The New Politics of the Textbook Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas 9789460919282, 9789460919299, 9789460919305, 9460919286, 9460919294, 9460919308

Table of contents :
pt. I. Political, social and cultural influence --
pt. II. Math and science education --
pt. III. English language arts education --
pt. IV. Social science and humanities education.

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THE NEW POLITICS OF THE TEXTBOOK

CONSTRUCTING KNOWLEDGE: CURRICULUM STUDIES IN ACTION Volume 2 Series Editors Brad Porfilio, Lewis University, Chicago, IL, USA Julie Gorlewski, State University of New York at New Paltz, USA David Gorlewski, D’Youville College, Buffalo, NY, USA Editorial Board Sue Books, State University of New York at New Paltz, USA Dennis Carlson, University of Miami, Ohio, USA Ken Lindblom, Stony Brook University, New York, USA Peter McLaren, University of California, Los Angeles, USA Wayne Ross, University of British Columbia, Canada Christine Sleeter, California State University, Monterey, USA Eve Tuck, State University of New York, Paltz, USA Scope “Curriculum” is an expansive term; it encompasses vast aspects of teaching and learning. Curriculum can be defined as broadly as, “The content of schooling in all its forms” (English, p. 4), and as narrowly as a lesson plan. Complicating matters is the fact that curricula are often organized to fit particular time frames. The incompatible and overlapping notions that curriculum involves everything that is taught and learned in a particular setting and that this learning occurs in a limited time frame reveal the nuanced complexities of curriculum studies. “Constructing Knowledge” provides a forum for systematic reflection on the substance (subject matter, courses, programs of study), purposes, and practices used for bringing about learning in educational settings. Of concern are such fundamental issues as: What should be studied? Why? By whom? In what ways? And in what settings? Reflection upon such issues involves an inter-play among the major components of education: subject matter, learning, teaching, and the larger social, political, and economic contexts, as well as the immediate instructional situation. Historical and autobiographical analyses are central in understanding the contemporary realties of schooling and envisioning how to (re)shape schools to meet the intellectual and social needs of all societal members. Curriculum is a social construction that results from a set of decisions; it is written and enacted and both facets undergo constant change as contexts evolve. This series aims to extent the professional conversation about curriculum in contemporary educational settings. Curriculum is a designed experience intended to promote learning. Because it is socially constructed, curriculum is subject to all the pressures and complications of the diverse communities that comprise schools and other social contexts in which citizens gain self-understanding.

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

Edited by Heather Hickman Lewis University, Romeoville, IL, USA and Brad J. Porfilio Lewis University, Romeoville, IL, USA

SENSE PUBLISHERS ROTTERDAM / BOSTON / TAIPEI

A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-94-6091-928-2 (paperback) ISBN 978-94-6091-929-9 (hardback) ISBN 978-94-6091-930-5 (e-book)

Published by: Sense Publishers, P.O. Box 21858, 3001 AW Rotterdam, The Netherlands https://www.sensepublishers.com

Printed on acid-free paper

All rights reserved © 2012 Sense Publishers No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword E. Wayne Ross

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Contributors

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Introduction Heather Hickman and Brad J. Porfilio

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Part I: Political, Social and Cultural Influence Textbooks as Mechanisms for Teacher’s Sociopolitical and Pedagogical Alienation Mary Koutselini Missing and Shrinking Voices: A Critical Analysis of the Florida Textbook Adoption Policy Randria Williams & Vonzell Agosto The Ruling Ideas in the Textbook Shelley J. Jensen

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The Competency-Based Approach in African Textbooks: An Approach Dominated by Economic, Political, and Cultural Interests from the North Yves Lenoir & Valérie Jean

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Part II: Math and Science Education (Re)presenting Critical Mathematical Thinking through Sociopolitical Narratives as Mathematics Texts Michael Fish & Anthony Persaud Science and Mathematics Textbook Progression: Textbooks, Testing, and Teaching Robert Ceglie & Vidal Olivares Politics and Science Textbooks: Behind the Curtain of “Objectivity” Kurt Love

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Beyond the Common Denominator: Exposing Semiotic (Dis)unity in Mathematics Textbooks Travis A. Olson & Noah R. Roderick

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Green Texts? Earth Smarts as a Tool to Critically Examine Textbooks for Environmental Assumptions, Distortions and Missions Bryan H. Nichols

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Part III: English Language Arts Education Muted Voices, Scripted Texts: The Silenced Writing Curriculum in a High-Stakes Era P. L. Thomas

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From Textbooks to “Managed Instructional Systems”: Corporate Control of the English Language Arts John Wesley White

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How Scripted Programs De-Professionalized the Teaching of Reading: A California Story Kimberly Hartnett-Edwards

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Remembering the Present Is the Past Writ Large: An Examination of the Politics of the Dominant Texts in the United States, 1700s-1900s Edward A. Janak

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Part IV: Social Science and Humanities Education Selecting History: What Elementary Educators Say about Their Social Studies Textbook Timothy Lintner & Deborah MacPhee

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Imagining Nation in Romanian History Textbooks: Towards a Liberating Identity Narrative Razvan Sibii

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Idealizing and Localizing the Presidency: The President’s Place in State History Textbooks Scott L. Roberts & Brandon M. Butler

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Throwing out the Textbook: A Teacher Research Study of Changing Texts in the History Classroom Christopher C. Martell & Erin A. Hashimoto-Martell

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Choose Carefully: Multiple Choice History Exams and the Reification of Collective Memory Gabriel A. Reich Afterword Julie A. Gorlewski

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E. WAYNE ROSS

FOREWORD

Textbooks have always been a major force standardizing the curriculum and shaping the work of teachers. At the turn of the 20th Century the prevailing view was that good textbooks were the basis of good teaching and the good textbook, in order to be published, prudently followed the guidance of the academic scholars. Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., a preeminent American historian at the time, put it this way: “whether we like it or not, the textbook not the teacher teaches the course.” In the 1930s, Bagley found that American students spent a significant portion of their school day in formal mastery of text materials. Research in the 1970s found 78% of what fifth-grade students studied came from textbooks and that textbooks and related materials were the basis for 90% of instructional time in schools. In his analysis of the history of curriculum centralization, Schubert (1991) points to 1958 as a key turning point in educational policy-making. That year the National Defense Education Act helped to import disciplinary specialists to design curriculum packages for schools. In the social studies these curriculum innovations were collectively called the New Social Studies. The purpose of the New Social Studies was to “capture the main ideas and current approaches to knowledge represented by the academic disciplines.” These curriculum projects focused on inquiry methods and the “structure of the disciplines” approach. Although social studies specialists helped in the development of New Social Studies materials, the curricular focus was on the academic disciplines. These materials were not “teacher proof,” but they are exemplars of teachers-as-curriculum-conduit thinking (Ross, 1994). Developers, who were primarily experts in academic disciplines, viewed teachers as implementers not active partners in the creation of classroom curriculum. Strategies for promoting the New Social Studies as well as other subject matter projects from this era, focused on preparing teachers to faithfully implement the developers’ curricular ideas. For example, schools could not adopt and use the project Man: A Course of Study unless teachers were specially trained. While the development and dissemination of the curriculum projects in the sixties were well funded, they failed to make a major impact on classroom practices. Some have argued that the “failure” of the projects is attributable to technical problems, such as inadequate training of teachers to use the packages or lack of formative evaluation. In contrast, proponents of grassroots democracy in curriculum offered the explanation that the failure was due to the blatant disregard of teachers and students in curriculum decision making. This is especially ironic inasmuch as those who promoted inquiry methods with the young neglected to allow inquiry by teachers and students about matters most

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fundamental to their growing lives, that is, inquiry about that which is most worthwhile to know and experience. (Schubert, 1991, p. 114)

It is clear that in the past forty years support for educational reform from industry, private foundations, as well as the federal government has produced a more capitalistic, less educator-oriented, and ultimately less democratic network of curriculum policy makers (Kesson & Ross, 2004; Mathison & Ross, 2008; Vinson & Ross, 2004). In the 1990s states produced curriculum frameworks or standards that were accompanied by mandated standardized tests that insured the “alignment” of classroom practices with state standards (and simultaneously eroded the professional purview of teachers). Regents Examinations in New York State are one of the oldest examples of this approach. And, The No Child Left Behind Act, and Obama’s Race To The Top program, have now enshrined test-driven curriculum across the US. These curriculum standards are intended to influence textbook publishers and establish the means by which students, teachers, schools, and ultimate the curriculum will be controlled and assessed. The creation of state curriculum standards represented a major step toward state control of what (and whose) knowledge is considered of most worth (Gabbard & Ross, 2008; Mathison & Ross, 2008; Ross, 1992). Although states deny that these standards amount to “curriculum,” their practical effects are the equivalent. This is particularly true when curriculum standards, textbooks, and high-stakes tests are aligned. For the past two decades, standards-based education reform reform has been focused on the deployment of bureaucratic outcomes-based accountability systems in schools, which rely on a regimented curriculum enforced via a regime of high stakes testing. It is clear that government-driven curriculum centralization efforts (supported by every Presidential administration from George H. W. Bush to Obama) have successfully transformed the official curriculum in every content area. The curriculum standards movement is a massive effort at curriculum regimentation and the de-skilling of teachers. Initially lead by state governors and corporate CEOs, the standards-based curriculum movement is a rationalized managerial approach to issues of curriculum development and teaching that attempts to define curricular goals, design assessment tasks based on these goals, set standards for the content of subject matter areas and grade level, and test students and report the results to the public (Ross, 2001). This “accountability movement” has culminated in what is known as the Common Core State Standards initiative, which was adopted by 45 states and a number of US territories in 2010-2011. (Texas and Alaska are the only states that are not members of the initiative and Virginia is the only state that has decided not to adopt the CCSS). Many states adopt textbooks on a statewide basis and three large “adoption states” (California, Florida, and Texas) exert an enormous influence on the content of textbooks used nationwide. The textbook industry is highly competitive and the industry is dominated by a very small number of large corporations; as a result, textbooks companies modify their products to qualify for adoption in one of these states, which will be must simpler with the Common Core Standards. As a result, x

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the values and politics of adoption committees in those states influence curriculum nationally. In attempting to reach the widest range of purchasers, textbook publishers promote values (overtly and covertly) that maintain social and economic hierarchies and relationships supported by the dominant socioeconomic class (Anyon, 1979; Apple, 1986; Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991). James W. Loewen (1995) illustrates this at length in his analysis of US history textbooks. For example, in a discussion of how history textbooks make white racism invisible, he notes: Although textbook authors no longer sugarcoat how slavery affected African Americans, they minimize white complicity in it. They present slavery virtually as uncaused, a tragedy, rather than a wrong perpetrated by some people on others … Like their treatment of slavery, textbooks’ new view of Reconstruction represents a sea change, past due, much closer to what the original sources for the period reveal, and much less dominated by white supremacy. However, in the way the textbooks structure their discussion, most of them inadvertently still take a white supremacist viewpoint. Their rhetoric makes African Americans rather that whites the “problem” and assumes that the major issue of Reconstruction was how to integrate African Americans into the system, economically and politically … The archetype of African Americans as dependent on others begins … in textbook treatments of Reconstruction … In reality, white violence, not black ignorance, was the key problem during Reconstruction. (Loewen, 1995, p. 151).

A primary tension in curriculum reform efforts, today and historically, is between centralized and grassroots decision-making. When there are multiple participants and competing interests in the curriculum making process, the questions arises, where does control reside? The standards-based curriculum movement represents an effort by policy elites to standardize the content and much of the practice of education, with textbooks and tests as major tools. Operationally, curriculum standards are anti-democratic because they severely restrict the legitimate role of teachers and other educational professionals, as well as members of the public, from participating in the conversation about the origin, nature and ethics of knowledge that is part of the enacted curriculum. In recent years, resistance to the standards-based education reform movement has been primarily focused on effects of high-stakes testing. There have been few academic studies of the role of the textbook in recent years; it has not been since the early-1990s that the role of textbooks in the regimentation of the curriculum has received serious and sustained scholarly attention (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991). Thus, with this book, Heather Hickman and Brad Porfilio are filling a substantial gap in our understanding of how textbooks are being used in new political times to define what (and whose) knowledge is considered of most worth and in addition, this book illustrates why and how teachers, students, and local communities resist the ruling ideas embedded in corporate-produced, stateenforced official curriculum.

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REFERENCES Anyon, J. (1979). Ideology and United States history textbooks. Harvard Educational Review, 49(3), 361-386. Apple, M. W. (1986). Teachers and texts. New York: Routledge. Apple, M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (Eds.). (1991). The politics of the textbook. New York: Routledge. Bagley, W. C. (1931). The textbook and methods of teaching. In G. M. Whipple (Ed.), The textbook in American Education (30th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part II). Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing. Gabbard, D., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). Education under the security state. New York: Teachers College Press. Kesson, K. R., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). Defending public schools: Teaching for a democratic society. Westport, CT: Praeger. Loewen, J. W (1995). Lies my teacher told me. New York: New Press. Mathison, S., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2008). The nature and limits of standards-based educational reform and assessment. New York: Teachers College Press. Ross, E. W. (1992). Educational reform, school restructuring and teachers’ work. International Journal of Social Education, 7, 83-92. Ross, E. W. (1994). Teachers as curriculum theorizers. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), Reflective practice in social studies. Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies. Ross, E. W. (2001). The spectacle of standards and summits. In J. L. Kincheloe, & D. Weil (Eds.) Schooling and standards in the United States: An encyclopedia (pp. 711-717). Schubert, W H. (1991). Historical perspective on centralizing curriculum. In M. F. Klein (Ed.), The politics of curriculum decision-making (pp. 98-118). Albany: State University of New York Press. Vinson, K. D., & Ross, E. W. (Eds.). (2004). Defending public schools: Curriculum continuity and change in the 21st Century. Westport, CT: Praeger.

E. Wayne Ross University of British Columbia

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CONTRIBUTORS

Vonzell Agosto is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of South Florida. Her research focuses on curriculum (theory, inquiry, policy), pedagogy, and the preparation of educators and administrators toward anti-oppressive education. She has presented her research at major conferences including the American Education Research Association, Bergamo, and Narrative Works in Progress. Dr. Agosto has published in handbooks and journals such as the Journal of Negro Education and Teacher Education & Practice. Brandon Butler is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He received his Ph.D. in social studies education with a certificate in qualitative research studies from the University of Georgia. His current research interests include field-based teacher education, teacher education program design and effectiveness, and social studies teacher education. He has recent publications in Teaching and Teacher Education, Action in Teacher Education, and Supervising Student Teachers: Issues, Perspectives, and Directions for Field-Based Teacher Education (Sense, 2012), an edited text on student teaching supervision. He currently chairs the Membership Committee for the National Council of the Social Studies and is an associate editor of the Georgia Social Studies Journal. Robert Ceglie is an Associate Professor of Education in the Tift College of Education at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. His research interests are in science education, gender equity, and teacher education. He received his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2009. The title of his dissertation was Science from the Periphery: Identity, Persistence, and Participation by Women of Color Pursuing Science Degrees. He is currently working in the development of collaborations to promote science literacy for underrepresented groups of children. Michael Fish is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Teacher Education at the University of Maine at Machias. He is active on several mathematics education projects in New England and is primarily interested in the use of sociopolitical, cultural, and historical problems as a means to promote and address culturally relevant and socially just pedagogy in the mathematics classroom. Michael has taught K-12 in the U.S. and abroad for several years and continues to work with teachers through professional development and ongoing research. Kimberly Hartnett-Edwards has been working in reading education for 23 years. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver at Morgridge College of Education. A third generation Californian, Dr. Hartnett-Edwards taught xiii

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in the K-12 system there and directed early childhood Head Start programs before working in the Graduate Program at California State University, San Bernardino. Completing her doctoral work at Claremont Graduate University, Dr. HartnettEdwards participated as a researcher in the Federally granted-funded TENDS Project working the Institute of HeartMath in Santa Cruz County. Her book Stress Matters, published in 2009, highlights the results of this research that showed a significant relationship between affective factors and student achievement. She can be reached at [email protected]. Erin A. Hashimoto-Martell is a science teacher at the Nathan Hale Elementary School in Boston, Massachusetts, where she teaches science to pre-kindergarten through fifth grade students. As a teacher leader in the Boston Public Schools, Erin conducts curriculum trainings and develops professional development workshops for teachers. Erin teaches elementary science methods courses at Boston College and for the Boston Teacher Residency program. She also co-teaches a graduate level science course on weather at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Erin earned her B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, and Evolution from the University of California, San Diego and her M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College, where she is currently a Doctoral Candidate. Her research focuses on urban education, environmental education, and science identity. Heather Hickman is an adjunct instructor of Education at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL and a full-time high school English teacher in a Chicago suburb. For the university, Heather teaches courses on reading instruction, curriculum, the history of American education, and introductory research. In her over ten years of teaching high school she has taught all levels of English language arts and literature. Dr. Hickman’s teaching focus, whether at the university or high school level, takes a critical stance examining the status quo and addressing marginalization. This teaching lens was developed through her doctoral program at Lewis University in Educational Leadership for Teaching and Learning. Heather earned her Ed.D. from Lewis in May of 2009. In addition to teaching, Heather has presented and published papers on the topics of heteronormativity and critical theory in education. Her current research involves the confluence of the Common Core Standards, critical education, and a human rights and human capabilities approach to education. Edward Janak completed his B.A. (English) from S.U.N.Y. Fredonia. After moving to teach English in the high schools of South Carolina, he earned his M.Ed. (secondary education) and Ph.D. (social and historical foundations of education) from the University of South Carolina. Another move has Dr. Janak teaching in the University of Wyoming’s Department of Educational Studies. His primary areas of research include historical foundations of education and educational biography; work in these areas has appeared in journals such as Vitae Scholasticae, the Journal of Thought, and Research in Higher Education. In addition to his academic pursuits, Dr. Janak is the “Education, Teaching, History and Popular Culture” area xiv

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chair for the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association and is active in the international education honorary, Kappa Delta Pi. Valérie Jean is a student in the master’s program in education science at the Université de Sherbrooke studying under the guidance of Yves Lenoir. His thesis subject is “L’approche par compétences comme cadre organisateur des curriculums d’enseignement au primaire: une analyse comparative dans six systèmes scolaires” [the competency-based approach as an organizing frame for teaching curricula at the elementary school level: a comparative analysis of six school systems]. Shelley Jensen taught elementary school for ten years in a diverse high-poverty district in California and is now a doctoral candidate in the department of Educational Methodology, Policy, and Leadership in the College of Education at University of Oregon. Her current research on state policies for school accountability and assessment depends on her discourse analysis rubric, which dichotomously sorts the maxims, concepts and language of education policy into competing theories of action, mechanistic/structural and humanistic/organic. Her AERA 2011 Conference paper, One Size Does Not Fit All, calls for reform of federal education policy to dramatically reduce the amount of large-scale high-risk assessments. The author is a proud member of Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation Local 3544 where she serves as chair of the Women’s Caucus. Mary Koutselini has a BA, MSc, and PhD in Curriculum and Instruction. She is Professor at the Department of Education of the University of Cyprus and Chairholder of the UNESCO chair in Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment of the University of Cyprus. Her research interests include Teaching and learning, Teachers’ development, Gender, mainstreaming, and Citizenship education. Her work and publications promote her pedagogical theory about metamodernity as a response to both modernity and post-modernity (i.e., Koutselini, 2008, 2010) Yves Lenoir holds a doctoral degree in sociology from the Université Paris 7 and is a Commander of the Order of the Crown as well as Full Professor at the Faculté d’éducation of the University of Sherbrooke. He is also holder of the Canada Research Chair in Educative Intervention since 2001. He has presided the World Association for Education Sciences since 2000. In addition, he is a member of the Centre de recherche sur l’intervention éducative (CRIE), which he founded in 1991 and directed until 2006. The research of Yves Lenoir carries on teaching practices approached in terms of their relation to the curriculum, the tension between instruction and socialization, and devices used in teaching/learning relationships. He recently published Les référentiels de formation à l’enseignement: quels référentiels pour quels curriculums? [teacher training frameworks: which frameworks for which curricula?] under the Éditions universitaires du Sud with

