Crossing boundaries: Dissolution as a secondary message of education in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

In Papua New Guinea, community schools are sometimes faced with the threat of school closure. Less dramatically, individual teachers contribute toward a hidden curriculum of dissolution through actions that emphasize structural weakness and the possibility of entropy. When certain forms of educational boundaries are crossed, students learn that formal schooling may be more flexible than educators often pretend. Although researchers have generally ignored these secondary forms of hidden curriculum, they encode important messages regarding the ways ‘traditional’ cultures affect Western-style educational systems in developing countries.