Second thought, Benson R. Snyder’s 1971 book, THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM, might interest you. One of my smartest and oldest friends, Nancy Barber, did her doctoral dissertation on “The Organizations as Curriculum: An Exploration of the Learning Implications of Organizational Culture and Administrative Practice in Colleges,” and Snyder’s work influenced her thought a good deal. There is a lot in Nancy’s dissertation about how colleges and universities teach students in unanticipated way lessons about success, work, achievement that are different from, often at odds with, an institution’s formal and conscious goals and values.

I think you hit something on the note of surprise. Surprise is very important, it is shock, and a sort of pain/pleasure, and we know people learn from certain kinds of things. I remember the first time i thought about surprise in this light, it was in relation to to zen buddhism, when i was an undergrad. It was the surprise and little joys of the world that I took from those texts. There are ways of seeing and being in the world that I think we need to have a sense of, that is the process, and the passing reality of the objective view. We have to find those little joys in the processes, in the play, in the incoherence and surprise. I try to get people to find those little ‘tie ins’ with their life in my classes, sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail, but really the goal is to get the students to the point of no longer wanting someone like me to provide guidance, but to find ways for them to be comfortable with creating their own world through their reading/research/work etc.