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Marc Bru of the Université de Toulouse II le-Mirail, and two special issues in the journal Issues in Integrative Studies, “Interdisciplinarity in Schools: A Comparative View of National Perspectives,” with Julie Thompson Klein of Wayne State University in Detroit, as well as “Les référentiels en formation. Enjeux, fondements, contenus et usages” [frameworks in training: issues, foundations, contents, and uses] with Christian Sauvigné in the journal Recherche et formation. Timothy Lintner is Associate Professor of Social Studies at the University of South Carolina Aiken. His research interests include critical social studies and the intersection between social studies and special education. Kurt Love is an assistant professor at Central Connecticut State University in the Teacher Education Department. His research and teaching practice focus on ecojustice pedagogy, and community-based praxes. His interest is working directly with teachers in their classroom on building teaching practices that use place-based contexts and investigations of cultural and ecological intersections. Dr. Love provides support and professional development for teachers at the Environmental Sciences Magnet School at Mary M. Hooker in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Love also teaches courses at the Sustainable Farm School of Connecticut at the Flamig Farm in West Simsbury for high school aged students. Deborah A. MacPhee is Assistant Professor of Literacy Education at Illinois State University with research and teaching interests in critical literacy and the integration of literacy and social studies. She teaches literacy methods and assessment classes in Professional Development Schools (PDS). Christopher C. Martell is a social studies teacher at Framingham High School in Framingham, Massachusetts, where he teachers primarily United States history and government. He is also a teacher educator at the Boston University School of Education. He earned his B.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, his M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction from Boston College, and his Ed.D. in Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University. Currently, he serves as the Program Chair for the Teacher As Researcher Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association and teaches a professional development course for the Framingham Public Schools on teacher research. His research focuses on social studies teacher development across the career span, including preservice teacher preparation, inservice teacher education, and teacher research/practitioner inquiry. Bryan H. Nichols is an instructor, ecologist and science writer with a PhD in science education and masters degrees in marine science and journalism. An avid scuba diver, sea kayaker and backpacker, he has done field research on fish, marine mammals, wolves, and bears. His educational research focuses on socio-

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environmental literacy and denialism. He has taught for organizations from Belize to British Columbia, most recently at the University of South Florida. Vidal Olivares is a doctoral candidate in the Curriculum and Instruction PhD program at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia and will graduate Summer 2012. She is also a mathematics teacher at Ola High School in McDonough, Georgia. The working title of her dissertation is Does the Apple Fall Far from the Tree? A Mixed Methods Study on the Intergenerational Transmission of Competence Beliefs in Mathematics. Her research interests include mathematics education, motivation, and social reproduction. Travis A. Olson is an assistant professor of mathematics education in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is a former doctoral fellow with the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum at the University of Missouri. His current research includes curriculum analyses, and teachers’ understandings of mathematical structures and modeling abilities. Anthony Persaud moved from a ten year career in pharmaceuticals and has been teaching vocational and college level students in grades 9 to 12 since 2005. He has facilitated several book talks on social justice and critical thinking through mathematics and has written curriculum interpretation documents for math and science vocational teachers. He works closely with other teachers through a mentoring program and is curriculum head at a vocational school. Anthony continues to develop ideas for rich, project-based activities and is learning ways to incorporate technology and manipulatives as thinking tools. A major focus for Anthony right now is the use of games and interactive simulations to enhance student learning. Brad J. Porfilio is Assistant Professor of Education at Lewis University in Romeoville, IL. He teaches courses on critical pedagogy, qualitative research, globalization and education, multicultural education and curriculum theory in the Educational Leadership for Teaching and Learning Doctoral Program. The Educational Leadership Program at Lewis University is unique in its critical and transformative focus where students are prepared to become transformative educational leaders who are deeply discerning, knowledgeable and approach the educational system as a potential avenue for challenging and transforming the status quo. Dr. Porfilio received his PhD in Sociology of Education in 2005 at the University at Buffalo. US. His research interests include urban education, neoliberalism and schooling, transformative education, teacher education, gender and technology, and cultural studies. Gabriel A. Reich is a product of, and former teacher in, New York City’s public school system. He currently works to prepare pre-service teachers for the secondary history/social studies classroom at Virginia Commonwealth University xvii

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in Richmond, Virginia. His research interests focus on the intersection of historical consciousness, testing, teaching, and curriculum especially as they pertain to urban schools. Scott L. Roberts is the Social Studies Program Specialist for Gwinnett County Public Schools in Suwanee, Georgia, and an Adjunct Professor of Education at Piedmont College in Demorest, GA. He received his Ph.D. in social studies education from the University of Georgia. His research interests include state history, textbook analysis, instructional technology, building literacy through social studies, and teacher education. He has written several articles and curriculum guides concerning Georgia studies and co-authored the textbook Time Travel through Georgia: Second edition, and authored Teaching Middle Level Social Studies: A Practical Guide for Teaching 4th-8th Grades (Digital Textbooks.biz, 2012). He has recent publications in The Social Studies and the Georgia Social Studies Journal. He currently serves on the Editorial Review Board of the Georgia Social Studies Journal. Noah R. Roderick is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition in the Department of English at Lourdes University. His current research interests are in the rhetoric of complexity theory and in language standardization in diaspora communities. Razvan Sibii holds a B.A. degree in Journalism from the American University in Bulgaria. He has received an M.A. degree in Communication from University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he is currently working on his Ph.D. dissertation in the same department. He is also a full-time lecturer in the UMass Journalism Program, and a foreign correspondent for Romania’s largest quality newspaper, Adevarul. Razvan’s scholarly interests include issues of identity, culture, and ideology; political communication; media & storytelling; and critical pedagogy. His most recent co-authored article, “Voicing Silence and Imagining Citizenship: Dialogues about Race and Whiteness in a ‘Postracial’ Era,” was published in September 2011 in Communication Studies. P. L. Thomas, Associate Professor of Education (Furman University, Greenville SC), taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is currently a column editor for English Journal (National Council of Teachers of English) and series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres (Sense Publishers), in which he authored the first volume – Challenging Genres: Comics and Graphic Novels (2010). Additional recent books include Parental Choice?: A Critical Reconsideration of Choice and the Debate about Choice (Information Age Publishing, 2010) and 21st Century Literacy: If We Are Scripted, Are We Literate? (Springer, 2009) co-authored with Renita Schmidt. He maintains a blog addressing the role of poverty in education: http://livinglearninginpoverty.blogspot.com/. His teaching and scholarship focus on literacy and the impact of poverty on xviii

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education, as well as confronting the political dynamics influencing public education in the U.S. Follow his work @plthomasEdD and Radical Scholarship (http://wrestlingwithwriting.blogspot.com/). John Wesley White, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of English Education and Reading Methods at the University of North Florida. His research focuses on the relationship of language to cognition and identity as well as ways to bridge the gaps between research-based literacy practices, the literacy learning that takes place in non-academic settings, and traditional English classroom teaching practices. Prior to becoming a professor, he taught English at an inner city high school for at-risk students. Randria Williams is currently a doctoral student in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies program at the University of South Florida. As a former Equal Opportunity Specialist for Pinellas County school district she has vast experiences in teaching, professional development, and school improvement. Her research interests include democratic participation theory in educational policy, critical social theories, social justice, the effects of institutionalized racism on human capital development, and issues in employment equity. She has presented her research at the Critical Race Studies in Education Association Conference.

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INTRODUCTION Long before the publishing of Apple and Christian-Smith’s The Politics of the Textbook (1991), scholars were analyzing the content of materials presented to students in schools. Educational history is ripe with reform efforts like Progressivism and the life adjustment curriculum that attempt to mitigate the traditional content of course materials and their disconnect in relation to students’ realities. The literature also shows focused studies of textbook content. Today, even satirists are in on the critique of textbooks. Jon Stewart’s publication of America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction (2004) and Earth (The Book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race (2010) satirize not only the structure of the textbook (resembling textbooks with their “This Book is the Property of Stamps” in the front cover and end of chapter activities and questions), but also the content of those books. In Earth, Stewart et al explain to their alien audience, “the best school textbooks kept up with the latest developments in science in order to deny them” (Stewart et al., 2010, p. 69). While this is a clear swipe at teaching creationism or intelligent design within a science curriculum, it also demonstrates a sharp criticism of the politically influenced content of textbooks in general. What made Apple and Christian-Smith’s work different, and therefore seminal, was its authors’ attention to doing critical analyses of the content in relation to the political climate of the time. Coming off two decades of civil rights changes for African Americans, Mexican Americans, women, and students with disabilities (among others), educational researchers were beginning to consider how textbooks reinforced the political status quo. They were asking more than “Spencer’s famous question about ‘What knowledge is of most worth’”; they were asking, “Whose knowledge is of most worth” (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991, p. 1). In 1991, Apple and Christian-Smith recognized that “the centralization of authority over teaching and curriculum, often cleverly disguised as ‘democratic’ reforms,” were on the horizon (p. 2). Today, with the Common Core Standards adopted by 44 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands, that centralizing authority has arrived (as of October of 2011 per corestandards.org). In addition to “what knowledge” being decided on a more centralized scale, “whose knowledge” has also been centralized. Since 1991, the number of textbook publishers has shrunk significantly as companies consolidated. One major company is Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which is comprised of not only Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt, but also Holt, and McDougal. Although the final standards were only released in June 2010, this major textbook company already has textbooks out for every grade that allege to address “all key points of the Common Core Standards” (from Houghton Mifflin xxi

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Harcourt’s website: www.hmheducation.com/sites/na/programs/language-arts/). This feat and this claim are not unique to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Sadly, since 1991, there has been little research on the impact of textbook content on students (Sedgwick, 1985; Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Frederickson, 2004; Woodrow, 2007). What research has been conducted remains unconnected to other recent studies. For example, Woodrow’s work (2007) considers culture as reflected in middle school science textbooks while Frederickson (2004) examines gender in history textbooks. Individually, these studies suggest the types of “othering” found in textbooks. Bringing these and other studies together in this volume will paint a more clear and accurate view of the impact of politics and commercialism on textbooks and students. Given the new age of testing ushered in by No Child Left Behind, the corporate dominance over textbook production inside and outside of US, and the US’s quest for cultural and economic dominance since 9/11(Chomsky, 2003) it is important to examine the materials used with children in schools for the messages both explicit and implicit in the content. For example, the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to “water down the teaching of the civil rights movement, slavery, [and] American’s relationship with the U.N.” (Castro, 2010) is one example of the conservative attitudes impacting curricula. Not coincidently, textbook manufactures and White elite citizens were behind the attempt to propagate lies about the nature of the US society and to further narrow what students learn from textbooks. These groups support their own economic and social dominance when they stymie teachers from reflecting upon what groups enjoy unearned privileges and entitlements due to the institutional arrangements that have been in place in the US for over 400 years. Further, they position teachers to view textbooks as rarified forms of knowledge that not only should never be questioned, but also must be at the center of their instruction, where students continually regurgitate this information to pass a battery of high-stakes examinations and come to believe social and economic inequalities are individual rather than social and economic phenomena. In a similarly narrow move, the Arizona State Legislature passed HB 2281, which prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that: promote the overthrow of the United States government; promote resentment toward a race or class of people; are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; [or] advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of people as individuals (Arizona H.R., 2010, HB 2281).

This bill limits the availability of classes that might challenge the dominant Western narrative and examine the inherent privileges associated with that narrative. In each instance described above, states are controlling the content of what students learn in school. In each instance there are clear political and social dimensions to the decisions. This volume will consider how these and other social forces impact the production and reception textbooks.

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What does this mean for textbooks, students, teachers, education, and society as a whole? The authors of this volume and its partner (The New Politics of the Textbook: Problematizing the Portrayal of Marginalized Groups in Textbooks) suggest that all of this centralization requires even more vigilance on the part of educators and researchers to expose political, social, and cultural influences inherent in the textbooks of core content areas such as math, science, English, and social science. More importantly, they suggest ways to resist the hegemony of those texts through critical analyses, critical questioning, and critical pedagogies. This volume is broken into four sections. Part I: Political, Social, and Cultural Influence, includes four chapters from scholars practicing around the globe. The first of these chapters is a look at how teachers view textbook prominence in Cyprus, Greece. It demonstrates the interesting phenomena of novice teachers who do not question the assumption that “pedagogical autonomy” can be equated to “arbitrariness,” and it reflects the shift in this view over time. In her conclusion, Koutselini succinctly notes that through the action research it became evident that “the best way to escape from an alienating environment,” such as one created from self-alienating views, “is to identify the mechanisms of alienation and the consequences of one’s powerlessness.” The second chapter in this section examines the textbook adoption process and how it marginalizes non-dominant groups through contradiction, participation restrictions, and other subtle mechanisms. Using Critical Race Theory and democratic participation theories, the authors address the existing process in order to propose changes. The third chapter, “The Ruling Ideas of the Textbook,” draws connections among the corporate elite who profit (financially and otherwise) from marketing educational material that shapes “the way we think about the role of government and the relationship between the affluent class and the rest of society,” the K-12 teachers’ practices in relation to this material, and the US university system. More specifically, the author “posits that an educational industrial complex of test and curriculum publishers, software and technology companies, and entities that market professional development and other reform assistance, share values and interests with other business and educational leaders who advance an ideology of education rationalized by a mechanistic/structural theory of action.” Finally, Lenoir and Jean have included a unique chapter that discusses a study of the competency-based approach to educational reform in Cameroon, Gabon, Mali, Senegal, and Tunisia. This work has strong implications for the ongoing project of critical textbook analysis in the US and around the world as it interprets data from both a teaching and learning standpoint and one related to social analysis. This later level of analysis demonstrates the critical link between textbook production and social reproduction to the benefit of those with power or supremacy. The second part of this volume looks carefully at math and science education. The first of these five chapters is an autoenthnographic study that considers mathematics as it not only builds “algorithmic or procedural” fluency but does so toward the end of preparing students “for critical participation in society.” Among other important findings, the authors present the “Critical Mathematics Narrative,” which combines a critical lens with a fallibilist lens to generate knowledge. The xxiii

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authors of the second chapter are teacher educators who are aware of the challenges facing teachers today. As teachers are pulled in different directions, it can become a survival technique to rely on textbooks. The authors offer an “analysis of the influence of textbooks” on teachers’ pedagogy and student learning. In addition to this, the authors provide alternatives for teachers who find corporate produced curricula too limiting for their students’ needs in a critical society. Love’s chapter follows and takes the strong stand that an uncritical approach to science “is responsible for hyper-consumerism that has lead to global destruction of ecology.” This assertion is substantiated by a textbook analysis done through an ecojustice frame. While the author does not discount the benefits of a positivist lens in science, he asks readers to acknowledge its limits. After a series of vignettes from textbooks interwoven with a history of scientific thought, the author ponders the possibility of changing the pedagogical paradigm to one that asks students to be “solutionaries” who “critically examine the world in which they live and act to create change.” Following this is a chapter that examines the disparate treatment and presentation of mathematics terminology across textbook publishers of middle grades’ textbook series and the implications of this on teaching and learning. For example, the authors discuss the potential for students to “find themselves outsiders to other discourse communities within the discipline of mathematics” if their understanding of a mathematical term like sequence is not use precisely. From a critical perspective, the authors argue that ambiguous and uncritical use of language denies students the ability to apply the concepts among “discourse communit[ies]” in their education and beyond. Finally, Nichols’ chapter presents the educational framework of earth smarts, “a form of socioecological literacy … based on justly maintaining or improving quality of life” as a tool for critically examining textbook content. This framework is selected to highlight what the authors considers the truism that that there is “no sustainable social justice without [ecological] sustainability.” The chapter describes the components of earth smarts and applies it to not only math and science curricula, but also to other disciples. Section three of this volume considers English and the language arts in education. The central premise of the first chapter is that writing programs resultant from mandated testing and corporate curriculum guides silence students and teachers. This is supported through first person account of a long time teacher and scholar. The author does not suggest that critical pedagogues wash their hands of these mandates; instead, we are called upon to “eradicate such systems” while we also “integrate preparing students for these bureaucratic realities in ways that confront them instead of abdicating authority to them.” To that end, the author enumerates many suggestions for challenging the status quo in the teaching of writing. Following this chapter is a critical policy analysis of how ELA content that was once determined by professionals in the classroom has become prescribed and diluted by corporate ideology. Despite longstanding conservative opposition to a national curriculum, a confluence of factors have resulted in corporations producing textbooks that become the curricula and, therefore, a de facto national curriculum. While the author acknowledges that theses packaged curricula “contain xxiv

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good content” and are created by individuals with “a vested interest and a personal stake in seeing public school students succeed,” the chapter reminds readers that despite this, the managed curricula really just enforce “homogeneity and control.” The author concludes by discussing teachers who choose to work within the system to teach students to deconstruct text and locate issues of power within. The third chapter in this section uses a chronology of education reform in California to highlight the ways in which scripted curricula deprofessionalize teaching and limit student literacy growth. The rise of scripted programs and their effects on student achievement are discussed as well as the role of teacher within such environments. Although it is noted that novice teachers and those who transfer to lower grades from upper elementary may find use in these programs, their overall mandated use is contraindicated. The final chapter considering ELA takes a unique perspective by looking at texts dominant in the past and considering their purpose to “preserve our emerging republic.” This historic perspective demonstrates the inherently political and marginalizing nature of these texts and provides a history of American education through the lens of its texts. While this context may prove the entrenched hegemonic influence of textbooks, the author also notes how the lessons learned provide guidance for a “hopeful future.” The final section of this volume includes fives chapters that examine aspects of social studies and humanities education. First in this section is a chapter that includes a clear call to action for inservice teachers to examine their texts and bring the gaps to the surface in the classroom to add a layer of critical discourse to the social studies curriculum. This call comes following an analysis of the “historical bias as gleaned through the insights of preservice and in-service educators,” which reveals, through teacher and student voice, that texts continue to present incomplete views of history. Next, Sibii considers the national identity of Romania presented in history textbooks through a critical lens. Specifically, it challenges hegemonic narratives that suggest that identity is singular and fixed, which is a notion that transcends boundaries. The chapter includes a narrative personal account of identity and then uses critical discourse analysis to analyze textbook content for the ways in which it (among other things) categorizes identity. In its conclusion, the chapter puts forth specific recommendations for those who author history textbooks. The third chapter is unique among considerations of history textbooks as it focuses specifically on the construction of the presidency. As textbook companies meet the demands of individual state standards and publish state-specific texts, the place of the president in these texts shifts. This chapter considers the implications of the presidential place in state history textbooks and offers suggestions for various audiences to “neutralize the biases and inaccuracies.” A teacher’s use of alternatives to textbooks is presented in the fourth chapter of this section. Many studies of textbooks offer suggestions to teachers to challenge the dominant discourse of the publishers and supplement with critical alternatives to the textbooks, and the authors of this chapter have done just this and examine the impact of those textbook alternatives. After a review of the literature related to history textbooks, the authors discuss the results of a survey and student interviews that reveal how supplemental materials alter student understanding of history. The xxv

