developmental forces that these physical factors exert on students can become positive factors in their development as environmental citizens. Higher education and tracking While studies on the hidden curriculum mostly focus on fundamental primary and secondary education, higher education also feels the effects of this latent knowledge. For example, gender biases become present in specific fields of study; the quality of and experiences associated with prior education become more significant; and differences in class, gender, and race become more evident at higher levels of education. Additionally, tracking is another aspect of the hidden curriculum that plays a major role in the development of students. This method of imposing educational and career paths upon students at young ages relies on a variety of factors such as class and status in order to reinforce socioeconomic differences. Children tend to be placed on tracks that guide them towards socioeconomic occupations similar to that of their parents, without real considerations for their personal strengths and weaknesses. As students advance through the educational system, they follow their tracks by completing these predetermined courses. Literary references John Dewey explored the hidden curriculum of education in his early 20th century works, especially in his classic, Democracy and Education. Dewey saw patterns evolving and trends developing in public schools which lent themselves to his pro-democratic perspectives. His work was quickly rebutted by educational theorist George Counts, whose 1929 book, Dare the School Build a New Social Order?, challenged the presumptive nature of Dewey's works. Counts claimed that Dewey hypothesized a singular path through which all young people travelled in order to become adults without considering the reactive, adaptive, and multifaceted nature of learning. Counts emphasizes that this nature of learning caused many educators to slant their perspectives, practices, and assessments of student performance in directions that affected their students drastically. Counts' examinations were expanded on by Charles A. Beard and, later, Myles Horton who created what became the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. The phrase "hidden curriculum" was coined by Philip W. Jackson (Life In Classrooms, 1968). He argued that we need to understand "education" as a socialization process. Shortly after Jackson's coinage of the term, MIT's Benson Snyder published The Hidden Curriculum, which addresses the question of why students—even, or especially, the most gifted—turn away from education. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated