Learning to live together: the hidden curriculum

Abstract

<p>Although “learning to live together” is a goal for education around the world, curricula are rarely aligned to the urgent need for people to learn to relate positively to one another across boundaries and borders, to respond to local and global crises that do not depend upon skills alone. This chapter highlights the hidden curriculum of education for living together. It argues that learning to live together manifests across curricula in schools, considering civic education as well as the hidden curriculum, of when students learn about how to relate to others, through courses like history and language learning, as well as outside classes. The chapter first provides a conceptualisation of education for living together and relates it to civic education, hidden curriculum and the concentric circles model of human relations. Then it explores manifestations of hidden curricula for living together, focusing on national, global, local, civilisational and interpersonal living together. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges for learning to live together, and the problem that young people are not encouraged to think critically about living with diverse others, given skills-based, neo-liberal orientations towards civic education.<br></p>