Moral values implied in school practices and policies constitute the "hidden curriculum." Because the hidden curriculum may promote certain moral values to students, teachers are partially responsible for the moral education of students. A component of the hidden curriculum, institutional political resistance, concerns teacher opposition to organizational constraints and may involve the violation of official rules and curricular guidelines. Such resistance alone cannot result in mental "emancipation" or a socially critical mentality. Only questioning and reasoning can oppose the prevailing institutional values. The observation of four anonymous eighth-grade teachers at an urban middle school substantiates this claim. For instance, one of the teachers implied the ethic of pragmatism by using a third-grade level story rather than the official curricular text in a class containing a number of Cambodian refugees. This kind of resistance and the ethic it implied failed to emancipate students because the implied ethic supported conventional, institutional ideologies. On the other hand, cultural political resistance emancipates students, either consciously or unconsciously. One of the teachers consciously emancipated students by articulating her concerns about equality; another teacher unconsciously caused students to question their work assignments by demonstrating frustration and directing critical language toward the administration. However, these teachers mostly stressed institutional values rather than questioned these values. Included are 22 references. (RG)