THE INVISIBLE CURRICULUM AND THE TOPSY-TURVY MORAL STANDARDS AMONG THE 21ST CENTURY YOUTH
Abstract
This study sought to establish the role played by the unseen curriculum in the 21st youth’s topsy-turvy moral standards. A plethora of articles have been written concerning youths’ moral breakdown but less attention has been paid to the undetected curriculum’s influences on youth’s confused moral standards. This means investigations on the influences of the social humanistic climate on youth’s chaotic moral standards have few works from which to draw from. Methodology: The study was a longitudinal survey. In gathering diverse views on young people’s reasoning about the role played by the invisible curriculum on the 21st century youth’s topsy-turvy moral standards, the researcher used a questionnaire with 64 closed-ended items and three unstructured interview guides each with around 10 open-ended items within a period of about 4 years. Over six hundred young people participated in 3 surveys. Out of 486 randomly selected respondents, 417 filled the questionnaire while purposely selected 190 participants took part in 3 different face-to-face interviews. The aim was to develop an in-depth understanding of the subject from individual youth’s perspectives. Word-based data was transformed into write-ups which were broken into expressions and termed as components. The components were grouped into related clusters and titled as codes, and then like codes were combined into themes which the researcher used to report the research findings. Results: The inevitable deduction is that young people unconsciously pick invisible messages besides the official teachings which affect their beliefs, values, attitude and ultimately their behavior. The three surveys reported in this article indicated that unseen curricula which dominate learning institutions and by extension the society, is of significance because it plays a crucial role in shaping young peoples’ worldviews and ultimately their behavior. The unstated curriculum exhibits itself in demeanors not openly recommended in any official manuscript but instills in young people values that are needed for survival in their community as well as immoralities. Conclusion: Understated messages in the society have both positive and negative influences on the young generation’s behavior; hence, cautious attention should be paid to what is going on in the social media, society, learning institutions and the family set-up in order to amend contemporary young peoples’ topsy-turvy moral standards.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejsss.v0i0.473
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