thepeculiarsblog

Most visible is the manifest curriculum the student is expected to learn. This curriculum includes the reading, mathematics, science, literature, social studies and other school subjects that he or she is taught. The second curriculum is not so clearly visible. This is the latent curriculum which is uniquely taught to and differently learned by each student. This is the curriculum which teaches each student who he is in relation to others. Subject-related affect in a subject or category of learning tasks may be defined behaviorally in terms of whether or not the individual would voluntarily engage in additional learning tasks of this type if free to make such a choice. Subject-related affect is largely a perceptual phenomenon based on the way in which students classify learning tasks and based on the judgements they make of the adequacy of their performance relative to the other students in the school or class they attend. School-related affect is a general disposition to regard the school and school learning in a positive or negative way. If this process of adequate or inadequate appraisals with regard to learning tasks is generalized over a large number of tasks over a number of years, eventually the object of appraisal for the student becomes partially shifted from the school subjects or the school to the self. While mental health and self concept cannot be sharply distinguished, we may think of mental health as concerned more directly with ego development, with reduction in general anxiety and with the ability to take stress and frustration with a minimum of debilitating affect.