Dr. Grauer's Column - The Hidden Curriculum of Middle School and High School

The Hidden Curriculum of Middle School and High School
(What you really remember)
By Stuart Grauer

I was up boating in the Puget Sound with an alumni dad last spring, and he told me that his son, Kurt Czerwinski, had said his clearest remaining memory of eighth grade was me sitting on the stage at the start of an assembly, showing, studying, and marveling over an apple and the journey it had taken. Point well taken.

What are your own first, most immediate memories of school—no analyzing, just what first comes to mind? Here’s what I remember, with some editing for brevity (names changed):

Gordon, a grade or two older than me, was a row behind me on the bus up to the ski mountain one winter Saturday in seventh grade. His stretch ski pants were bright red and looped under his feet to stay unwrinkled. He was worried that if he bent his knees, the pants would stretch out around the knees and lose their perfect shape, so he sat with his legs stretched straight out all the way to Davos Mountain.

Richard Waters approached Ricky Sullivan in the long hallway of lockers. Ricky tensed up against the wall, and Richard said, “Look at Sullivan,” before slapping him. I never knew why Sullivan cowered like that. Sullivan got a Corvette Stingray in high school and was way cooler than Waters, if you ask me.

We sat cross-legged on the hardwood gymnasium floor in four rows, grouped into our gym class squads. Billy Greene wanted the seat where I was and told me to move back, but I didn’t want to. So he said we would fight after school by the bus stop, and I agreed, or shrugged. After school, turning the corner to the bus stop, he came up from behind me and pulled me down by the back of my shoulders. I fell and was getting up to fight, but it was nerve-wracking—I didn’t know how to fight anyone other than my brothers. Then the bus driver came over and said the bus was about to leave, and I felt relieved.

My twelfth-grade teacher, Dr. Godfrey, who created a course called Problems of American Society, rode the bus from Greenwich Village out to the suburbs where our school was. One weekend, he was out there and I remember only that he was wearing blue jeans. (I had been sent to the principal’s office for wearing blue jeans.) Later in the year, after class, he told me I was smart—something that had never occurred to me or been told to me.

The world history teacher seemed very old to us, always in gray suits, his hair parted like T. S. Eliot’s. One day, he became very angry and shouted at Wilson at the back of the room: “Wilson, don’t hang around with Kaplan! Stop hanging around with Kaplan, do you hear me, Wilson, do you hear me? Don’t hang around with Kaplan!” 

Ricky Perkins passed out and fell back when we were dissecting rats in biology class. We could hear his head thump or crack on the hard tile floor.

Steven Russo had long, dark hair that curved down over his forehead. Habitually, he curled his lower lip upward from one side and blew it out of his eyes.

Frankie Romano wore tight black pants and a pompadour haircut, seemed older than all of us, and walked slowly with incredible posture, always looking straight ahead and never quite smiling.

One weekend, I rode my bike to the high school, around back to the bus garages, and there was a portable stair set up where a Black choir sang In the Still of the Night—the most physical and alluring music I had ever heard, sung by kids my age who weren’t in any of my classes. The chorus repeated, “Sho do, do be do.” Then Scooter Collins said in an alto, like a thread of silk, “I remember,” and the chorus cycled in, “I re-mem-ber,” smooth and low, folding the phrase into some world I had never known about and would never forget.

These are some of my own strongest, clearest memories of secondary school, and I can’t change that. There are some similar anecdotes that I can’t tell. Leave a comment and tell us your story, please! 

There is a lot that feels new in schools today—new technologies, new social norms, new crises—but some things have not changed since I was a kid, and probably long before that. Kids still posture for status, test the limits, and navigate friendships and rivalries. There is still the unspoken code of who is “in” and who isn't, the awkwardness of gym class, the teachers who see something in us before we do, and the moments of sudden, unexpected wonder—whether it’s a song that goes into our soul, a forbidden glimpse into an adult world, or the quiet realization that we might just be smart after all.

There is also a direct point here for leaders. There hasn’t been much focused study on the underlying educational experiences that shape youth and the awakening that accompanies them. What’s your real takeaway from school days?

To large extent, the measure of school culture and the leaders who create and nurture it is in the relationships and types of interactions going on in the unstructured times. The real challenge for scholars and leaders isn’t just studying the politics of education or curriculum shifts but recognizing the learning that happens beyond the classroom walls—the whole curriculum that we all take away from school. Maybe studying that is like studying an apple that has reached its destination—understanding all it has been through to get there from a seed, how fragile it is, and how precious.

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