associated with it is an important part of the first type of hidden curricular
learning which avoids the school as enclave difficulty. The hidden curricular learnings
associated with the physical environment seem likely to remain mainly unverbalised, and thus
are part of the second type of learning which avoids this difficulty.
However, when we turn to the SHC, which is our concern here, things are very different.
Social messages, to use Apples (1981) term, are not those generally considered part of the
schools legitimate area of authority and the social learnings of the hidden curriculum would
appear to be precisely those which do become verbalised. Thus the school as enclave argument
would appear to augment resistance theories very convincingly vis-a-vis the ineffectiveness of
the SHC.
Resistance Theories, the School as Enclave Argument and Rules

Since the hidden curriculum about rules is part of the SHC, must the theoretical structure laid
out in the first part of this article now simply be dismissed as irrelevant? Must we accept the

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conclusion that the hidden curriculums lessons about rules are not learnt very well if at all,
despite the pervasiveness of school rules? I answer in the negative. It seems to me that there
are good reasons for believing that the hidden curriculum about rules manages to avoid the
difficulties raised by resistance theories and the school as enclave argument.
Let us imagine a group of working class lads who reject certain rules or perhaps the very
notion that school rules need be obeyed. If they are doing this deliberately, they must espouse
beliefs like This rule is stupid or Nobody here is going to tell us what to do7.The point is
that, in order to entertain such beliefs, these lads must have some notion of what a rule is.
Their notion need not be one philosophers of law would be happy with, but it cannot be
completely amorphous. Without some relatively clear notion of the nature of rules, one cannot
reject particular rules or question the right of other people to demand ones obediance to them.
If rejection of rules requires that our imaginary lads have some idea of what rules are,
then the question arises: how and where did they learn their idea of the nature of rules? Can
one entertain the idea that they arrived at school as six year olds with a certain conception
which remained fixed throughout their school careers? Far more reasonable to assume that
their conception of rules resulted at least in part from hidden curricular lessons in school
about rules. Resistance can never be a process of total annihilation of all hegemonic
impositions.
A formally equivalent argument can be offered when relating to the relevance of the
school as enclave argument in learning abcut rules. Here again, entertaining beliefs like In
school there are rules like X, but I will not need to deal with X-like rules outside school
requires: (1) that I have some picture of what a rule in general is; (2) I must have learnt this
rule at least in part in school.
As a general conclusion we can say that the pupils rejection or qualification of certain
SHC lessons relating to rules logically entails that at least one hidden curricular lesson was
taught effectively-the lesson about the general nature of rules. Seeing as this is such an
important lesson, with so many significant consequences, we can conclude that at least one
central part of the SHC is probably an effective part of the hidden curriculum.

Unanswered Questions
Let me conclude by pointing out some of the questions raised by my analysis, questions which
I hope to address in some future article.
First, there are certain value issues which follow from Dworkins distinction between
conventional and concurrent morality. During this article I have maintained, or tried to
maintain, a neutral stance vis-a-vis the question whether schools should teach the hidden
curriculum about rules that I claim they actually do teach. Clearly ones reaction to the
analysis depends on the way one answers this question.
Let us assume ones answer is that this hidden curriculum should not be taught because the
concept of rules it teaches is misleading, unsuited to modern societies, or whatever. This raises
a second question: how can this hidden curriculum be countered? How can one teach pupils to
distinguish between habits, primary rules, secondary rules and principles? An obvious suggestion would be to teach about rules explicitly in the manifest curriculum. But this raises further
problems. Would the teaching of such a manifest curriculum in a particular school have any
impact on that schools hidden curriculum? If not, would it be effective enough to counter the
hidden curriculum (remember, the hidden curriculum is usually considered to be a more
effective curriculum than the manifest curriculum)?
A further set of questions arises when we notice that schools do not only teach the sort of
social rules I have considered here. They also teach rules related to cognitive matters. For
instance Ormell (1978) and Gordon, Achiman & Melman (1981) have discussed the hidden

Rules and the Effectiveness of the Hidden Curriculum

211

curriculum associated with the learning of rules in mathematics. Do these two different hidden
curricula about rules interact? If so, in what way?
Attempting to relate to these questions must be postponed for another time, but we now
can say, at least, that they show the whole issue of the hidden curriculum and rules to be an
important one. I also hope that my discussions of Hart and Dworkins work has pointed up a
source for educational theorising that has been used too little in the past [ 6 ] .

Correspondence: David Gordon, Ben Gurion University of the Neger, Beersheba, Israel.

NOTES
[ I ] Of course the special sub discipline concerned with sociology of law has used this philosophical literature at
times. For example: Barkun (1968), Bechtler (1978), Weber (1954).
[2] In the case of mechanical solidarity/organic solidarity, this is not surprising seeing that legal matters feature so
strongly in Durkheims (1964) development of this distinction.
[3] Actually it isnt completely clear that even stage 6 is one of concurrent morality. A central educational
development of Kolhbergs approach is the idea of a just community. According to Power (one of Kohlbergs coworkers) in such a community there are collective norms, which he defines as norms which bind members of a
group qua members of that group to act in certain ways (Power, 1981, p. 11). This seems to me to be a
conventional morality in Dworkins sense. The point is, however, that Power seems to believe that a truly
exemplary community will be one whose collective norms will be stage 6 norms. If so, even stage 6 is not a
concurrent morality.
[4] I have shown that the notion of a non-event teaching something is problematic (Gordon, 1982). However, the
example I am developing here avoids the problems I pointed out in the previous paper.
[5] However, Straughan (1982) has argued that they do this in such a way as to make the notion of a rule logically
superfluous.
[6] I am not referring here to the use of the philosophical analysis of distributive justice in discussions on
educational policy. That has been quite prevalent for some time (Strike, 1979).

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