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final chapter in this section and in the volume does what none of the other chapters in this volume does, which is examines the examinations associated with textbook content. As the author points out, “the chapters in this book build on a substantial literature that looks critically at the content and uses of textbooks.” This chapter, however, goes beyond the content of the textbooks to the tests. In particular, the author argues that tests, like textbooks, reify particular ideologies. These sections on their own and combined with those in the partner to this book highlight the continued power of textbooks and related products to shape social views, perpetuate power in dominant groups, demonize or trivialize social groups who are oppressed on the structural axes of race, class, gender, sexuality and (dis)ability, and regulate student thought and behavior. Acknowledging that knowing is not enough, contributors make sense of the political, social, moral, and economic dimensions of textbooks and share ways in which they have (and others can) disrupt this power. As Apple (2006) notes in Educating the “Right” Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality, “in the absence of an overt national curriculum, the commercially produced textbook … remains the dominant definition of the curriculum in the United States” (2006, p. 46). For this reason, textbooks must be reconsidered for the role they 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, and religious and linguistic background. Contributors to this and the partner volume move this knowledge to praxis by suggesting how teacher education can reduce the alienating power of the textbooks and how content-area teachers can transform their textbook driven curricula to be critical and transformative despite the textbook’s content. This volume and its partner have implications for a wide audience. First, it will be appealing to students and educators in colleges of education. Specifically, preservice teachers and their educators can use this book to facilitate discussion of course content selection and analysis. Further, students and professors in the areas of educational leadership and curriculum and instruction can use this text to consider policy regarding texts and the political implications of choices. School administrators are another audience for this text. Administrators can refer to the volume as a guide when considering textbook adoptions. Likewise, state and local policy makers may find this volume useful when creating policy for textbook adoption and use at the state or district levels. We hope that you find this book valuable as you take steps to challenge the dominance in the textbooks that you encounter. Respectfully, Heather Hickman, EdD Brad J. Porfilio, PhD

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REFERENCES Apple, M. W. (1999). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. W. & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Castro, A. (2010, May 21). Texas OKs school textbook changes: Critics claim conservatives trying to revise history. MSNBC.com. Retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37271857/. Chomsky, N. (2003). Hegemony or survival: America’s quest for global dominance. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books. Frederickson, M. (2004). Surveying gender: Another look at the way we teach United States history. The History Teacher, 37(4), 476-484. Kornfeld, J., & Goodman, J. (1998). Melting the glaze: Exploring student response to liberatory social studies. Theory into Practice, 37(4), 306-313. Lugg, C. A. (2003). Sissies, faggots, lezzies, and dykes: Gender, sexual orientation, and a new politics of education? Education Administration Quarterly, 39(1), 67-93. Meyer, E. J. (2008). A feminist reframing of bullying and harassment: Transforming schools through critical pedagogy. McGill Journal of Education, 1(1), 33-48. Retrieved from http://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/1077/2086 Prohibited courses; discipline; schools, 49th Arizona State H.R. HB 2281 (2010). Sedgwick, E. K. (1985). Between men: English literature and male homosocial desire. New York: Columbia University Press. Wong, S. L. (1991). Evaluating the content of textbooks: Public interests and professional authority. Sociology of Education, 64(1), 11-18. Woodrow, K. E. (2007). Culturally responsive middle school science: A case study of needs, demands, and challenges. Doctoral dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado. Retrieved October 22, 2008, from Dissertations & Theses: Full Text database. (Publication No. AAT 3273663).

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POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL INFLUENCE

MARY KOUTSELINI

TEXTBOOKS AS MECHANISMS FOR TEACHERS’ SOCIOPOLITICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ALIENATION

For whom do we write textbooks? What is their relationship to curricula? What is their value for teaching? Whose culture do they present? Do they facilitate teaching and learning? Do they empower or deskill teachers? What are the politics of textbooks and what are the roles of teachers? Are teachers the passive medium between writers and students? Whom do writers represent? What is the relationship between the official knowledge, the dominant culture, and the textbooks’ content? Does the replacement of textbooks really mean a change of power holders? These are the questions addressed at the first meeting of the course “EDU612: Writing and Evaluation of Textbooks” of the postgraduate program “Curriculum and Instruction” in the University of Cyprus. Though the value of textbooks has been disputed (Apple, 1995), they continue to have a protagonist role in the classroom and on students’ learning. Textbooks have replaced curricula in various contexts and teachers’ preparation for teaching; they have downgraded students’ autonomous learning and annihilated teachers’ political sensitivities. Although in different contexts textbooks play a different role and have different uses, it is not difficult to point out common negative side effects when teachers rely on them. Beyond the usually overloaded content of textbooks that forces teachers to run for covering the content instead of caring about students’ learning, one can refer to the fact that textbooks in the everyday classroom interaction have replaced curricula and have become a bad translation of them, a translation that is always worse than the original; they are used as “holy books” by teachers and parents and ask students to memorize interpretations and views that, at least in the textbooks of social sciences, are presented as “facts” and “information.” Replacement of curricula by textbooks means viewing the teaching process as delivery of a final product, ready-made in the content of the textbooks, which must be delivered by teachers and memorized by students. Moreover, this unquestioned use of textbooks contributes to the unquestioned preservation of the social, economic and political status quo, and it prevents teachers’ involvement in changing the monolithic educational agenda. The stable and leading presence of textbooks in the educational system can be interpreted by teachers’ supporting attitudes and also by the stakeholders’ lack of confidence in

H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 3–16. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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the fulfilment of curricular aims and objectives if they have not been implemented as pages of books. In Cyprus, the situation is exacerbated because of the content-oriented curricula and the fact that curricula have been totally replaced by one textbook for each subject area. Primary and secondary education teachers have as their primary concern to “cover the content” of the textbook, a concern that promotes the view that teaching means a delivery of the content. The epistemological side effects of such an approach and understanding are obvious: Students’ needs and dispositions are not taken into account, and the lack of communication between teachers and students becomes larger from year to year of schooling. Moreover, in Cyprus, the production of textbooks has been centralized, with the majority of textbooks being imported from Greece and others are written by the Cyprus Pedagogical Institute of the Ministry of Education and Culture. Centralization of the textbooks used in public schools in Cyprus prevents teachers, students, and parents from becoming aware of other perspectives and views, a fact that contributes to the unquestioned acceptance of textbooks’ content. Nevertheless, the debate about the cultural and political role of textbooks has recently been rekindled because of the 2008 attempt in Greece to replace the history textbooks. In Cyprus, the public dialogue on textbooks and their role has been intensified in the last three years after the commencement of the 2000 educational reform, which has been welcomed by all of the political parties and is now realized by the new government with a leftist president. The reform includes the development of new curricula and the writing of new textbooks. The debate over the curricula and textbooks of history reveals the cultural and political expectations that all political parties and citizens have on the teaching of history. The right-wing parties interpret the replacement of textbooks as an attempt from the Ministry of Education to promote the communist ideology and cut off the strong historical and cultural relationship between Greece and Cyprus, whereas leftists declare their intention to write books that can cultivate attitudes of reapproach between Cypriot-Greeks and Cypriot-Turks. The re-approach politics has been inserted in the Cyprus political agenda after the 1974 Turkish invasion and the military occupation of north Cyprus, which continues today. Re-approach is both an attempt to reach an agreement with Turkish-Cypriots and a strategy for mutual understanding of the different cultures of the two communities. An ineffective attempt was also made by the so-called neo-Cyprian Association, established immediately after the invasion, to interpret the re-approach policy as a process for establishing a new neo-Cyprian identity, common for Turkish- and Greek-Cypriots. The main aim of this chapter is to present the results of an action research study with 25 primary and secondary school teachers enrolled in the postgraduate course “Seminar on Textbooks’ Writing and Evaluation” during the academic year 2010– 2011 and understand how novice teachers’ views of curricular purposes and dominance change over time. The aim of the action research was twofold: first, to develop participants’ awareness and sensitivity about the textbooks’ pedagogical,

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political and cultural functions; and, second, to support teachers’ change of attitudes, understanding, and use of textbooks. ACTION RESEARCH AS A META-MODERN EDUCATIONAL APPROACH

Although it did not establish action research, critical pedagogy, especially its emphasis on the improvement of social conditions through participation and awareness building, has had a profound influence on the embracement of this form of research by critical pedagogues (i.e., Campbell & Groundwater-Smith, 2010; Freire, 1972). Action research as a process of teaching and learning in a meaningful environment facilitates teachers’ self-understanding and supports the generating of new knowledge, which can in turn raise awareness about deficiencies, imposed limits, and boundaries. In this context, the assumption underlying educational action research is that teachers are trapped in prescribed everyday routines without realizing that they have been alienated from their pedagogical role to decide ad hoc about their teaching in a way that respects the needs of the specific students in their classrooms. Moreover, the assumption is that alienation from their pedagogical role has indirect side effects to their political and cultural participation. Thus, action research aims at enhancing participants’ selfawareness about their own attitudes, beliefs, and actions (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). The heuristic, cyclic, and collaborative investigation taking place during action research motivates participants’ souls and minds, allowing for change to happen in their understanding and attitudes. This approach contradicts the modern paradigm of teachers’ training in which teachers attend courses by experts in the field who impose their wisdom, which can later be transferred by the audience to the classrooms. The action research meta-modern paradigm (Carr & Kemmis, 2010; Koutselini, 2008) is based on self-development processes, in which experts and teachers participate as researchers and learn from their experiences. A meaningful environment involves action, reflection on the action, and new action that is composed of new knowledge and understanding (Koutselini, 2010). During the semester, all participants, tutors, and teachers had 12 meetings that led to gradual self development and understanding. Situated learning, collaboration in small groups, and reflection in both groups and diaries supported participants’ meaning-making and understanding in a nonlinear process of concept and attitude building, reconstruction, and rebuilding. THE THREE CYCLES

The First Cycle (Three Meetings): Dispute and Hesitation In the first meeting, all participants individually answered the questions presented at the beginning of this chapter, thus expressing their views concerning the use of textbooks and their role. Participants were advised to keep their answers written and unchanged in their notebooks and use them during the discussion in the plenary session. They were also informed that the discussion had not been 5

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predetermined and that there were not any correct or wrong answers or thoughts, but different views that should be presented. It was not surprising that the participants did not like the open environment and especially the fact that the instructor had no intention to give them the “correct” answer for the questions (Koutselini, 2008). When the idea of teaching without using the single textbook provided by the Ministry of Education had been expressed, the majority of teachers, especially teachers with more teaching experience, responded negatively. They started to murmur, complaining between them, and when they were encouraged to express their hesitations aloud, they expressed ideas about value, reliability, and ease for teachers saying, “We must value the support given by the textbooks.” “How much more difficult is it to teach without books?” “How do we know that the books we read from are reliable?”

Secondary school teachers supported the view that “textbooks are necessary for students’ learning at home.” After the first meeting, teachers were asked to reflect on the way they use textbooks and to record their observations and thoughts in their diaries. The second, third and fourth meetings were scheduled for discussion and reflection on selected extracts from scientific articles with the cultural, political, and pedagogical functions of textbooks as their main ideas. The discussion of these extracts in small groups gave them the opportunity to exchange ideas without the restriction of the reactions of a big audience. The groups were formed randomly in order to bring together people who had never collaborated in the past and could express divergent ideas. All groups needed some time for trust building among the members of the group, and at the beginning the participants seemed very reluctant to express ideas and objections. The discussion in three groups (five members each) revealed two different and antagonistic views: The one view expressed “second thoughts about the restrictions imposed on teachers by the textbook writers” and the “control of heterogeneity” in the teaching and viewing of social events; the other view was in support that “homogeneity in teaching ensures that at least all teachers maintain the standards” and that “it is difficult for teachers to search all the time for new material and assignments for each lesson. They completed this view by saying that centralization and homogeneity of textbooks and materials safeguarded textbooks’ pedagogical and scientific appropriateness. They also argued that parents could not trust the school and teachers to decide about what and how their children are going to learn. Moreover, teachers of the latter view argued that one of the main functions of textbooks must remain cultural transmission, which is something different from the political parties’ varying views. They explicitly referred to the different views of the parties about the Greekness of Cyprus, as well as the different and contrary mottos adopted by the supporters of the left party (the supporters of the neoCypriot identity and conscience) and the “conservative patriot Greeks,” who 6

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support that Cyprus culture is indisputably Greek. This debate was recently revived during the public debate of the ongoing educational reform that focused on the question: Does the Education of Cyprus remain Greek? Since 1960 – the Independence of Cyprus – the aim of curricula declared that education in Cyprus is Greek. Beyond the ideological and cultural roots of teachers’ hesitation about the content of textbooks, the first four meetings revealed two very important issues concerning teaching from textbooks: First, the issue of controlling teachers, and second, the legitimacy of knowledge. Moreover, during the discussion teachers expressed attitudes and dispositions of mistrust towards their ability to act as professionals. In his context, they expressed the view that teachers are not capable of choosing their material and that they are not trusted by parents to do so. Their implicit belief was that they needed to be instructed and also to be controlled not only by the legal authorities, supervisors and the Ministry of Education, but also by parents and other teachers. Therefore, during the groups and plenary discussion, the teachers disputed their own ability to activate their pedagogical autonomy. Upon analyzing their views, especially through their reflections in the diaries, one can see that not only did they dispute their own ability but also, and centrally, the ability of “other teachers”: “Is it possible to trust the next door teacher to change the content of the lessons?” “What are the qualifications of teachers that make them experts in choosing the material?”

They also disputed “the ability of other teachers.” They expressed this view openly by saying the following: “I would not want to know that the teachers of my own child have the authority to decide what to teach.” “I cannot imagine that a leftist teacher or a socialist or a rightist would express their political views in the classroom; then teaching becomes propaganda.”

It was obvious that they interpreted pedagogical autonomy as arbitrariness, which could jeopardize the education of their children, and that they could not understand that education always has ideological roots (Apple, 2006). As it has been argued (Koutselini, 1997), the case of Cyprus, a state with a long unresolved political-national problem, requires new theoretical insights that will not only account for the clash between different ideologies, but will also explain the domination of a stable and protected educational policy, which can safeguard the survival of the Greek culture and civilization in the island. Turkish invasion and continuous military occupation, along with threats against Cyprus independence and new claims about the existence of Cyprus as a European state, explain why any intention of change to the Cyprus cultural pattern is considered a threat that gives privileges to the Turkish and damages the national tradition of Greek Cypriots. 7

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Taking into account that the educational system, curricula and textbooks are associated with a context embedded in specific time and space, one can interpret why in Cyprus teachers hesitate to trust teachers’ initiatives in choosing textbooks and curricula; the unresolved political problem enhances the power of politicians and political parties, who are considered “responsible” for advocating reforms, curricula and textbooks that ensure national and cultural interests. Moreover, the long lasting control exercised on teachers through the one textbook teaching (a situation established since the 1960 Independence of Cyprus) transforms them to become indecisive human beings that condemn other teachers, who are only the “next-door” persons. It is surprising that the concept of “colleague” was not expressed during any of these meetings. One meeting was dedicated to reflection and self-reflection on issues concerning autonomy and arbitrariness: What are the limits of autonomy and arbitrariness in the process of choosing material and teaching methods? How can one historical event be presented differently by writers with different ideologies? Teachers were assigned to use the history textbooks, to work in groups and to evaluate–based on their own criteria–the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the existing textbooks. The surprising fact was that the participants never thought that textbooks receive their legitimacy from the curriculum and that the primary source of what has been agreed to be taught is not textbook but curriculum. They put down scientific and epistemological criteria, as well as pedagogical criteria, such as methods of teaching and activities. No one mentioned the curricular criteria, or the fact that textbooks should conform to curriculum principles, recommendations and syllabus, a situation that could partly explain why teachers hold textbooks as a sort of holy books that contain all the wisdom teachers have chosen to transmit to students’ heads. Also, no one mentioned the political and cultural criteria, a fact that indicates the lack of any awareness of such issues and the role of textbooks as transmitters of political ideas. The discussion of the issue of cultural and political transmission was very difficult and participants were very hesitant to touch it. To some extent, this hesitation can be understood–as it has been explained above–by the fact that the political problem in Cyprus is still open and that questioning the textbooks and the cultural heritage that they transmit would be interpreted as questioning the Greek ideals and the identity of Greek Cypriots. The question of whether education in Cyprus remains “Greek education” is one typical and regular question addressed to the Minister of Education in the last three years, during the ongoing educational reform. In the final analysis, the investigation of textbooks’ chapters from various political views proved to be a very empowering tool for starting a rewarding discussion on these issues.

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THE SECOND CYCLE (FOUR MEETINGS): SELF CONFIDENCE AND AWARENESS BUILDING

The second cycle of action research comprised four meetings and preparation for action at schools. The aim was the construction of self-respect and trust building among teachers, an endeavour that needed to be grounded on experiences of success at schools. Participants were reluctant to undertake action and change the delivery of teaching from textbooks. The easy questions that arose were: “What next? How do we replace textbooks? What do we teach?” Two groups disputed the whole procedure and they addressed questions such as, “Why do we change the textbooks’ content? Why would one make teaching difficult?” Teachers reiterated ideas, which indicate their trust on authenticity, experts, and textbook writers by stating, “The writers and the minister know better.” They also asked, “Who shall evaluate the teachers’ products?” Reducing external control, willingness to obey the evaluators and the questioning of their own ability to produce legitimate knowledge were the themes that continued. During the plenary session, some teachers proposed, for the first time, for the curriculum to act as a measurement of legitimate changes. Participants started to think about textbooks and teaching in the context of curriculum. Surprisingly, the secondary school teachers stated that there were not any curricula on secondary subject matters, a statement that proved wrong, since the curricula existed, but had been totally replaced by textbooks. The biggest impediment for teachers’ action at schools was the lack of confidence on the effectiveness of their initiatives, especially because of the “lack of specialization.” Primary school teachers spoke about lack of specialization in relation to content, since primary school teachers in Cyprus are considered able to teach all subjects, without being specialized in any subject matter. On the contrary, secondary school teachers considered themselves specialized in different subject matter areas but adhered to teacher and content-centred teaching, because of the lack of broad pedagogical knowledge. Thus, teachers considered textbooks and readymade knowledge that could be delivered to students as a lifebelt that could cover their deficiencies either on content knowledge or on pedagogy. This is an additional reason for Cyprus teachers’ adherence to textbooks’ teaching. As a first step for action-taking at schools, participants decided to proceed to the evaluation of the chapters that they were scheduled to teach. They compared history textbooks and curricula to see whether textbooks corresponded to curriculum guidelines and syllabus (curricular criterion). Participants produced and implemented a variety of criteria and shared their understanding and evaluation perspectives during the plenary session: Does the textbook correspond to format criteria concerning color and layout of pages in order to attract students (format criteria)? Do they include activities that can motivate students? Are there any hidden messages promoted through the pictures or the activities and the content? What is the official knowledge presented in the textbooks (political and cultural criteria)? Does the text facilitate reading and comprehension (pedagogical criteria)? All questions were discussed in depth and the discussion in groups provided the 9

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opportunity for students to gain awareness about the multi-level and different functions of textbooks. Participants’ voices indicated their anxiety and concern for the fact that in their final analysis, teachers, textbooks and teaching becomes a mediation of imposing the government’s view in the heads of students: “What counts as knowledge?” “Everybody in control changes narration of historical events in the way that supports their ideologies and view.” “Why must teachers play their political theatre?”

