ABSTRACT
Context: TE Secondary, Multicultural Education, 7-12, University NCSS Standards: II (People, Places, and Environments), VI (Power, Authority, and Governance),
X (Civic Ideals and Practices) INTASC Standards: 4 (Instructional Strategy), 7 (Instructional Planning), 9 (Refl ective Prac-
tice) Topics: ethical-political valuation, critical thinking, student-centered, democracy, citizenship,
power/authority, consciousness raising, critical literacy, photographs, pictures, prejudice, racism
In this chapter I describe an assignment in which students learn to use the tools of social construction and deconstruction and come to better understand how power functions through culture and how “hidden curricula” are taught in diff erent spaces. I believe that one of the most important educative techniques for democracy is to be able to critically deconstruct social meanings and to refl ect on how we come to understand ourselves and our worlds. As we make ordinary choices as citizens in any particular circumstance and, more broadly, as we live and imagine a life plan and a good society, we make reference to the language, discourses, concepts, ideals, archetypes, stereotypes, and images available in our culture-these, despite immediate appearances, are not neutral. Many important civic concepts-what power and authority are, how one should behave, who people are, what gender, class, and culture mean-are learned most powerfully through the hidden curricula and through the conventions and assumptions imbedded in language and culture. Our culture and our language inevitably contain biases and even violence and dehumanization; the very conceptual tools we think with contain prejudices.
