The New Politics of the Textbook : a Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas

In an age of unprecedented corporate and political control over life inside of educational institutions, this book provides a needed intervention to investigate how the economic and political elite use traditional artifacts in K-16 schools to perpetuate their interests at the expense of minoritized social groups. The contributors provide a comprehensive examination of how textbooks, the most dominant cultural force in which corporations and political leaders impact the schooling curricula, shape students' thoughts and behavior, perpetuate power in dominant groups, and trivialize social groups who are oppressed on the structural axes of race, class, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability. Several contributors also generate critical insight in how power shapes the production of textbooks and evaluate whether textbooks still perpetuate dominant Western narratives that normalize and privilege patriotism, militarism, consumerism, White supremacy, heterosexism, rugged individualism, technology, and a positivistic conception of the world. Finally, the book highlights several textbooks that challenge readers to rethink their stereotypical views of the Other, to reflect upon the constitutive forces causing oppression in schools and in the wider society, and to reflect upon how to challenge corporate and political dominance over knowledge production. Front Matter....Pages i-xxviii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Textbooks as Mechanisms for Teachers’ Sociopolitical and Pedagogical Alienation....Pages 3-16 Missing and Shrinking Voices....Pages 17-39 The Ruling Ideas in the Textbook....Pages 41-64 The Competency-based Approach in African Textbooks....Pages 65-85 Front Matter....Pages 87-87 (Re)Presenting Critical Mathematical Thinking Through Sociopolitical Narratives as Mathematics Texts....Pages 89-110 Science and Mathematics Textbook Progression....Pages 111-131 Politics and Science Textbooks....Pages 133-150 Beyond the Common Denominator....Pages 151-162 Green Texts?....Pages 163-175 Front Matter....Pages 177-177 Muted Voices, Scripted Texts....Pages 179-192 From Textbooks to “Managed Instructional Systems”....Pages 193-212 How Scripted Programs De-Professionalized the Teaching of Reading....Pages 213-230 Remembering the Present is the Past Writ Large....Pages 231-245 Front Matter....Pages 257-257 Selecting History....Pages 259-270 Imagining Nation in Romanian History Textbooks....Pages 271-286 Idealizing and Localizing the Presidency....Pages 287-303 Throwing out the Textbook....Pages 305-320 Choose Carefully....Pages 321-335 Afterword....Pages 337-339 In an era when corporate and political leaders are using their power to control every aspect of the schooling process in North America, there has been surprisingly little research on the impact of textbook content on students. The contributors of this volume and its partner (The New Politics of the Textbook: Problematizing the Portrayal of Marginalized Groups in Textbooks) guide educators, school administrators, academics, and other concerned citizens to unpack the political, social, and cultural influences inherent in the textbooks of core content areas such as math, science, English, and social science. They urge readers to reconsider the role textbooks play in the creation of students’ political, social, and moral development and in perpetuating asymmetrical social and economic relationships, where social actors are bestowed unearned privileges and entitlements based upon their race, gender, sexuality, class, religion and linguistic background. Finally, they suggest ways to resist the hegemony of those texts through critical analyses, critical questioning, and critical pedagogies.