The change in Greece in regard to the primary schools’ history textbook for the 4th grade and the comparison of the different narration of the historical events concerning the Turkish invasion in Cyprus functioned as evidence for the different views when interpreting facts. Importantly, the change of textbooks evidenced especially for the government’s selection of the view projected in the textbooks, a view that serves the governmental, political and social strategies. But the most important part of the participants’ shift is the development of a new perspective concerning official knowledge, cultural transmission, and legitimate knowledge. They admitted that, “History textbooks do not simply present ‘facts’ objectively but from the writers’ perspective, which provides also the interpretation of the facts.” During the plenary session, participants pointed out and discussed “whether teachers become the mediators of the government’s view and to what extent teachers’ different views should be presented in the classroom.” The teachers’ role as “passive receivers and transmitters” was theoretically rejected, but participants admitted that this was finally what they actually did. One more perspective that enlightened the participants’ understanding concerned the crucial question that they shared during the plenary session: Do textbook content and activities support the needs of all students in mixed ability classrooms? Extracts from their diaries show how exciting and enlightening the questions about the differentiation of teaching and learning according to the needs of the students have been: “The most I gained today is the confidence that I can evaluate textbooks with criteria that facilitate learning as I experience them in the classroom.” “Finally, this is the answer to my question, ‘Why do we need to change teaching for textbooks – the mixed ability classrooms and the textbooks’ inability to correspond to the different needs of students.” “I have never thought that I might use inappropriate material to teach. I feel more sensitive to students’ needs and textbooks’ readability and comprehensiveness.” “Do students in mixed ability classrooms really learn from textbooks and textbook based teaching? Surely teaching should result in learning for each student. But do we really want learning for all students? This is in final analysis, the question. When we

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are obliged to teach and deliver the textbooks’ content without having the time to look back, we surely do not expect that all students will learn.”

However, the participants continued to insist on the “principle” that teachers must not present their own views and their ideological disposition. Participants also argued that official knowledge and cultural heritage are not the same, since sometimes political parties with a small percentage of votes become governmental parties with the support of other political powers. They pointed out issues related to William’s (1961) selective tradition and the conflict of interests over curricula and textbooks (Apple, 1990, 1993). They were also given extracts from the book The Subaltern Speak (Apple & Buras, 2006), and they gained awareness regarding the “struggles of dominant and subaltern groups to define what counts as knowledge and to appropriate political, economic, cultural, and social resources in a range of educational contexts, both national and international scope” (p. 6). It was important that participants changed considerably their views and that they supported the view that when governments produce textbooks with their views and ideological interpretations, they circumvent the dominant culture and present as legitimated knowledge what is an artificial “official one.” Questions and issues regarding the dominant culture as oppressing minorities or persons with marginalized social identities and political roles promote discourse on multicultural education and inclusion. It had been recognized that the official aim of Cyprus education includes multicultural education and inclusion, but this remains a rhetoric declaration that has not been realized in praxis, mainly because schools’ classroom provisions and textbooks’ content do not take into account their own different needs. Participants concluded that responsibility for the nonrealization of multicultural education and inclusion might be shared by textbooks and teachers. THIRD CYCLE (FOUR MEETINGS): NEW THEORETICAL INSIGHTS AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the second cycle of action research, participants were given three scientific articles to read and reflect upon. The concepts of “situated learning” and “school-based decision-making” prevailed in one article whereas the other two were concerned with the political consequences of textbooks’ production and monopoly in teaching. In the second meeting for this cycle of action, research participants were placed in groups at schools, four persons in each group, two classes in each school, with their previous experience as criterion. At least one participant without any school experience had been assigned in each group. The purpose behind this was to push teachers in real action research by motivating them to take action in order to answer their own questions and construct their philosophy (Elliott, 1983) instead of blindly accepting that “all the others” know better and that imposed central knowledge through textbooks must remain indisputable. Thus, “retrospective understanding” should lead to “prospective action” (Carr & Kemmis, 2010, p. 59).

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The aim of this third cycle of action research was to create a trustful situated learning environment for teachers who had to teach children in a multicultural inclusive environment as opposed to teaching from the textbooks. Teachers were encouraged to informally assess students’ learning, students’ difficulties in studying textbooks, and their attitudes towards learning from textbooks. Students’ reactions and responses surprised a number of teachers, as they admitted during the plenary session. They also enjoyed sharing responsibility and decisions at schools that changed the school ethos and their isolation in decision-making and experiences. Selected articles and classroom readings that completed what they had already started to construct as new knowledge enhanced conceptualization of the textbooks’ role. It is acknowledged that action research cycles and incidents within cycles can support the participants’ understanding of self and their confidence as well as enhance the search for meaning-making in relation to the problem under investigation, but it is also the truth that the construction of knowledge is not totally innate – in the platonic sense of innate ideas that come into light inductively. Teachers’ action and experiences need an interpretive context, which will bind together all ideas derived from action and reflections and transform them to scientific knowledge that remains and empowers teachers and teaching. The knowledge we gained, as participant- researchers, is that when teachers start building their knowledge and give meaning to their experiences, they themselves search for more sources and readings. Thus, the usual complaint from academicians who ask, “Why do students not want to read?” as well as ask, “Why are they reluctant to search for more readings on a topic?” finds an answer: Students want to be responsible for finding readings that answer their own questions and complete their experiences through theory and not vice versa. They are inspired when they build their knowledge inductively, based on context-bound environments and questions, and they enrich their experiences and new knowledge with readings, actions, and new reflections. Questions and issues concerning legitimization of textbook knowledge and socially tailored curricula (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991) have been in the core of group and plenary discussions during the incidents of action research. From that point of view, participants were not expected to fully theorize the topic under investigation, unless they invested their experiences and reflection with readings and scientific knowledge. It is true that trust and self-confidence is gained when they realize that their interpretation of their experiences is in line with the scientific knowledge in the field. THE ROUTES TO TEACHERS’ SOCIOPOLITICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL ALIENATION

Alienation in this paper is defined in terms of an individual’s feelings and dispositions towards self, others, and one’s own work. In this context, action research on textbooks’ role and evaluation indicated that textbooks have been the mechanisms of teachers’ sociopolitical and pedagogical alienation, a means of 12

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alienating teachers from their main role, the pedagogical role, that gives them the authority to decide what, how, and when to teach, as well as how to differentiate teaching and learning for students with different needs and backgrounds. The hidden and powerful routes of alienation estrange teachers from their own community and from the other teachers, who are viewed as next-door persons, and they trap them in blind faith for authority. This situation also has a political dimension, since faith in legitimate knowledge is attributed to the powers of control, “those who know” in contrast with teachers who are not entitled to decide. Thus, a certain group holds all the knowledge, power, and control while all the others, those who do not have the legitimacy to decide, are distrusted. Adherence to textbooks is also a means of annihilation of the concepts of collegiality and situated learning, and, consequently, of all the feelings that empower members of the same community, schools, and social context. The attitude of apathy in relation to student failure is cultivated through the implicit belief that teachers must aim to cover the specific content presented in textbooks, a belief that is grounded on the “easygoing” theory of life. This apathetic stance gradually develops to lifestyle, philosophy, and political attitude, according to which nothing makes a difference, an attitude alienating teachers and citizens from their political, social, and educational involvement and concerns. It is important to say that the routes of alienation derive from the modern educational view, according to which difference is an exception from the omnipotent rule to which all persons must match. In this system persons are not allowed to have personhood but only the ability to reach the standards of the market, which have been transmitted in the textbooks (Koutselini, 1997, 2006). The modern uniformity in education is the cause of a number of negative side effects: lack of authentic communication between teacher and student; teaching without taking into account the needs of different students; material that is supposed to meet the needs of a non-existing homogeneous classroom; teachers that follow textbooks’ prescriptions of routine teaching procedures and activities; rhetoric about multicultural education for all; and inclusion without discrimination that cannot be transformed to school-based and societal praxis (Nieto, 2000). Within this modern and technocratic paradigm, teachers view themselves as transmitters of textbook knowledge and their students as knowledge consumers, depersonalized and trapped in the replication of uniformity. A crisis of self-confidence and confidence among teachers was obvious in the participants’ discourse and diary reflections. This situation can be described as self-alienation, since doubting a teacher’s ability to act pedagogically is the same as doubting their own identity. What literature calls self-estrangement and lack of self-realization at work is also present in the teachers’ work at schools when they teach textbooks while neglecting the students’ learning. As Apple (1995, p. 128) has argued, this situation deskills teachers and reduces them to textbook guides. The conviction that teachers are or are called “intellectuals” (Sultana, 2001, p. xv) was not verified in the case of novice teachers of Cyprus, who participated in this study. Teaching from textbooks provided by a central governmental source limited teachers’ authentic and original thought about important educational, 13

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political, and cultural problems; it made them receivers and mediators without the freedom to think and decide on considerations such as what schooling is more appropriate for in developing good citizens and who, in final analysis, achieves true citizenship in the contemporary society. In the last meeting, participants were asked to answer the questions we posed at the beginning of the course and to compare their answers with those given in the first meeting. It was not surprising that they all said that there was no relation between their first answers and the new ones. Their reflections on the questions in their diaries showed new theoretical insights and a lot of considerations that made them able to not only dispute but also to give alternative answers to their considerations, by taking into account the influence and the conflicting interests of social, economic, and political factors on education (Apple, 1993, 1995). Concerning the ideological impact on the textbooks’ content of the political party in government, the predominant idea during the closing session was that, when in power, a powerful right-wing or left-wing government tries to impose its own interpretations and beliefs. In Cyprus, Neo-Cypriots promote denationalization of Cypriot culture as a means of their re-approach policy, and right-wing policies try to enhance the national feeling as the only feature that guarantees the survival of Greek civilization under the threat of Turkey. The social aim of providing advantages for the unprivileged is not disputed by any political party; but given the prioritization of the national-political aims, the differences between right-wing and left-wing governments focus on matters of culture and identity. This picture is the one we can trace in the change of textbooks, and especially in the Greek and Cyprus History textbooks. CONCLUSION

Action research was expected to result in a gradual shift from imposed, unquestionable acceptance of textbook-based teaching and legitimated knowledge to flexible and differentiated learning that associates textbooks and teaching with socioeconomic, political, and cultural issues. A first concluding remark is that participants’ diaries and classroom discussions, along with their action at schools, proved that their participation was rewarding and empowering in terms of new understanding and change of attitudes towards both the abilities and skills of teachers and the use of textbooks through “counter hegemonic practices” (Smyth, 2010, p. 371). Overall, the best way to escape from an alienating environment is to identify the mechanisms of alienation and the consequences of one’s powerlessness. Teachers in schools do not have the time to consider, look back, and to reflect on their own practices, dispositions and relationships. Action research cycles give teachers the opportunity to subject their own lives to introspection and analysis, reflect on their beliefs and dispositions, and understand why they do not appreciate their role and their colleagues – a process that emancipates and equips them with self awareness and also understanding of the collective power that teachers must have in the

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working environment and the society. However, the lack of role models in society makes teachers’ transformation difficult, though not impossible. Michel Apple in his book Cultural Politics and Education (1996) wrote: “Cultural politics in education is not only about the complex issues of what and whose cultural capital becomes official knowledge” but is about “to defend those counter hegemonic forms that now exist or to bring new forms into existence” (p. 21). The Cyprus paradigm taught us that it is difficult to “name the world differently” in an occupied country with long lasting open national-political problems. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

What are the relations between cultural heritage, dominant culture and official knowledge in a multicultural society? What are the strengths and weaknesses of educational action research for understanding the role of textbooks as mechanisms of alienation? Reflect on the author’s statement: “The lack of role models makes teachers’ transformation difficult.” What are the political indirect results of teachers’ pedagogical alienation? What does the Cyprus political paradigm imply about dominant culture and the parties’ priorities? REFERENCES

Apple, M. (1990). Ideology and curriculum (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. (1993). Official knowledge. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. (1995). Education and power. London, England: Routledge. Apple, M. (1996). Cultural politics and education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Apple, M. (2006). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M., & Buras, K. (2006). The subaltern speak: Curriculum, power, and educational struggles. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple. M., & Christian-Smith, L. K., (Eds.). (1991). The politics of the textbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Cambell, A., & Groundwater-Smith, S. (Eds.). (2010). Action research as critical educational science. In A. Cambell, & S. Groundwater-Smith (Eds.), Action research in education-fundamentals of applied research (Vols. 1-3). New York, NY: Sage. Carr, W., & Kemmis, S. (2010). Action research as critical educational science. In A. Cambell, & S. Groundwater-Smith (Eds.), Action research in education-fundamentals of applied research (Vol. 2, pp. 53-82). New York, NY: Sage. EIliott, J. (1983). Legitimation crisis and the growth of educational action research. Mimeo, Cambridge: Cambridge Institute of Education. Freire, P. (1972). Cultural action for freedom. Harmodsworth, London: Penguin. Koutselini, M. (1997). Contemporary trends and perspectives of the curricula – Towards a meta-modern paradigm for curriculum. Curriculum Studies, 5(1), 87-101. Koutselini, M. (2006). Towards a meta-modern paradigm of curriculum: Transcendence of a mistaken reliance on theory. Educational Practice and Theory, 28(1), 55-69.

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MARY KOUTSELINI Koutselini, M. (2008). Participatory teacher development at schools: Processes and issues. Action Research, 6(1), 29-48. Koutselini, M. (2010). The financial crisis in the light of modern-metamodern discourse: Reconceptualising the modern knowledge system. Journal of Social Science Education (JSSE), 9(2), 26-31. Retrieved from www.jsse.org Nieto, S. (2000). Affirming diversity: The socio-political context of multicultural education (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Reason, P., & Bradbury, H. (2001). Handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and practice. London, England: Sage. Smyth, J. (2010). Teachers’ work and the politics of reflection. In A. Cambell, & S. Groundwater-Smith (Eds.), Action research in education-fundamentals of applied research (Vol. 2, pp. 371-402). New York, NY: Sage. Soultana, R. (2001). (Ed.). Yesterday’s schools: Readings in Maltese educational history. Malta: PEG. Williams, R. (1961). The long revolution. London, England: Chatto & Nindus.

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MISSING AND SHRINKING VOICES A Critical Analysis of the Florida Textbook Adoption Policy

Curriculum defines what counts as valid knowledge (Bates, 2005). As a social product, curriculum and its construction and dissemination (i.e., textbook selection) are strongly influenced by systems of social and cultural control. It is a key vehicle for forming individual attitudes about other groups, and helps shape a student’s fundamental attitudes toward society (Greaney, 2006). As major staples in the curriculum of K-12 schools since the 1900s, textbooks contribute to the production of knowledge. In the U.S., the time students spend using textbooks is estimated at 75 to 90 percent (Ajayi, 2005; Watts-Taffe, 2005; Wiley & Barr, 2007). U.S. secondary school teachers, according to Apple (1991), have been found to devote three-quarters of their classroom time to textbooks, which also make up approximately 90 percent of homework time (Greaney, 2006). As noted in the report A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (1983), individual teachers have little influence in critical professional decisions such as textbook selection. However, teachers can exercise some authority over the curriculum and autonomy by using textbooks and other instructional materials selectively (Doyle, 1992). Today, 21 states (Florida included) “exert control at the state level for aspects of curriculum regulation such as standard setting, textbook review, and assessment of student learning” and since the advent of the federal policy No Child Left Behind (U.S. Department of Education, 2001), states have assumed “more authority for setting curriculum standards” (Hirsch & Reys, 2009, p. 750). In addition to the role of teachers in how textbooks enter the curriculum, the voices of parents and other local community stakeholders are also worthy of consideration. While access to textbooks has been identified as one of the most effective ways that schools can raise academic achievement (Greaney, 2006), controversies over their content suggest that their significance extends beyond academics to include politics, ethics, and aesthetics. Curriculum policy concerning the selection of instructional materials engenders and rests on power dynamics that affect the exclusion and inclusion of voices in their production and dissemination. Current policies and pending changes to the process for selecting instructional materials implicate issues of voice and silence in decisions about what students learn. We focus on the participatory opportunities and obstacles facing racial and ethnic groups that are political minorities and generally people of color who historically have been marginalized in U.S. education policy-making decisions affecting them H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 17–39. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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(Marsh, 2007). An analysis of documents related to Florida’s textbook adoption process (i.e., rubrics for the evaluation of instructional materials, interest group letters, State Adoption Process Chart, and an online training course on the adoption process) illuminates some of the opportunities and obstacles to their participation. Emphasized is “the importance of policy analysis which explicitly links the ‘bigger picture’ of global and national policy contexts to the ‘smaller pictures’ of policies and practices within schools and classrooms” (Vidovich, 2007). Analysis of the Florida textbook adoption processes, proposed changes, and review of literature through Critical Race Theory (CRT), multicultural education and democratic participation theories point to the need for active participation by local stakeholders if they are to gain or retain presence and influence in the processes that help to determine what is taught in schools. We consider two primary questions: (1) To what extent can diverse educational stakeholders (students, parents, teachers) participate in policy decisions concerning the curricular needs of students? (2) How can counternarratives serve to affect macro level policy that determines what counts as knowledge? We discuss the importance of voice and the possible benefits of including a diversity of voices through counternarratives in curriculum policy development and implementation. Consequently, this research will advance our knowledge and understanding of the impact and potential for the use of personal narratives in curriculum policy reform (e.g., Griffiths & Macleod, 2008). Background context on the textbook adoption process is provided, followed by the theoretical framework and review of literature. OVERVIEW OF THE TEXTBOOK ADOPTION PROCESS

States are referenced by the approach they use to adopt textbooks: adoption state or open state. An adoption state has a two-tier process. In the first tier the state determines a list of texts that will be provided to the students for free (the state covers the charge). In the second tier, districts and schools make a selection from a preapproved list. The disadvantage in this process is that funds are not provided for texts selected which are not included in the preapproved list. However, most states have a waiver policy allowing states to make a case for purchasing a text outside those on the approved list. “If the waiver is accepted the state provides funds for the selection. If not, the district must provide its own funds for these texts” (WattsTaffe, 2006, p. 109). Statewide adoption was created to provide uniformity in texts used by an increasingly mobile student population and has remained relatively unchanged since the early 1900s (Watts-Taffe, 2006). In the second type, an open state, school districts may choose from among all textbooks on the market (Watts-Taffe, 2006). In the United States there are 22 adoption states (including California, Texas, and Florida) and 28 open states.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Analysis of curriculum policy and politics through a critical race lens helps to illuminate the challenges and possibilities for the participation of people of color in the processes of textbook selection and adoption. CRT has five defining elements reflecting its basic assumptions, perspectives, and pedagogies: a focus on (1) race and racism, (2) social justice and social justice practice, (3) historical context, (4) the contestation of dominant ideology (i.e., White supremacy), and (5) the recognition of experiential knowledge (Villalpando, 2004). This critical theoretical framework centers race as a socially constructed concept that is deeply ingrained in American culture given its role in the historical development of the U.S. The tenets create a theoretical framework that not centers race and racism but also focuses the analysis on the historical context of curriculum and how racial and ethnic groups have attempted to contest the dominant ideologies reflected in curriculum and instructional materials such as textbooks as an expression of social justice Counternarratives provide an avenue for contesting dominant racial ideologies embedded in the artifacts of education (policy, instructional materials). As Swartz (2009) asserts, instructional materials that portray African Americans as “devoiced victims” even when there is evidence to the contrary are “in need of counternarratives that speak and act back on the hegemonic and hierarchical use of knowledge that historic systemic forces continuously work to maintain” (p. 1061). The element of the tenet of experiential knowledge takes into consideration the lived realities of those who express critique but generally do so outside the mainstream political discourse. In the field of education, “the lived reality of families, students, and educators is out there and often not represented by educational policy actors” (Marshall & Gerstl-Pepin, 2005, p. 86). This analysis of opportunities and obstacles to the participation of groups underrepresented in policy development and implementation is also informed by the literature on democratic theory and participatory democratic theory concerning individuals’ involvement and power to participate in decisions affecting them (Marsh, 2007). Participatory democratic theory helps identify components of joint work and community practice and speaks to how decisions are made, who is at the table (whose voice matters), and how those representations and competing values affect desired outcomes (Marsh, 2007). Marshall and Gerstl-Pepin (2005) offer a model for understanding educational politics and policy that draws on multiple critical and postmodern theories. They suggest the inclusion of counternarratives and counter publics in decision-making processes to center the needs and lived realities of those marginalized by the hegemonic policy arena. Through the framework comprised of CRT and democratic theory (i.e., deliberative democracy) we consider the potential of counternarratives and counter publics to shape critical policy narratives that would articulate a sense of priorities and refocus the prevailing discourse on the unmet needs of those historically excluded from constructing knowledge through textbooks and curriculum materials distributed for use in K-12 classrooms.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

