Schooled: The Podcast

In his 1968 classic, Life in Schools, Philip Jackson coined the phrase “the hidden curriculum”, the implicit rules, values, norms, and behaviors in any school that students must learn in addition to the stated classroom curriculum. Learning this hidden curriculum becomes even more challenging when students’ backgrounds differ from the “dominant cultural context” of their school. In this episode we speak with Elly Fishman, author of the recent Refugee High: Coming of Age in America, a book that chronicles a year in the life of Sullivan High School, a Chicago Public School where over three dozen languages are spoken and where half of the student body consists of recent immigrants and political refugees.