Schools teach, without stating it, a second syllabus of waiting, compliance, deference and being evaluated, and pupils learn it as thoroughly as the first.
Jackson coined the term in Life in Classrooms (1968), after observing that much of a pupil's day is waiting, taking turns, and being praised or judged in public. None of it is on the timetable and all of it is learned. Bowles and Gintis gave it a sharper reading in 1976, arguing that school discipline mirrors the workplace it prepares pupils for.
In practice
- A school that promises independent thinking in its prospectus and rewards silent compliance in its behaviour policy is teaching the second lesson.
- A child learns from years of lining up that whoever controls the queue controls the day.
- Standing
- Read from different sides: as training in compliance for the labour market, and as the route by which a school's values reach pupils unannounced. Compare guessing the teacher's password.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- Theories of teaching, and what schools are for