The average person views the acquisition of knowledge as a functional process in which one learns to read, write, speak, calculate, and listen in order to become a productive citizen with opportunities for upward mobility. In this manner, knowledge is perceived as a nonpolitical function. Michael Apple’s (2000) description of knowledge challenges traditional perceptions by illuminating that a root cause of struggles between groups is to have their knowledge and history included in curriculum. As educators, Apple (2000) argues, “our aim should not be to create ‘functional literacy,’ but critical literacy, powerful literacy, political literacy which enables the growth of genuine understanding and control of all of the spheres of social life in which we participate.” (p. 42). Essentially, knowledge is socially constructed and associated with power and the small percentage of people (usually within a capitalist market) that recognize that knowledge is power also realize that the circulation of knowledge is a part of the social distribution of power, and tend to hold on tightly to their span of control expressed through the determination of not only what books are published but the content of those books. The importance of textbooks within our nation’s school districts derives from their role as a vehicle through which culture is taught, a culture representing interests relating to what people hold dear: their experiences, struggles, contributions, and overall history. Furthermore, textbook content has the ability to influence the direction students take as they venture through life. The relationships between voice, representation, knowledge/power, and identity can be exposed through the interrogation of textbook selection and adoption processes. STRUGGLES OVER CONTROL OF KNOWLEDGE AND ACCESS

Controversies over what should and should not be taught in schools, who has access to particular content, and how people are represented often center on the textbook, a major instructional material used in K-12 schools. The production and dissemination of textbooks coincides with the production and dissemination of knowledge. Precisely “because of their power to define what gets taught, textbooks have been socially contested for decades” (Sleeter, 2005, p. 85). According to Spring (2008), from World War II to the present, Native Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans have demanded that public schools recognize their distinct cultures and incorporate these cultures into curricula and textbooks. On the other hand, there have existed policies intended to force groups of people to abandon their cultures, language, and customs in order to indoctrinate them to accept governmental policies and pledge allegiance to the U.S. As Spring (2008) reminds us: In 1889, Commissioner Morgan wrote a bulletin on Indian Education that outlined the goals and policies of Indian schools. Williams T. Harris, commissioner of education, praised the new education for our American Indians, particularly the effort to obtain control of the Indian at an early age, and to seclude him as much as possible from the tribal influences. The systematizing of Indian education was demonstrated through

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English only language requirements within schools and program emphasis on vocational training for jobs identified as patriotic. Indians were not allowed to speak their native languages or practice native customs, but were instead required to attend character trainings were saturated with moral ideas, love of truth and fidelity in duty, duties of citizens, and systematic habits of patriotism. (p. 35)

The following section reveals the struggles that many racial and ethnic minority groups (i.e., African Americans, Mexican Americans) have engaged in to have their histories and perspectives infused into the instructional material and overall curriculum in schools. CONTESTING MASTER NARRATIVES OF DIVERSITY AND DOMINANCE

Education is a key vehicle for forming individuals’ attitudes about other groups, both domestically and in other countries; education also helps shape a student’s fundamental attitude toward society (Greany, 2006). The presence of even a small amount of biased reading material can be a problem since reading material can contribute to the development of stereotypical negative attitudes, especially when it confirms unjustified perceptions held by others. In both developed and developing countries, textbook publishers have tended to devote insufficient attention to the positive and negative roles that reading materials play in framing young people’s attitude toward others. Although most textbook content does not contain material that overtly fosters inappropriate views of others, some materials, especially history books, promote versions of history and views that have the potential to undermine social cohesion (Greaney, 2006, p. 48). Textbooks, in particular, have helped promote highly idealized views of one nation or group of people (Elson, 1964; Greany, 2006; Venezky, 1992). In contrast, the content of textbooks tends to misrepresent political minority groups’ histories in the struggle to gain their civil rights (Aldridge, 2006; Bose, 2008; Brown & Brown, 2010a). For instance, researchers have noted the prevalence of textbooks to downplay the agency and voice of African American activists such as Martin Luther King (Aldridge, 2006) and Rosa Parks and their activism, for instance during the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Kohl, 2005). Aldridge (2006) describes how master narratives have operated in high school history textbooks to portray the work of Dr. Martin L. King Jr. He argues that these representations reproduce master narratives that not only misrepresent the context of the struggle but also preclude students’ adoption of critical perspectives. Similarly, Swartz (2009) describes how textbooks reflecting hegemonic diversity “provide token inclusions; sanitize oppressive, violent, and unjust conditions through distortion; and deny access to the emancipatory messages inherent in more accurate accounts of history” (p. 1060). For example, Brown and Brown (2010b) analyzed K-12 textbooks using a framework of CRT and cultural memory and found that racial violence toward African American receive minimal and/or distorted attention in most K-12 texts. Bose (2008) has raised similar concerns about cultural memory and accuracy in the controversy over the representation of Hindu history in California social science textbooks. Researchers 21

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(Aldridge, 2006; Brown & Brown, 2010b; Pinto, 2007; Swartz, 1992, 2009) express concerns about the limitation that such texts pose for the capacity of students to fully understand race and racial inequality in the history of the United States. When students interact uncritically with such texts there is the risk of indoctrination, which is “inconsistent with a democratic vision of education” (Pinto, 2007). Loewen (2009) also critiques American history textbooks and provides recommendations for history teachers to increase students’ critical literacy by confronting marginalized histories. More recently, in 2010, Mexican Americans have been fighting with school officials to include the roles Mexican Americans have played in American history in textbooks with the intention of exposing all students to contributions from diverse groups to American history. However, neither the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE), an elected 15-member board including the Commissioner of Education, is responsible for overseeing the public education system nor the Arizona Governor Jan Brewer shared the perspectives offered by Mexican Americans on the telling of American history. Governor Jan Brewer signed HB 2281, which outlaws ethnic studies in public and charter schools in Arizona and according to Kramer (2010), specifically targets one such program in Tucson that incorporates the teachings of Paulo Freire, including his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). HB 2281 also bans classes that it claims: – Promote resentment toward a race or class of people; – Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group; or – Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals. On a similar note, Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) recommended that César Chávez, a Mexican American civil rights leader who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, be excluded from textbooks. This recommendation was later rescinded. However, it was reported by James C. McKinley in the New York Times that one Hispanic board member walked out of the meeting in frustration saying, “they can just pretend this is White America and Hispanics don’t exist” (New York Times, 2010). According to Swartz (1992) the debates over issues of diversity in the curriculum are about struggles between emancipatory curriculum and hegemonic curriculum based on Eurocentric master scripts that K-12 schooling imparts to students. “In education, the master script refers to classroom pedagogy, and instructional materials-as well as to the theoretical paradigms from which these aspects are constructed-that are grounded in Eurocentric and white supremacist ideologies” (Swartz, 1992, p. 341). Instead, Swartz argues that emancipatory narratives that draw on African and Indigenous worldviews should permeate the curriculum. However, this seems increasingly unlikely as “market mergers of the past decade have put the production of vast amounts of school knowledge for U.S. children in the hands of European corporations which own a majority of the major textbook companies” that produce textbooks for the U.S. market (Swartz, 2009, p. 1069). In other words, those who produce and profit from the sales of textbooks 22

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that present master scripts idealizing European cultures are typically not those who have been raised with African and Indigenous worldviews and cultural memory. Swartz (2009) asserts that master scripts operate through systemic forces that are political, economic, social, and historical. Concerns over who has the authority and expert knowledge to represent a group’s history and cultural memory complicate notions of representation and voice. As Bose (2008) describes in the textbook controversy that occurred in California during 2005-2006, multiple groups with divergent perspectives challenged the content and offered contradicting positions on the (mis)representations of Hindu religion and culture. This account of textbook controversy details the complexity in the politics of representation due to multiple communities and group heterogeneity. This complexity suggests that we provide some explanation of how we intend to deploy the related concept of voice. Baker (1999) asserts that voice, identity, and representation have been considered cognate terms and presumed to bear some relationship to the construction of knowledge and the circulation of power. She adds that voice is (among other things) a political strategy, suggesting that systems of inclusion/exclusion do not lie in direct parallel with vocal expression and silence. For instance, power can be veiled in silence. Censorship is one method used to silence what can be said through textbooks, which too often are those experiences that are of interest to students (Ravitch, 2004). There are also areas of silence that occur between the policy and practice of textbook adoption processes. Those who convene policymakers, draft policy, translate policy into practice, and make critical decisions play an influential yet largely invisible role in what later presents as controversies. What happens during policy development and change or during the pre-adoption phase sets the stage for later controversies over what is content is reflected in textbooks. More research is needed that explores the forces that create conditions for the reproduction of master scripts in textbooks and the social exclusion of actors in decisions affecting textbook adoption. Despite the controversies over the content within textbooks there has been little research conducted on textbook adoption processes (Tulley & Farr, 1985; Pinto, 2007; Stein, Stuen, Carnine, & Long 2001; Watts-Taffe, 2006). The practice of asking who participates in the production of knowledge is also the practice of deliberative democracy. Deliberative or discursive democracy reflects a joint activity of people talking about something that happened outside of their immediate setting; making practical decisions about what is to happen next; and then publicly reflecting on what just happened … [and] … rationally weighing alternatives on the basis of earlier knowledge. (Varenne, 2007, p. 1569)

Deliberative democracy that brings counterpublics together to critique inequalities offers the best possibility for change in a democracy (Fraser, 1994). The identification of critical perspectives and multiple voices focused on how racism operates through policy advocacy and implementation becomes an important component in promoting equitable curriculum/instructional policy. We suggest 23

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counternarrative methods for bringing multiple perspectives and voices (and lack thereof) to the forefront of policy development and implementation. METHODS

Public documents from the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) describing the state of Florida’s policy and practices related to curriculum were collected for review; these included: rubrics for the evaluation of instructional materials, interest group letters, State Adoption Process Chart, project charter on Florida’s plan for digital instruction, and an online training course on the adoption process that has been part of the preparation of committee members involved in the selection, evaluation, and adoption of instructional materials. These documents were analyzed for the presence of dominant narratives, expressions of power, and the opportunities and challenges they present for the participation of competing voices in the curriculum. Document analysis through the tenets of CRT focused attention on the role of individuals and organizations in shaping policy development and concern on the representation of people from racial and ethnic political minority groups (i.e., Asians, Hispanic/Latinos/as, African Americans). The following section presents the textbook adoption process in Florida relative to current state statutes and pending policy changes concerning the adoption of curricular and instructional materials. ASPECTS OF THE PROCESS OF ADOPTING CURRICULAR AND INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL IN FLORIDA

In 2008, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 1908, now Section 1003.41, Florida Statutes – Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS). In the FDOE’s report Priorities for Evaluating Instructional Materials (2008), attention is given culture and diversity and more specifically, the misrepresentation of minorities and cultures. The author of the report cites Watts-Taffe (2005) and her recommendations on how to rectify the problem of the peripheral treatment of diverse groups: 1) Include items related to respect for diversity in evaluation protocols and 2) build respect for diversity into frameworks and standards and in any bid specifications for publishers. The report describes the importance of multicultural fairness and advocacy in the evaluation of materials. “Fairness requires a balanced representation of cultures and groups. The materials should support equal opportunity without regard for age, gender, disability, national origin, race, or religion, and should represent multiple settings, occupations, careers, and lifestyles” (Priorities for evaluating instructional materials, 2008, p. 34). Furthermore, the report Priorities for Evaluating Instructional Materials (2008) describes what is meant by multicultural advocacy: Advocacy requires embracing a multicultural context, not just through pictures, but through information about ways to honor differences and deal with conflicts, promote a positive self-image for members of all groups, and provide for the development of healthy attitudes and values. Portrayals must promote an understanding and

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appreciation of the importance and contributions of diverse cultures and heritage. (p. 34)

The report notes the following strategy offered by Watts-Taffe (2005) for promoting respect for diversity during the selection process: “Compose evaluation committees to include diverse perspectives, which are representative of the diversity in the community, subject-specific knowledge, and pedagogical knowledge” (p. 114). This recommendation also includes suggestions made by Chambliss and Calfee (1998) to construct committees comprised of teachers who are knowledgeable in the subject-matter content and pedagogy, from diverse backgrounds, and educated and experienced in teaching a wide variety of students. They also suggest that the diversity among participating parents can serve to represent the diversity among the student population served. To what extent are these recommendations for assuring multicultural fairness and advocacy, and convening diverse committees evident in the policies and procedures of textbook selection? Swartz (2009) speculates about the conditions that make it possible for master scripts to enter social studies textbooks even when more accurate scholarship is available. She suggests, either the experts gathered together to produce social studies textbooks are decidedly Eurocentric in their knowledge and perspectival frameworks or these expert voices are submerged by editors, who in line with corporate interests … use an additive approach to include ‘others’ without changing the basic master narrative. (Swartz, 2009, p. 1063)

The evaluation of instructional material is dependent on committee membership, so in order to understand how state policy is implemented and to determine which instructional materials enter classrooms there needs to be more attention given to who is selected, who hails from diverse backgrounds, and how the committees are formed at the state and local levels. DIVERSITY OF THE COMMITTEE

Textbook adoption is not only controlled by the market, but also by state textbook adoption policies. Given that textbooks are a key vehicle for forming students’ attitudes about other groups and shaping their fundamental views toward society, the role of textbook selection committee members is a crucial one. Committee members are imperative because they represent multiple stakeholders. Who are the committee members? What are their experiences? How do the committee members come to be selected? First we introduce the statute guiding the selection of the committee and requirements for committee participation. The Department of Education receives nominations from school districts, professional and educational associations, and civic organizations and makes appointments to the committee. The Florida Commissioner of Education will select a minimum of ten members for each subject area committee to review and recommend instructional materials for adoption. The committee is comprised of ten or more members who should represent the demographic and cultural diversity of 25

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the state. At least 50 percent of the members are required to be classroom teachers certified in an area directly related to the academic content area or level being considered for adoption. The remainder of the committee is comprised as follows: two lay citizens, one district school board member, and two supervisors of teachers. The term of appointment is 18 months. According to the document Priorities for Evaluating Instructional Materials (2008), “committees are expected to reflect the diversity of Florida’s population and to have the capacity/expertise to address the broad racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and cultural diversity of students in Florida’s schools” (p. 83). According to the census bureau (2009), the racial diversity in Florida is as described below (see Table 1). Table 1. Florida State Demographic Profile According to the U.S. Census (2009) Racial Groups White persons Black persons American Indian and Alaska Native persons Asian persons Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander persons Persons reporting two or more races Persons of Hispanic or Latino origin White persons not Hispanic

Percentage of Florida’s Population 79.4% 16.1% 0.5% 2.4% 0.1% 1.5% 21.5% 59.5%

Given the recommendation for diverse representation among the committee members, one would expect the racial and ethnic diversity of the committee to be reflective of the state’s population. Additionally, as a measure of accountability, the FLDOE was charged with making public not only the names and addresses of committee members but their racial and ethnic diversity as well. In our view, the State of Florida has presented a number of opportunities for multiple voices to participate in the state adoption committee. For instance, as stated above, state policy provided for diverse ethnicities, community voices, and content area experts (to include 50% of the instructional personnel actually utilizing the curriculum on a daily basis). However, despite the opportunities made available for equal utilization of voice as democratic participatory theory suggests, information is not made available specifying how one may take advantage of the opportunities delineated on the website. The ambiguity related to the selection process creates a barrier to the good faith efforts on behalf of the state to create and make such opportunities public and available. Furthermore, according to the Instructional Materials Nomination form, in order to be eligible to serve on the SIMC, a nomination form completed by a nominator is preferred but not required. However, the website does not indicate the requirements necessary to become a nominator or even how one becomes eligible to serve as a nominator. Although it is not required for a prospective SIMC member to be nominated by a nominator, one seriously interested in serving as a 26

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member may want to know the specific requirements of a nominator in an effort to identify and increase one’s opportunity for selection. Similarly, we would like to reflect on the previously stated Florida’s evaluation rubric. “Diversity: Committees are expected to reflect the diversity of Florida’s population and to have the capacity/expertise to address the broad racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and cultural diversity of students in Florida’s schools” (Priorities for evaluating instructional materials, 2008, p. 83). The Bureau of Curriculum and Instruction should be commended for supporting the selection of committee members that have the expertise and background to identify curriculum that will reflect the diverse population of Florida and its students. According to 1006.29 State instructional materials committees, each school year, not later than April 15, the commissioner shall appoint state instructional materials committees and make the names and mailing addresses public. Yet after our extensive search of the website after April 15th to identify the committee members we were unable to identify any information regarding the names, occupations, backgrounds, expertise or other demographic data reflecting the priority outlined above. Four months after requesting information from the commissioner regarding the committee members, we have yet to receive a response. CONCERNS ABOUT THE EVALUATION OF MULTICULTURAL CONTENT

There is a section on the evaluation form to be used by committee members in their evaluation of instructional materials for multicultural representation which asks the following questions: “If gender, ethnicity, age, work situations, and various social groups have been portrayed, has the portrayal been fair and unbiased? Is there a balanced representation of cultures and groups in multiple settings, occupations, careers, and lifestyles? Is there an integration of social diversity throughout the instructional materials?” (Priorities for evaluating instructional materials, 2008, p. 3) This approach to the evaluation of multicultural representation reduces the evaluation process concerning diversity to a few questions that stand alone rather than serve as a lens to be used throughout the evaluation. The questions suggest that committee members focus on the representation of diversity in the materials while ignoring the diversity of the student population to be served by the instructional materials. Also problematic is that questions in other sections of the evaluation form are written as if evaluators are to consider a monolithic, rather than culturally diverse, group of students: “Are the language and concepts used familiar to students?” (State Committee Evaluation Form, p. 6) “Are there tasks related to student interests, and activities relevant to the student’s life?” (p. 7) Who are the students one considers when faced with these questions? Do they share languages, interests, and activities? Furthermore, even if a committee member or members evaluate the material as inadequate in its satisfaction of the requirements under the section on multicultural representation, is it only one of eight areas under content to be reviewed alongside: alignment with curriculum, level of treatment, expertise of authorship, accuracy, 27

