"Happy Consciousness": Ideology and Hidden Curricula In Literacy Education

1 March 1993

journal article
research article
Published by SAGE Publications in Adult Education Quarterly

Vol. 44 (1) , 17-33
https://doi.org/10.1177/0741713693044001002

Abstract

The content of five widely-used ABE reading series was analyzed 13 years ago by Gerald Coles (1977). Coles found racism, sexism, and socioeconomic stereotypes to "abound" in these materials. Using the same categories of racism, sexism, and the socioeconomic categories employed by Coles, this investigation reconstructed the Coles study to determine if hidden curricula still exist and, if so, to what extent. Findings indicate that today's most popular reading texts have improved since 1977, but only slightly. Cultural and political reproduction comprise two of the guiding ideologies for literacy education in the 1990s.

Keywords

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