All i learnt at school

Entering education parents have an idea of what their child would be learning such as reading,writing,maths, other subjects etc. but what parents and also children don't realise that as they are learning all of these things and more, they also in fact learn something called the 'hidden curriculum'. The hidden curriculum is in a way a side effect of the lessons, it isn't intended to be learnt by children. It includes things such as the social structure of a classroom, the authority of teachers, labels,roles,social higher archery,beliefs and much more. in this essay i am going to write about some of the things i learnt during my four years in secondary school. As i went to an all girls' school my experience would differ from others as an all girls school was a very different atmosphere to a mixed school. 


One of the things i learnt through the hidden curriculum during my time at school was that image was everything, the way you looked was very important to the status of your popularity, if you weren't what was seen as pretty and skinny, or you didn't have a certain look you weren't 'popular', it didn't even matter what your personality was like and in most cases you were bullied by the 'popular' girls . in my experience i was one of the girls who was classed as 'unpopular' and bullied for a few years at my time at secondary school because of the reasons I've stated above,even by friends only because they wanted to be popular. even though this was not pleasant time for me, I am thankful for it now because it's made me the person i am now. 

Another thing i learnt from the hidden curriculum would be the labels that were put on people or the 'cliques' within school for example;chavs,goths,emos,geeks,popular girls etc. who all rebelled against the uniforms in some way to show these 'cliques' for example the girls who were classed as chavs would have bleach blonde hair,more jewelry than allowed,rolled up skirts as short as possible and also a lot of make-up. this would relate to one of Argyles's 10 codes of NVC more specifically the appearance one as he talks about how the way some looks can give an impression to other people what that person is like e.g.unapproachable/approachable. the changing up of the uniform, wearing make-up didn't happen at Hayesfield until about year eight. The 'cliques' themselves though were established rather quickly, during year seven. in my experience of this lesson i went through a few of the labels,hanging around with several groups of people. my first 'clique' was the popular girls, this was because my best friend was chosen as one of the popular girls but she didn't want to leave me behind so she tried to get them to accept me but as i said before i was not particularly popular so this didn't work out,i didn't  fit in at all and just felt awkward and out of place. The next 'clique' i found myself entering was the chav one. this was a clique i stayed with for years 7-9 but i wasn't what people would call a stereotypical chav and even in this clique i didn't fit in, even though i tried hard too. the final 'clique' i got into was the 'emo' meaning emotionally unstable group this clique was the most interesting, it wasn't as if they were actually depressed they were just normal girls who wore a lot of black and listened to heavy music. the 'emo' group was by far the best as they were very accepting and as long as you were a nice person they liked you and i am still friends with the girls from that 'clique' today. I didn't really fit in with any of these cliques and that taught me that you shouldn't try and change yourself to be friends with people, you should see if they accept you for you. and this also allowed me to build my own sense of identity and realising how i wanted to dress and do my make-up my individual way and also to stop caring about what people thought of me.  

Lastly another lesson i learnt from the hidden curriculum would have been the higher archery in the school, and i started to realise that this also applied to the teachers also, this chain went from the top beginning with the head teacher,heads of subjects,the teachers, the students and then cleaning staff and dinner ladies. as the years went on this 'higher archery' system became more and more obvious and you could see tension between each section of the chain for example i witnessed disputes between heads of subjects and the teachers that in some cases like arguments that seemed childish . this lesson taught me that you will always have people above and below you, that also it was extremely difficult to make your way up the chain and also that even when you're an adult, you'll still have childish factors about you. 

In conclusion i learnt a lot more in my time at secondary school than i thought i did and even though the lessons i learnt weren't particularly pleasant i am thankful because they made me into the person i am today.