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currentness, authenticity, and portrayal of humanity. Content is only one of three areas, and the only to raise attention to issues of social diversity. In this construction diversity remains marginalized in the overall evaluation process. Where the process is structured to marginalize diversity concerns in the evaluation and selection of instructional materials, the requirements for 1) training that supports cultural sensitivity and 2) diverse backgrounds of the committee members and education or experience with a diversity range of student populations ought to help maintain concerns for diversity in the process. It is to these two areas (training, committee membership) that we now turn our attention. STATE INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS TRAINING PROVIDED

Historically, many adoption processes have been criticized for not providing adequate training for selection committee members. However, the online instructional materials training program is a legal requirement for all persons serving on the instructional materials committee to participate in training before beginning the review and selection process as defined by Florida State statute 1006.295. This comprehensive training program models the policies and procedures aligned in the Florida Instructional Materials adoption catalog and is meant to “assist committee members in developing the skills necessary to make valid, culturally sensitive, and objective decisions regarding the content and rigor of instructional materials” (Priorities for evaluating instructional materials, 2008, p. 83). The training is comprised of 5 modules also accessible to the public. The goal of the training is to adopt the highest quality instructional material for Florida’s teachers. Florida refers to the term adopted as materials of the highest quality recommended for public schools. The word quality quickly takes precedence in the context of what we consider appropriate content knowledge for k-12 students and is defined by Merriam-Webster as a degree of excellence and superior in kind. Given that each committee member is charged with fulfilling the role of evaluating how well instructional materials meet the State of Florida evaluation criteria and making recommendations to the Commissioner of Education, it is imperative that there be a thorough process to ensure the selection of committee members in an effort to identify persons with the knowledge and experience necessary to select the materials that will shape the minds and possible the future direction of students. Again, one would have to gain access to that information in an effort to make a sound judgment of the level of background and expertise a committee member has that will impact their ability to choose texts to best meet the needs of all students. The online training includes a description of the adoption process, explanations of the modules, training, frequent learning assessment quizzes, and instructional evaluation activities that provide trainees and opportunity to apply content to the evaluation of a fictitious text. It is a comprehensive program that covers the five modules as follows: Module 1. Introduction – Provides an overview of the adoption process. The major objectives of this module is to assist committee members with understanding 28

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the evaluation process, learning how to use state committee evaluation forms, and how to rate instructional materials according to specific evaluation criteria. This module prioritizes the criteria for evaluation beginning with content (what is taught and if it meets benchmarks), followed by presentation (graphics, colors, ease of use, pacing, readability, and organization) and concluding with learning (instructional methods and assessments) Module 2. Content – Orients committee members to applying content criteria to the evaluation instructional materials. The content review includes determining whether the content aligns with curriculum, the appropriate level of treatment, authors’ expertise for content development, accuracy, currentness, authenticity, multicultural representation, and humanity and compassion. Module 3. Presentation – Evaluates the comprehensiveness of student and teacher resources by the integrity and alignment of instructional components with each other, organization, readability, pacing, and ease of use. Module 4. Learning – Applying the various learning criteria by reviewing instructional materials for motivational strategies, teaching a few big ideas, explicit instruction, guidance and support, active student participation, instructional and assessment strategies, and features that maintain learner motivation. Module 5. Summary – Summarizes the training and outlines the next steps in the process for committee members. A value is assigned to the modules in terms of importance with content being the lead. The e-forum is available for committee members to share ideas regarding previous and current adoption processes and the training, thereby leaving room for continuous improvement. However, the information is available to the public as a “read only” leaving no discussion/comment forum public to ideas related to the adoption process. The public and the State Instructional Materials Committee (SIMC) stand to mutually benefit if given the capability to post online comments related to the example, a fictitious Health textbook accompanies the training with the intent to provide trainees opportunities to apply curriculum evaluation skills acquired in the content, presentation, and learning modules. Guests participating in the training may have valuable ideas based on their evaluation ratings. However, online discussions from the 2009 mathematics adoption were partially available with differing levels of access threads including new (new posts made since you last viewed this thread), locked (no new post made in this thread), open (all committee members view and post in this thread), and closed (only the original poster and designated Office of Instructional Materials staff may view and post to this thread), and sticky threads (threads sorted at the top of the forum index). All discussion forums were made available for the most recent science adoption and the 2011-2012 social studies adoption. CRITERIA OF OBJECTIVITY IN SOCIAL STUDIES CONTENT

In the social studies specifications for the 2011-2012 state adoption of instructional material is the criterion Accuracy of Content: Content must be accurate in historical context and contemporary facts and concepts. This criterion is based on 29

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Florida Statutes, Sections 1006.38(8); 1006.31(4)(e); 1006.35, and is described as follows under the requirement of objectivity: Objectivity. Content that is included in the materials must accurately represent the domain of knowledge and events. It should be factual and objective. It must be free of mistakes, errors, inconsistencies, contradictions within itself, and biases of interpretation. It should be free of the biased selection of information. Materials should distinguish between facts and possible interpretations or opinions expressed about factual information. Visuals or other elements of instruction should contribute to the accuracy of text or narrative. (Social studies specification, 2010, p. 72)

Furthermore, Section 1003.42, F.S., requires instruction that presents American history through one perspective. “American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence” (Social studies specification, 2010, p. 3). This requirement guides content included by publishers as well as the evaluation process of the selection committee. This section contrasts the recommendations for multiple perspectives, forecloses postmodern and critical approaches to teaching that bring attention to multiple realities, perspectives, and master narratives such as the only principles operating are those in the Declaration of Independence. For instance, American history viewed as “the creation of a new nation” based the principles stated in one document (the Declaration of Independence) contrasts views that the creation of the new nation in American history included the destruction of many older nations. Despite claims of objectivity in American history textbooks, they tend to serve the interests of some groups (i.e., elite, White, English speaking) over others (Anyon, 2011). MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION: A HUMAN RELATIONS APPROACH THROUGH CONTRIBUTIONS AND ADDITIONS

According to section 1003.42, F.S., required instruction includes attention to particular ethnic and racial groups. The statute focused on African American history reads: (h) The history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans. (Social studies specifications, 2010, p. 3)

Four of the five sections of the statute that include attention to African American history focus on slavery. This does not reflect an interest in seeking balance concerning the history of African Americans. Implied in this framing is that the history of African people pivots on the institution of slavery rather than more complex structures such as imperialism and colonialism. A balanced representation in the statute toward multicultural fairness concerning African American history would encourage more than the contributions of African Americans to society. The emphasis on contributions can be fulfilled through curriculum devoid of conflict. 30

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To address the contributions of African Americans to American History in a balanced manner one would have to acknowledge the obstacles to their participation and the many forms and faces of oppression that continue to exist such as violence, cultural imperialism, powerlessness, exploitation, and marginalization (Young, 1990). A single and explicit focus on contributions occurs in the statute regarding teaching about Hispanics (Latinos/as) and women: “(p) The study of Hispanic contributions to the United States and (q) The study of women’s contributions to the United States” (Social studies specifications, 2010). This section of the statute does not operate in isolation, but is informed by other sections such as those that support patriotic goals and are delineated as Required Instruction in Section 1003.42 of the Florida Statutes in relation to social studies content (i.e., flag). For instance, section “s” reads: “The character-development curriculum shall stress the qualities of patriotism,” while section “t” reads, “In order to encourage patriotism, the sacrifices that veterans have made in serving our country and protecting democratic values worldwide” are to be included in the curriculum (Florida Statutes, p. 3). The focus on contributions challenges the purported purpose and completeness of social studies education in Florida. “A complete social studies education ensures our nation an informed, responsible, and well-educated citizenry” (Social Studies Specifications for the 2010-2011 Florida State Adoption of Instructional Materials, 2010, p. 1). Multicultural theorists have criticized the advancement of depoliticized and sanitizing approaches (such as the contributions approach and the additive approach) to multicultural curriculum (none of which were cited in the report guiding the evaluation of instructional materials). “Most textbooks reflect an additive approach to multicultural curriculum” (Sleeter, 2005, p. 87) in which concepts, themes, or content is added to an otherwise unchanged lesson, unit, or course (Banks, 1999). A similar approach is the contributions approach, described by Sleeter and Grant (2003) as the inclusion of content that consists largely of cultural artifacts, holidays, heroes or heroines. In other words the contributions of groups are added without attention to their daily navigation of complex structures or that which challenges dominant narratives of American society as a model for the values of equality and fairness. Textbooks tend to sanitize what they mention about racial issues when they are contributed and fail to include counternarratives that offer historical accounts and interpretations that run counter to the dominant narratives (Sleeter, 2005). The contributions approach and the additive approach are two that reflect the human relations approach to multicultural education (Sleeter & Grant, 2003). This approach to multicultural education is popular among White elementary teachers and most reflective of assimilation as cultural differences are taught only to the extent necessary to improve students’ selfconcepts (McDougall, 2003). In the effort to increase academic achievement and motivation for students, teachers should make learning relevant to the real life experiences, backgrounds, and interests of students. High quality educational experiences do not exist when ethnic groups and their contributions to the development of history, life, or culture 31

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are ignored or demeaned (Gay, 2000). Including content about diverse cultures, ethnic groups, and their contributions to society into curriculum combined with employing teaching strategies and activities in response to the content creates a culturally responsive classroom. Multicultural content provides a broad understanding of culture to all students, creates an environment that restores trust in democracy through the equalization of knowledge of various cultural and social contributions of diverse groups, and most of all it establishes “educational relevance so that students of color may perform successfully on all levels” (Gay, 2000). However, textbooks identified as multicultural textbooks also reproduce culturally harmful knowledge about groups (i.e., racial, ethnic, rural) historically devalued or ignored (Ayalon, 2003; Wynter, 1990). Therefore the educational experience and training of committee members must extend beyond a superficial exposure to multicultural education to include critical literacy (Apple, 2000). TASK FORCE ON AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

One of the requirements of membership on a form detailing information for prospective members of the state instructional materials committee is the stipulation for lay citizens. SIMC requires that persons serving as lay citizens may be parents, community members, or retired educators having an interest in education but are not currently professionally associated with education. There are organizations with a primary charge to assure that groups that have historically been devalued or ignored in curriculum are infused in the curriculum and represented appropriately (free from negative and harmful stereotypes) whose members can serve as lay persons. An example of such an organization is the State of Florida’s African American History Task Force. The task force advocates for teaching the history of African peoples and the contributions of African Americans to society to students in Florida’s schools. The goals of the task force include promoting awareness, understanding, and the infusing of the required instruction legislation that addresses the African and African American experience into the curriculum of Florida’s schools, the development of instructional guidelines, standardized framework, and supplemental materials /resources that include the African and African American experience, providing pre- and in-service training for implementation of the required instruction using various technologies and materials, and making recommendations to the Commissioner of Education and the appropriate Florida Department of Education leaders that support the full implementation of the required instruction mandate. The task force also works to ensure awareness of the requirements, identify and recommend needed state education leadership action, assist in adoption of instructional materials by the state, and build supporting partnerships (Mission Statement). The task force can be instrumental in assuring that African American history is included in the curriculum. However, all of their efforts and contributions are not clearly delineated on the website and are consequently not widely

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publicized. Whether politicians utilize their efforts as a voice to actually influence policy is not discernable from the information provided. TRAINING PROCESSES AND RESOURCES FOR COMMITTEE MEMBERS

While completing the evaluation exercise utilized a fictitious health book, we came to an important observation. Within the textbook, figure five on page eight displays a picture of a boy who appears to be a person of color (perhaps from a Latino ethnic group) with a caption above that reads “Living in an area with a high crime rate increases stress.” Also, on page 12 - figure two, are two boys who appear to be of African descent with a caption above that reads, “An addiction to illegal substances can impact you physically and emotionally.” To the right of that image and caption in the Reading Check section the statement reads, “Risky behaviors like consumption of alcohol or drugs, reckless driving or pre-marital sex can be reduced and avoided by examining one’s own behaviors and making necessary changes.” This information is applicable to all teens as indicated in the question, however, anti-social behaviors were paired with pictures of Black and Brown complexioned youth. This pairing demonstrates the need for members of the state instructional materials committee to have expertise in diversity and sensitivity within textbooks in an effort to eliminate the possibility misrepresenting groups by assigning and reinforcing negative stereotypes (overgeneralizations about groups of people based on preconceived notions). The pages in the textbook were not pages from an actual textbook, but were created for training purposes. Trainees were expected to evaluate the text and assess their rating by comparing their evaluation rating to that of the instructional materials trainer rating. Throughout the training our ratings tended to be consistent with the trainer ratings. However, after having confidently rated multicultural content as insufficient due to the stereotypical images with captions we found our rating differed from the trainer ratings (which provided a higher rating). As a result of the different ratings, we focused again on the pending questions related to the demographic makeup and experience of the committee as well as the level of involvement the task force has in the adoption process. As groups vie for voice at the decision making table regarding textbook adoption, are authentic opportunities made available for their participation? Do they really have seats at the table? FINDINGS

Our research suggests that there is a lack of transparency in the textbook selection process, insufficient information on the opportunities available for democratic participation, and an imbalance in the groups’ participation in the process of selecting instructional materials. Furthermore, there are missed opportunities for increasing participation among groups representing a broad spectrum of cultural and racial diversity.

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Lack of Transparency and Insufficient Information on Participation Requirements for persons interested in becoming a member of the SIMC Committee were available on the website. However, no information was available in terms how one would come to be selected other than the availability of a nomination form. The requirements state that although not mandatory, it is recommended that a nominator nominate a prospective committee member. Information was not available detailing a list of nominators or the criteria for becoming a nominator. Democratic participation, which provides opportunities for participation and the equalization of voice, is not possible without sufficient information indicating how one may become involved in the process. While this could be an oversight, analyses through a critical race lens beg the question of whether the lack of transparency is a structurally embedded strategy of silence and invisibility facilitating social exclusion or marginalization. The fact of marginalization raises basic structural issues of justice concerning the appropriateness of a connection between participation in productive activities of social cooperation on one hand and access to the means of consumption on the other. Marginalization involves deprivation of institutional conditions necessary for exercising power in a context of recognition and interaction (Young, 1990). Participation Imbalance At the local level teachers select from texts that have been pre-identified by the SIMC committee, so they have little influence to determine curriculum or opportunity to make their voices heard at the decision making table. Currently, the SIMC guidelines call for 10 or more members composed of at least 50% certified classroom teachers in subject area, two lay persons, two supervisors of teachers, and one district school board member. However, the state board of education has a five-year timeline for a project to have all instructional materials provided in digital formats. The shift to digital instructional materials includes proposed changes to the adoption process that threaten to minimize the opportunities for democratic participation and social justice for culturally diverse groups. The proposed changes to the committee design include the substitution of the aforementioned participants for post secondary experts in content areas who will review digital content submitted for adoption and provide feedback through a digital review system. Teachers would then review expert recommended content digitally to ensure usability of digital content and provide feedback to the department (Project Charter on Florida’s Five Year Plan for Digital Instruction, p. 3, 2011). This proposed change to the adoption of instructional materials reduces the role of teachers in the process as well as lay persons who are not mentioned at all in the proposed process. Furthermore, the entire process would result in a digital review of materials in place of the now required face-to-face meetings and paper evaluations and ballots. There is the possibility that imbalances in representation will be further veiled by a process that is entirely online and obscure questions necessary for awareness 34

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and critical literacy about textbook adoption that stakeholders need in order to participate in the processes and policy making. On the other hand, there are possibilities that digital media provide for stakeholders to participate in the development of policy concerning the use and adoption of instructional materials. The possibilities for the use of narratives in a digital age to inform policy affecting the adoption of textbooks and other instructional materials are discussed as recommendations. RECOMMENDATIONS

The analysis of current policy, practices, and pending changes concerning the adoption of instructional materials reveals several areas that fail to foster fairness in racial group representation during textbook adoption (transparency in committee representation, training, evaluation), instructional content (i.e., statutes forwarding a contributions approach), and in the participation of stakeholders (task force). Given this, we offer the following recommendations. Counternarratives: Little Stories Can Tell the Bigger Picture Counternarratives are stories that reflect the critical perspectives of storytellers and challenge injustice. Critical literacy can be coupled with narratives of those whose stories are seldom told for their perspectives can be used to foster critical policy analyses by communities and by teachers. Critical policy analysis that brings together macro- and micro-level perspectives can facilitate empowerment leading to active participation in both policy interpretation and policy construction (Vidovich, 2007). While narratives have been used in England to inform policy development (Macleod & Griffiths, 2008) they have not been as welcome in the development of educational policy in the United States. However, Griffiths and Macleod (2008) suggest that autobiographical methods are suited for inclusion in decisions that guide policy as little stories have the potential to refine the bigger picture. Finally, because of the ability of auto/biography to capture the individual experience in the wider social context, and to represent complex and nuanced situations, this approach has a contribution to make not simply to questions of ‘what works?’ but issues such as why, when and in what circumstances, what works, and why, when and where it does not. (Griffiths & Macleod, 2008, p. 38)

Recommendations for countering the resistance to the participation of more diverse groups and inclusive practices are the use of personal narratives in curriculum policy reform (Griffiths & Macleod, 2008). More specifically, we suggest the construction of individual and composite counternarratives in the tradition of CRT (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Since stories shape what, or how people think by influencing the readers’, listeners’ or viewers’ perspectives about a problem or issue; and therefore can change values and decisions. Thus it is imperative that the voices of students, parents, and teachers be included in policy in an effort to 35

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transform policy to directly meet the curricular needs of students. The voices of those excluded (especially those for whom the policy is intended to serve) can be useful in policy making related to the selection of instructional materials. Digital Initiatives and Narratives in Curriculum Policy With technological advances come changes that can both hinder and advance participation concerning various aspects of curriculum policy. While counterpublics are generally convened as face-to-face encounters, digital forms of communication and collaboration can also take place in communities that have been on the fringe of participation. Australia provides an example of a country’s use of multiple methods (online surveys and face to face forums) to encourage participation in curriculum policy development and implementation. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) sought feedback from teachers, school leaders, students, professional associations, universities, teacher unions, parents, industry and the general public on a draft of a national curriculum. The survey provided qualitative and quantitative data through open-ended questions and rating-scale questions. In order to login and view content, survey takers had to provide some personal information rather than participate anonymously. ACARA received 3650 responses to the survey. Furthermore, the survey was coupled with public forums across Australian Territories and components of the curriculum were piloted in various schools. A report on the collection and analysis of data is accessible online in the Draft K-10 Consultation Report V 4. The increasing development in digital textbooks promises to bring an expanded range of content and foster collaborative decision-making on content in Florida (Mardis, Everhart, Smith, Newsum & Baker, 2010). Students and teachers will increasingly gain the ability to create custom textbooks in which they can combine chapters from books or other resources, including material they have constructed in a digital platform (i.e., Flexbook). Advances in the use of digital media can also provide an outlet for the creation and dissemination of narratives by various stakeholders. Online discussion forums that are accessible to the public can provide an opportunity for the participation and inclusion of community voice in the adoption training and overall process of selecting instructional materials. Additionally, we recommend that state instructional materials staff develop an online discussion thread for community voice as a vehicle for improvement and resource for committee members. CONCLUSION: CONSTANTLY SHRINKING VOICES

In the midst of research for this chapter concerned with including and expanding the voices of community and educational stakeholders in the textbook adoption process, the participation of multiple and diverse voices continues to dwindle. The governor of Florida, Rick Scott, has approved legislation that reduces the current ten-member committee responsible for reviewing materials and making 36

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recommendations to the educational commissioner down to two subject matter experts selected by the commissioner. As a result, Citizens for National Security, a volunteer group, “formed out of concern about terrorism, is suing governor Rick Scott for what it deems a threat to public schools: new textbook adoption process,” according to a reporter with the Tampa Bay news (Sanders, 2011). They claimed that the law does not provide for transparency in the experts’ discussions and citizens are disenfranchised in the selection process. This news report also states that former Democratic state Rep. Barry Silver asserted that Governor Scott’s procedures push his agenda rather than inviting the voices of the people in Florida to participate in education policy. The concerns expressed by Citizens for National Security reflect some of those that were raised through our analysis and review of the literature. “In the process, they disenfranchised not just us but all citizens from the selection of textbooks,” said William Saxton, Citizens for National Security chairman (Sanders, 2011). However, while the rationale behind the lawsuit headed by the Citizens for National Security arises from concerns about the infusion of Islam into the curriculum, our inquiry was not motivated by such concerns or fears. Rather this chapter proposes to paint the landscape of policy change in Florida with a broader brushstroke. Reduction in the participation of diverse voices (i.e., educators, stakeholders, political and social minority groups) in education policy and practices, especially those concerning curriculum and instruction, and their trend toward shaping policy that is more exclusive than inclusive is both problematic and contradictory for a pluralistic nation that prides itself on having democratic roots and ideals. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

To what extent are diverse educational stakeholders’ (students, parents, teachers) narratives present and influential in policy decisions concerning the curricular needs of students? How can counternarratives serve to affect macro level policy that determines what counts as knowledge? How does the absence of information influence democratic participation in educational policies and practices? In what ways can we increase educational stakeholders’ knowledge of multicultural education? What affect will digital textbooks have on the issue of “voice”? REFERENCES

Anyon, J. (2011). Ideology and United States history textbooks. In J. R. Provenzo, E. F. Provenzo, A. N. Shaver, & M. Bello (Eds.), The textbook as discourse: Sociocultural dimensions of American schoolbooks (pp. 109-139). New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. W. (2000). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York, NY: Routledge.

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RANDRIA WILLIAMS & VONZELL AGOSTO Apple, M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. In M. W. Apple & L. K. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook. London, UK: Routledge. Ayalon, A. (2003). Why is rural education missing from multicultural education textbooks? The Educational Forum, 68(1), 24-31. Baker, B. M. (2002). The hunt for disability: The new eugenics and normalization of school children. Teachers College Record, 104(4), 663-703. Banks, J. A. (1994). An introduction to multicultural education. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Bates, R. (2005). Can’t we just live together?: Towards a global curriculum. Arts & Humanities, 4(1), 95-109. Bose, P. (2008). Hindutva abroad: The California textbook controversy. The Global South, 2(1), 11-34. Brown A. L., & Brown, K. D. (2010). Strange fruit indeed: Interrogating contemporary textbook representations of racial violence toward African Americans. Teachers College Record, 112(1), 3167. Brown, K. D., & Brown, A. L. (2010). Silenced memories: An examination of the sociocultural knowledge on race and racial violence in official school curriculum. Equity & Excellence in Education, 43(2), 139-154. Doyle, W. (1992). Curriculum and pedagogy. In P. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 486-516). New York, NY: Macmillan. Draft K-10 Consultation Report V 4. Australia Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority (ACARA). http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Draft_K-10_Consultation_Report_v4.0.pdf) Elson, R. (1964). Guardians of tradition: American schoolbooks of the nineteenth century. Lincoln, NJ: Princeton University Press. Florida Department of Education, Bureau of Curriculum and Instruction. (2008). Priorities for evaluating instructional materials: Research Update. Retrieved from http://realm.cimes.fsu.edu/ resources/files/researchReportfinal.pdf. Florida Department of Education (2011). Project charter on Florida’s five year plan for digital instruction. Retrieved from http://www.fldoe.org/board/meetings/2011_02_15/digital.pdf. Fraser, N. (1994). After the family wage: gender equity and the welfare state. Political Theory, 22, 591618. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Griffiths, M., & Macleod, G. (2008). Personal narratives and policy: Never the twain shall meet. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42(S1), 121-143. Hirsch, C. R., & Reys, B. J. (2009). Mathematics curriculum: A vehicle for school improvement. ZDM Mathematics Education, 41(6), 749-761. DOI 10.1007/s11858-009-0218-0 Kohl, H. (2005). She would not be moved: How we tell the story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. New York, NY: The New Press. Loewen, J. (2009). Teaching what really happened: How to avoid the tyranny of textbooks and get students excited about doing history. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Marcia M., Everhart, N, Smith, D., Newsum, J., & Baker, S. (2010). From paper to pixel: Digital textbooks. Florida’s Schools Partnerships for Advancing Library Media (PALM) Center, The Florida State University. Marsh, J. (2007). Democratic dilemmas. Joint work, education politics, and community. New York, NY: SunyPress. Marshall, C., & Gerstl-Pepin, C. (2005). Re-framing educational politics for social justice. Boston, MA: Pearson. McDougall, S. C. (2003). Review of Sleeter, C. E., and Grant, C. A. “Making choices for multicultural education.” Education Review. Retrieved from http://www.edrev.info/reviews/rev237.htm. McKinley, J. C. (March 12, 2010) Texas conservatives win curriculum challenge. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html Merriam, S. (2009). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

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MISSING AND SHRINKING VOICES Pinto, L. E. (2007). Textbook publishing, textbooks, and democracy: A case study. Journal of Thought, 42(1-2), 99-121. Ravitch, D. (2004). The language police: How pressure groups restrict what students learn. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Roberts-Schweitzer, E., Greaney, V., & Duar, K. (2006). Promoting social cohesion through education: Case studies and tools for using Textbooks and curricula. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Sanders, K. (August 11, 2011). New lawsuit against Gov. Rick Scott is over new textbook adoption law. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved from http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/new-lawsuitagainst-gov-rick-is-over-new-textbook-adoption-law/1185253. Sleeter, C. E. (2005). Un-standardizing curriculum: Multicultural teaching in the standards based classroom. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Sleeter, C. E., & Grant, C. A. (2003). Making choices for multicultural education: Five approaches to race, class, and gender. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(2), 23-44. DOI: 10.1177/ 107780040200800103. Spring, J. (2008). Deculturalization and the struggle for equality: A brief history of the education of dominated cultures in the United States. 4th Ed. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. State Committee Evaluation Form: Guidelines for the Review of Instructional Materials. Retrieved from http://www.fldoe.org/bii/instruct_mat/pdf/evaluation-form.pdf. State of Florida’s Task force on African American History. Mission Statement. Retrieved from http://www.afroamfl.com/OurMission.aspx. Stein, M. L., Stuen, C., Carnine, D., & Long, R. M. (2001). Textbook evaluation and adoption practices. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 17(1), 5-23. Swartz, E. (1992). Emancipatory narratives: Rewriting the master script in the school curriculum. Journal of Negro Education, 61(3), 341-355. Swartz, E. (2009). Diversity: Gatekeeping knowledge and maintaining inequalities. Review of Educational Research, 69(2), 1044-1083. The National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. A report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education United States Department of Education. Tulley, M., & Farr, R. (1985). Textbook adoption: Insight, impact, and potential. Book Research Quarterly, 1, 4-11. U. S. Department of Education. (2001). The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Washington, DC. U. S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/index.html. U. S. Department of Education. U. S. Census Bureau, Retrieved from http://quickfacts.census.gov/ qfd/states/12000.html. Varenne, H. (2007). Difficult collective deliberations: Anthropological notes toward a theory of education. Teachers College Press, 109(7), 1559-1588. Venezky, R. (1992). Textbooks in school and society. In P. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 436-461). New York, NY: Macmillan. Vidovich, L. (2007). Removing policy from its pedestal: Some theoretical framings and practical possibilities. Educational Review, 59(3), 285-298. Villalpando, O. (2004). Practical considerations of critical race theory and Latino critical theory for Latino college students. New Directions for Student Services,105, 41-50. Watts-Taffe (2006). Textbook selection and respect for diversity in the United States. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Wynter, S. (1990). Do not call us Negroes: How multicultural textbooks perpetuate racism. San Francisco, CA: Aspire. Young, I.M. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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THE RULING IDEAS IN THE TEXTBOOK

Teachers in grades K-12 and textbook publishers in the United States must conform to recently mandated annual tests for all public school students in reading and math in grades three through eight and at least once during grades ten through twelve (US DOE, 2011). States have increasingly adopted standards and accountability policies that increase student assessment. Unlike teachers, textbook publishers have a vested interest in sales of assessment materials. In addition to increased spending on statewide standards-based assessments, there has been growth in the sale of assessment-matched curriculum materials and content standards. In 2010, CTB/McGraw-Hill’s Acuity® was the leader of the “educational assessment industry” (CTB, 2011, para. 1). At the time of this writing, Pearson marketed texts through its Scott Foresman and Prentice Hall divisions that were linked to Pearson Assessment (Pearson, 2011). Houghton Mifflin (which acquired Harcourt Brace) marketed Iowa Assessments based on the Common Core Standards and Edusoft and DataDirector assessment software (Harcourt, 2011). These are just a few of the assessment products offered by textbook publishers; the educational assessment industry is a profitable outgrowth of the standards and assessment movement. Beyond the direct profits made by tapping public funds spent on education, corporations and the individuals who lead them use their power to advance a far more potent project than just direct financial gain – they shape the way we think about the role of government and the relationship between the affluent class and the rest of society. In other words, “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (Marx, Engels, Pascal, Lough, & Magill, 1947, p. 59). In education policy, that means support for the production of workers rather than “to ensure the participation of citizens in government” (Heck, 2004, p. 45), the educated populace championed by Thomas Jefferson. This chapter will connect the dots between the corporate elite and the practices in the K-12 classrooms, by way of the U.S. university system. It will examine the methods by which the power of corporations overtly and more subtly exert control over the rationales that underpin policy decisions in particular support of a mechanistic/structural model of educational systems underlying current standards and accountability policies. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Education has served several functions in American society. One fundamental purpose has been the transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation. H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 41–59. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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Jefferson championed public education; an informed electorate was seen as crucial to a democratic state. It was not until the mid-twentieth century that progressives pushed for greater efficiency in public education. Meritocracy, a system and belief that those who do well on standards-based assessments are more competent and deserve to be rewarded with greater economic benefits than those who do not perform as well, sorts students to prepare them for the work force, serving the needs of capitalists for both White and blue collar workers. Progressive reforms conveniently reinforced the prevailing class and racial hierarchies; supposedly unbiased tests sent White middle class students to college preparatory high schools while members of less privileged races and cultures were sent to technical or industrial high schools to prepare them for a life of labor. Public education had been transformed from a tool to prepare students for participation in a democracy into a component of the capitalist economic system. While the racist nature of tracking has been identified and reduced to some degree, meritocracy remains and, along with it, the belief that standardized testing can reliably tell us the most important information about students. The Cold War allowed for a ramping up of concerns that America was losing the competition for political and economic world domination. A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) fueled fear-driven mantras of competition in the world marketplace. Business leaders have successfully argued that the primary purpose of public education must be to prepare students for college and jobs and that a business model is appropriately applied to educational systems. Testing has always been present in public education, but today it reigns supreme as the final arbitrator of a student’s value and success and with the advent of value-added model (VAM), teachers are judged by the metric of student scores on high-risk large-scale assessments, diminishing teachers’ other contributions in the formation of educated and rational minds. CURRENT CLIMATE OF K-12 PUBLIC EDUCATION

This chapter posits that an educational industrial complex of test and curriculum publishers, software and technology companies, and entities that market professional development and other reform assistance, share values and interests with other business and educational leaders who advance an ideology of education rationalized by a mechanistic/structural theory of action. The business model in education serves two purposes. First, it allows profits to be generated from publicly funded education from the privatization of schools and the sale of standards based curriculum materials, tests, technology, and reform assistance. Second, a business model applied to K-12 public education reduces the role of classroom teachers (union members) as arbitrators of what counts as knowledge and how students will be taught. The possibilities of the empowerment of the individual student are reduced by policies that are strategically framed as the best way to increase the opportunities of the most disadvantaged students. The business model currently in vogue is referred to as the standards based movement, which operates as though all students can be reasonably expected to 42

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achieve proficient levels of competency at any given chronological age, if only they are taught correctly. The ironically named No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandated that every child be assessed using standardized tests every year in all critical content areas, regardless of economic deprivation, mobility, disability, or English Language Learner status. Punishments mandated for schools that did not produce the desired test results effectively force a massive reform of educational instructional practices. These new instructional modes are often not tailored to the individual needs of the most challenged students. The most disadvantaged students are more likely than their affluent counterparts to be drilled in rote memorization with worksheets geared towards passing the mandated tests and taught test taking skills that confer no greater high-status knowledge than rapid and accurate answersheet bubbling and how to effectively guess at answers (Kozol, 2005). While the more affluent public school student continues to receive a high quality education that still includes field trips, recess, and engaging learning activities, the economically disadvantaged student is more likely to be taught by an underqualified teacher using a draconian pedagogy in the harsh school climate of a substandard facility. These opportunity-to-learn issues are addressed weakly, at best, by NCLB and funding to equalize the spending gap between school districts lags or is non-existent. Race to the Top (US DOE, 2009) perpetuates the spending gap between schools, districts, and states. Over $4 billion has been awarded in competitive grants – successful state applications are rewarded for plans for “adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy; building data systems [to] measure student growth and success; [etc.]” (p. 2). It is safe to assume that the states that did not receive Race to the Top money lost the competition because they were less functional in their ability to produce a grant application, and perhaps less functional overall. LANGUAGE MATTERS

The language that supports the standards and accountability hegemony in educational policies can be described as mechanistic/structural. Table 1 presents a proposed, provisional, situated, and dichotomous sort of terms and concepts that help define a mechanistic/structural theory of action that supports the standards and accountability model of education systems, and its binary opposite, a constructed hypothetical alternative, a humanistic/organic theory of action. Corporations that publish textbooks, other curriculum materials, and assessment products are just one segment of the capitalistic or profit driven forces of modern civilization. THEORY – MARX, DOMHOFF, AND SOLEY

Building on Marx’s idea that “the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force” (Tucker, 1978, p. 172), Domhoff (2010) described a dominant class made up of corporate owners and executives, a corporate community that is able to “transform its economic power 43

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into policy influence and political access [which] makes it the most important influence on the federal government” (p. xiii). In The Leasing of the University, Soley’s (1995) power structure research details the advancement of corporate influence over university funding, research, and educational content. Marx described the ruling ideas in German Ideology (1932). Marx wrote that the members of the ruling class possess, among other things, consciousness, and therefore … are thinkers, producers of ideas, regulat[ing] the production and distribution of the ideas of their age. … [The] dominant idea … is expressed as an ‘eternal law’ [to which] those who lack the means of mental production are subject. (as cited in Tucker, 1978, pp. 172-173)

Domhoff provides an excellent modern understanding of the ruling class in his description of corporate elites. Domhoff described Who Rules America (2010). Domhoff (2010) used membership network analysis to demonstrate that there is a corporate class, comprised of roughly one half a percent of the population. He defined one aspect of class power, distributive power, as the “power over” (p. 13) or ability to influence outcomes. Domhoff described three indicators of power: “Who benefits? Who governs? and Who wins?” (2010, p. 15). The process that produces policies that serve corporate interests is often hidden and to a greater extent than in the past, upper class members are not willing to volunteer information revealing their connections, making power structure research more difficult. Domhoff diagramed the path of corporate community influence on government policy starting with issue formation at the corporate level, passing through universities to think tanks, and then going either directly to government decision making, or indirectly through to policy-discussion groups and task forces. The corporate community wins policy victories using the special-interest process, the policy-planning process, and the opinion-shaping process. There is a revolving door of direct financial support and/or participation by corporation elites in the policy planning process network: foundations, think tanks, policy-discussion groups, government committees, boards, and panels. Domhoff depicted conservative think tanks in the following ways: the Brookings Institution is “mainstream or on the right wing” (2010, p. 97); the American Enterprise Institute employs respected experts but remains “an adjunct to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce” (p. 97), the conservative business lobbying group; and the Heritage Foundation hires “young ultra-conservatives who are willing to attack all government programs” (p. 97). Richard Mellon Scaife, who, like other trustees of the Heritage foundation is an ultra-conservative with inherited wealth, founded and funds other conservative think tanks (Center for Media and Democracy, 2010). “Universities are part of the power equation because they educate future leaders and train the experts who work for the think tanks” (Domhoff, 2010, p. 99). While 44

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Domhoff focused primarily on the influence of the corporate community on government policy, Soley examined the influence of the corporate community on higher education in the United States. He described the effect of the corporate class on what counts as knowledge in the university that matches Marx’s idea of the control of the ruling ideas by a ruling class. Soley described how corporations are Leasing the Ivory Tower (1995). Soley described the activities that allow corporations to influence U.S. universities. The 1980 University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act (P.L. 96–517) allowed the sale of patents to corporations, even if the patent was based on university research funded by the taxpayers. The 1981 Recovery Tax Act (P.L. 97– 34) enlarged tax deductions for corporate donations to universities, allowing corporations to move some of their costs for research and development to universities. This enables them to choose how funds are spent that might have a greater chance of benefiting the public good rather than corporate profits, had the money been paid as taxes and distributed by the government. University leadership frequently comes from the corporate class. Corporations and wealthy individuals privilege areas of study by financing departmental chairs and professorships. The endowed positions pay more than regular positions and offer a lighter teaching load; selection of the individual to fill the chair is frequently controlled by the funding entity. In some cases, corporations directly control research with grants and corporate funding of research centers, think tanks, and foundations, some of which criticize laws that constrain businesses regarding “employment, antidiscrimination, comparable worth and sexual harassment practices [and] … advocate for “laissez-faire domestic policy” (Soley, 1995, p. 108). Universities have developed bureaucracies for fundraising; however, most of revenue does not go education, remaining in the fundraising bureaucracy; university athletic departments are a prime example. Soley described “commercial penetration” (1995, p. 41) of university research facilities. Corporations benefit from their relationships with universities in the form of access to research parks and technology transfer, the licensing of discoveries made by university researchers. The influence of corporations on faculty ranges from the way consulting income effects research choices and fosters a lack of transparency of corporate ties to direct corruption of faculty research. Faculty are reluctant to publish research that is critical of sponsoring corporations. Clearly, the more influence corporations have on what topics researchers develop, the greater the constraint on what research is conducted. Some faculty members engage in faux research that supports corporate clients leading to the degradation of the academic journals. Soley described direct greed and vanity as two causes of this kind of malfeasance. The university leadership who avoid annoying the corporate consumer of the research product often attack whistleblowers. Soley described the way that “corporate culture comes to campus” (p. 51), suggesting that universities are now oriented towards fundraising as a prime activity.

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WINNERS & LOSERS

Domhoff asked: Who wins? Soley suggested, in a sense, that we follow the money. He found that income from corporations stays where it was generated, whether it is in the athletic department, think tanks, research centers, or the fund raising bureaucracy. Profits are not used to expand educational opportunities for students, whose tuition continues to rise. Corporations reduce their costs of research and development – externalizing to the university. Taxpayers pay for research costs and students pay higher fees. Corporation funding situates teaching as lower in value than research, administrative work, and participating in a think tank. When tenured faculty research more and teach less, students are taught by non-tenured adjunct professors and graduate students. Student research can be constrained by what is funded. POWER STRUCTURE RESEARCH

Building on the work of Domhoff and Soley, this chapter examines several discrete sites of power relations: two federal funding agencies for educational research (the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) Institute of Education Sciences (IES)); and two universities’ leaders and faculty research entities (University of Washington (UW) and University of Oregon (UO) university leaders and College of Education (COE) faculty and their research shops). The evidence at the time of this writing reveals relationships among numerous groups: foundations; think tanks; multinational and other corporations, including an educational industrial complex of publishers of textbooks, other curriculum, tests, and assessment software and technology; reform and professional development companies; and other corporate actors and agents. Additional players in the accountability and assessment industry are identified and described. EVIDENCE

The following case studies include reports of resumes and academic vita detailing university research, publishing, academic leadership, and related public service for federal board members, university leaders, and faculty posted on university websites, other relevant sources, and news reports. Such individuals have been omitted from this report. Inclusion in this chapter does not indicate wrongdoing on the part of the individuals mentioned; they are academics operating in a system of corporate influence over educational research and educational policy that is taken for granted. Note: an asterisk (*) notes entities that are described in greater detail in the Organizations of Interest section. Double asterisks (**) identify textbook companies.

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NATIONAL FUNDING AGENCIES

Institute of Education Sciences. IES in U.S. DOE is the most prominent government funder of grants for educational research at UO. Some of its presidentially appointed board members are academics not directly connected to the corporate community but the chairman was a senior fellow at the ultraconservative think tank the Hoover Institution* and some are corporate leaders including the CEO of Conexus Indiana, a transportation business advocacy group (IES, 2010). National Science Foundation. NSF, created to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; [and] to secure the national defense” (NSF, 2011a, para. 1), funds around 20% of U.S. university research and is a key grant provider to COE faculty at UW. Some members of its board represent corporations, while others serve on several boards including Rockefeller Foundation* and one was the chief technology officer of nanoSEC (NSF, 2011b), created “for the purpose of commercializing patented technology developed at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan” (nanoSec, 2011, para. 1). UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

College of Education Faculty Funding. The Director of the Center for Multicultural Education holds the Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies. Chairs such as this are funded by corporations and wealthy individuals such as Kerry Killinger, who served as CEO of Washington Mutual (WaMu) bank until he was subject to a lawsuit by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for taking “extreme risks with the bank’s home-loans portfolio, causing billions of dollars in losses” (S. Pearson, 2011, para. 1). Table 2 describes a few of the faculty connections to entities of interest through research funding. Research Shops. Two research shops connected to UW provide evidence of corporate connections. The Center for Educational Leadership (CEL, 2011) is funded largely by a foundation endowed by a Japanese electronics manufacturer. Panasonic Foundation cites its influence on education “reform, [and a] … belief in all students being capable of successfully meeting consistently high expectations; … [in] today’s … highly competitive environment (Panasonic Foundation, 2010, pp. 4-9). While the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) is not particularly associated with the COE, it provides a current example of Soley’s description of research parks and technology transfer in the service of profit. ISB is a nonprofit research institution with 300 employees including 13 faculty (ISB, 2011d) with a goal of bridging “the gap between academia and industry (2011b , para. 1). The board make up reflects a typical configuration of academics and those with corporate affiliations including Microsoft, Intel, Dow Chemical, a host of bio-medical, genetic, and pharmaceutical companies and MHz, “a strategic advisory firm focused on U.S.-China privatization opportunities” (ISB, 2011a, para. 19); their industrial partners include Applied Biosystems, Genelogics, and IBM. What they describe as 47

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“commercialization and spin-off” (ISB, 2011c, para. 1) includes Accelerator, created to facilitate access to “the best opportunities emerging [from the] groundbreaking life science opportunities” (ISB, 2011c, para. 1). Faculty members are credited with founding new companies “either as a result of new technologies or strategies from the Institute” (ISB, 2011c, para. 4). UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

UO leaders provide descriptions of their previous relationships with corporations, as well as work in funding, technology transfer, and research parks. Particular insight can be found in the website biography of the Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. He listed millions of dollars of sponsored research and technology transfer activities, “proactively pursues regional economic engagement through collaborative industry relations and the formation of high-quality startup companies” (UO, 2010a, para. 3); and he claimed membership in numerous national and state organizations. Table 3 provides a snapshot of a few of the UO leaders. College of Education. In 2010, U.S. News & World Report chose UO COE as the top graduate school for a program of education again, based on the large amount of research dollars brought in, nearly a million dollars per faculty member (UO, 2010e). HEDCO Foundation donated $10 million to the construction of an educational building at UO COE, which was therefore named the HEDCO Education Building (UO, 2011a). HEDCO funds research projects that support forprofit enterprises, such as the creation of an artificial pancreas at Oregon Health & Science University that is intended to evolve into a “marketable product” (OHSU, 2011, para. 9). According to their 2006 tax return, the foundation is funded by multinational corporations in a variety of industries: pharmaceuticals – Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer; chemical, oil, and energy – Dow Chemical, Exxon Mobil, and Royal Dutch Shell; financial – Capital One and Citigroup; technology – Dell, and General Electric; and other entities – Honda and Wal-Mart (HEDCO Foundation, 2006). EDUCATIONAL METHODOLOGY, POLICY AND LEADERSHIP IN THE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION (EMPL)

The dominant theory of education in the current epoch is that testing students will provide valid information about them that will drive educational systems to help students achieve greater success. EMPL faculty prepare educational leaders in the nuances of assessment as a function of quantitative methods. Ph.D. students, destined for jobs as academics or in an industry, are offered a plethora of quantitative courses including Multiple Regression, Analysis of Discrete & Categorical Data, Multivariate Statistics, Hierarchical Linear Models, Item Response Theory, and Structural Equation Modeling, but just one qualitative course sequence, Single Subject Research Methods, (UO, 2010b). D.Ed. students comprised of current and future principals, superintendents, and those destined for 48

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jobs in government DOEs are also expected to learn the methodologies of quantitative research along with policy and leadership. Students who want to learn more about qualitative methods are advised to look outside the department and COE. Before being hired at UO, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs was a project director at Psychological Corporation, a subsidiary of Harcourt Brace** (Donovan, 2010) and a measurement statistician for ETS* (UO, 2011b). The leadership of EMPL focuses on student assessment in a context of quantitative methods. Their instructional goals match their research interests, which sometimes take place in research groups that garner large sums of money from governmental agencies and corporate sponsors. Among the research organizations led by EMPL faculty, four are notable for their size, earnings, and influence: Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR), Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC), Center on Teaching and Learning (CTL), and Behavioral Research and Teaching (BRT). CEPR is a for-profit policy research shop created to support the standards-based movement, particularly college and career readiness, originally funded by a $2.5 million grant. Housed in the same suite of offices and working on similar projects for federal and state agencies and foundations, etc., is a related not-for-profit policy and research organization, EPIC (EPIC, 2011b). EPIC clients include Achieve*, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation*, Carnegie Corporation*, College Board, and Oregon Engineering Technology and Industry Council (EPIC, 2011a). The UO faculty member who is director of both organizations has received “over $28 million in grants and contracts, serves on numerous technical and advisory panels, consults with educational agencies nationally and internationally, and is a frequent speaker at national and regional meetings of education professionals and policymakers” (EPIC, 2010, para. 1-3). The director of CTL is EMPL Associate Dean for Research and Outreach. “Between 2000 and 2005, the CTL research group secured $43.4 million in external grant awards from federal, state and private sources” (CTL, 2010a, para. 2). The mission of CTL is “the role of curriculum, instruction, and assessment as individual elements that interact in school systems” (CTL, 2010b). CTL’s leader “served as the first commissioner of the National Center for Special Education Research” (UO, 2010c, para. 1) at IES. He also “earned at least $150,000 a year in royalties and compensation from Pearson Scott Foresman** which publishes a textbook he wrote with another university professor” (Cavanagh, 2007), according to a congressional report prepared by Senate investigators who described soaring earnings of researchers who served as regional service directors of Reading First, an NCLB-favored program. He was also the creator of a Teachscape* modules, Early Reading Success (Teachscape, 2011). The Dean of EMPL directs BRT, “the recipient of over 26 million dollars in federal and state level research, training, and development funds” (BRT, 2010b). BRT seeks to “provide accessibility to large-scale testing so that all students can demonstrate their proficiencies on state and local achievement standards” (BRT,

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2010a, para. 1). The Dean is also the technical advisor to Oregon’s State Assessment System and DOE Technical Advisory Committee (UO, 2011b). ORGANIZATIONS OF INTEREST

Achieve. Achieve is a national group that advocates for standards based education policies, championing more rigorous high school graduation requirements. In order to make college and career readiness a priority in the states . . . Achieve is an independent, bipartisan, non-profit education reform organization . . . created . . . by the nation’s governors and corporate leaders; . . . it helps states raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments and strengthen accountability. (Achieve, 2011, para. 1)

American Enterprise Institute. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a think tank that considers itself “libertarian and conservative rather than simply ‘probusiness’” (AEI, 2011b, para. 1). It credits some of its success to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and claims to be a source of “innovative ideas on deregulation” (para. 6) and host to “influential thinkers including neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol” (para. 5). In one advocacy article, the authors suggest: breaking the stranglehold of the whole-school … funding assumption; … the state would deposit money in an account in the name of each student and then allow parents to use that money to procure services from an array of state-approved providers. (AEI, 2011a, para. 31). Attain. Attain is a professional strategic and operational support services company that delivers to “more than 100 customers in the federal, state and local, and higher education . . . markets,” in partnership with Oracle (Attain, 2011). Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One goal of the foundation is “to graduate all students college-ready” (Gates Foundation, 2011c, para. 1). Promoting VAM, their Measures of Effective Teaching project “goes beyond the exclusive use of student assessments as a proxy for effectiveness and is instead geared to developing a set of measures that together serve as an accurate indicator of a teacher’s impact on student achievement” (2011b, para. 2). Connections of lead research partners include Teachscape*, the National Math and Science Initiative* and ETS* (Gates Foundation, 2011a). The Brookings Institution. The Brookings Institution is a conservative think tank claiming a contribution to deregulation (Brookings, 2011a). The Board of Trustees features executives from scores of multinational and other corporations including Young & Rubicam Brands, Nike, State Farm Insurance, and Bank of Italy (Brookings, 2011b). A recent policy brief (Whitehurst, 2011) found that cutting school funding has advantages and suggests “that parents of economically disadvantaged students … should be able to direct that the funding associated with their child be spent to cover the costs of enrolling their child in virtual courses or in a virtual school” (para. 5).

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The Carnegie Corporation. The Carnegie Corporation is a grant dispensing giant; some of the board represent corporations including Bell Atlantic and Morgan Stanley (Carnegie Corporation, 2011). Educational Testing Service. ETS is a private nonprofit organization “devoted to educational measurement and research, primarily through testing” (ETS, 2011, para. 1) that develops and administers over 50 million test every year. It generates products for government, corporations, and academic institutions. The leader of ETS served as CEO of Dupont Pharmaceuticals (Forbes, 2011). Hoover Institution. Based at Stanford University, the Hoover Institution mission statement claims that “both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise … [It seeks to] limit government intrusion into the lives of individuals” (Hoover Institution, 2011a, para. 2-3). One current institutional initiative addresses governmental support of public education “versus private solutions – both within and outside the public school system – that stress choice, accountability, and transparency; that include systematic reform options such as vouchers, charter schools, and testing; and that weigh equity concerns against outcome objectives” (2011b, para. 3). National Math and Science Initiative. Identifying a crisis in education, National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) uses a competitive model to award grants aimed at increasing the number of students taking “rigorous college courses in mathematics and science” (NMSI, 2011b, para. 1) with initial funding from Exxon Mobil Corporation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation*, and Dell Foundation. Board members represent corporations including Lockheed Martin and Exxon Mobil (NMSI, 2011a). Rockefeller Foundation. The Rockefeller Foundation Board of Trustees includes representatives from several multination corporations including Young & Rubicam Brands, Econet Wireless International, Citigroup, and Rockefeller Financial (Rockerfeller Foundation, 2011). Schools Interoperability Framework Association. SIF is a nonprofit organization “whose members include over 3,200 software vendors, school districts, state departments of education” (SIF Association, 2011, para. 1). The SIF Board includes the representatives from Pearson**, Educational Systemics, Microsoft, IBM, and Integrity Schools, which “provides solutions for school districts across the country as well as software vendors in the educational technology market” (Integrity Schools, 2011, para. 1). Teachscape. Teachscape is a for-profit company that delivers web-based teacher training and other services to schools in program improvement status (Teachscape, 2011). WestEd. WestEd is a not-for-profit agency supplying reform assistance to program improvement schools. Some members of its board represent corporate interests, including Evans Newton, a company that markets reform materials (WestEd, 2011a). In addition to funding from tax dollars, some of its income derives from corporations, foundations, businesses, and nonprofits that are connected to corporate interests including Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation*, Carnegie Corporation*, Packard Foundation, and AT&T Foundation (WestEd, 51

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2011b). Table 4 provides a detailed look at a few of the relationships of WestEd funders, a close examination of a slice of the interwoven relationships of corporations and educational entities associated with WestEd. DISCUSSION

The evidence presented in this chapter supports Domhoff’s description of corporate influence on national policy, in this case education policy, and Soley’s description of university leadership that comes from the corporate class; fundraising bureaucracies; the confounding of large revenue with educational quality; research parks and technology transfer; professorships or chairs funded by corporations; an interplay of faculty government work, test and textbook publishing, and academic activities; faculty status associated with revenue; and the corruption of faculty members who derive income from corporations. Corporate Influence on National Policy and Funding Priorities In addition to more prosaic corporate representation on the boards of national education policy and funding entities IES and NFS, leadership at IES is connected to the right-wing Hoover Institution and at NFS to a technology transfer company. Altogether, the evidence supports Domhoff’s idea that corporate representatives are seated at the table where policy decisions are made about the direction of public funding of education research. Corporate Influence on Education Foundations and Policy Groups Additional evidence of corporate influence over education is corporate sponsorship and board membership on foundations and other grant funding entities, as well as policy groups. One example, CEL funder Panasonic Foundation, provides language that represents a mechanistic/structural approach to education, with “reform,” competitive environment, “all students,” and “high expectations.” Imbedded in these seemingly innocuous catchphrases are some assumptions that deserve critical examination. First is prioritizing of competition in education models, which is valued over collaboration. Next, the language of high expectations sets the stage for standards based performances that render invisible the differences between students, the great variation of background knowledge and skills that they bring to school. Finally is the use of the term “all” in describing expected outcomes for students. When “all” fifth grade students are taught fifth grade reading standards (i.e., inference) in expectation of a criterion referenced test, there is a mismatch of content for students who are reading well below grade level and would benefit from phonemic awareness instruction or fluency practice. Students who move frequently and miss content instruction, who are English Language Learners at the beginning levels, and some of those with identified learning disabilities, cannot be expected to achieve proficiency of benchmarks at the same chronological point as native speakers with no special challenges. The language of “high expectations for 52

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all” ignores these realities and tacitly approves the deficit thinking that describes lower performance by subgroups as deficiencies to be remediated. This labeling of a large segment of the student population as underachieving, at risk of failure, and other pejoratives, is damaging to their identities, construction of self. Language matters when it comes to labeling children. University Leadership from the Corporate Class Both Domhoff and Soley described the role of the leaders of universities as representatives of the corporate class, either directly, as corporate leaders who are appointed to be trustees, or indirectly, as facilitators of corporate aspirations through consulting or other forms of corporation service. This paper has identified these types of connections at UO, and additionally located bureaucratic fund raising and technology transfer apparatus. Fundraising Bureaucracies Soley described universities actively seeking funds from corporations, setting up bureaucratic functions to funnel corporate dollars and influence in ways that are often profitable to the donor and less so to the recipient. Evidence at UO reveals a strong orientation towards the development of corporate funding by the dedication of leadership positions to these concerns. Additionally, the athletic department leadership claims successful fundraising. Confounding of Revenue with Educational Quality Soley discussed increasing perceptions of the value of research at universities being equated with how much income is generated, as opposed to, for example, the public good that might be done with the discoveries. The selection of OU COE as the top graduate program for education was based not upon a high graduation rate, the status of the jobs graduates found, the earnings of graduates compared to other groups, nor the social contributions of graduates. Rather, the media and the leaders of COE were impressed with the large amount of research dollars brought in, nearly a million dollars per faculty member, on average. COE leaders and the media confounded the goals of higher education with the income generating properties of grant funded research to reach a conclusion of excellence based on income. Research Parks and Technology Transfer UW and UO affiliated research shops, COES, CEP, CEPR, EPIC, CTL, and BRT, focus on mechanist/structural goals funded in part by corporations, their foundations, and governmental bodies aligned with this vision. The influence of these research organizations is a two-way arrangement. On the one hand these institutions both reflect and drive the demand for high-stakes tests and other 53

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assessments. The power and relationships of the leaders mingle research with policy influence. On the other hand, graduate students need the research opportunities made available by school affiliated research organizations. Opportunities to do research are mandatory for a graduate student. The research that is done in these environments does not derive from the original thinking of the students. Rather, it supports the existing work of the research shop, which is organized around the goals and values of its leaders. These institutions also represent potential employers after graduation; students who conform to the ideology of their leaders are more likely to be employed than those who resist. The case of ISB, while not particularly a COE enterprise, usefully illustrates the corporate penetration of the university at the research park level. Commercialization and spin-off are touted, and faculty members are credited with founding new companies. Soley described technology transfer as being lucrative for corporations, another feature of corporate profiteering at universities at the taxpayer expense, but this is a new permutation of the benefits accruing to faculty – that they start for-profit companies based on the work they do in research shops. Professorships or Chairs Funded by Corporations Soley described corporate sponsorship of faculty chairs; two such chairs are noted at UW COE, one sponsored by Boeing, the other by a now discredited WaMu mogul. At the least, the academic’s reputation as prominent scholar in multicultural education and past president of the American Educational Research Association (UW, 2011) is borrowed by elites like Killinger. Revolving Door for Faculty The behaviors of COE faculty are those of high status academics, moving fluidly between government panels, committees and jobs, think tanks, and employment with testing, textbook, and not-for-profit and for-profit entities that market reform materials to schools in program improvement, and other corporations and their foundations. The relationships of power are visible in the resumes of COE faculty including connections to Houghton Mifflin, Pearson Scott Foresman, Harcourt Brace, Creative Publications, Teachscape, ETS, WestEd, HEDCO, Carnegie Corporation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Comingled with these relationships are service on influential government technical and advisory panels and advising or consulting for state, national educational agencies and committees. Faculty status associated with revenue. Soley advised that value of research at universities is defined by how much money it brings in, not by its ultimate value to the public. Bringing in research dollars is a critical feature of prestige at university COEs in a business oriented higher education system. The faculty at UW clearly understands this concept, as they report millions of dollars of revenue on their vitas. Corruption of faculty members who derive income from corporations. The director of CTL and UO COE EMPL Associate Dean for Research and Outreach 54

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was investigated by a Senate concerned about the large incomes of academics involved in the Reading First program. The opportunity to earn outside money from a textbook publishing giant in an apparent conflict of interest was found to be within the bounds of poorly written law, but the funding was cancelled for the program as a result of the investigation. Limitations One problem encountered while doing power structure research is the lack of access to complete records of the individuals being examined. Domhoff described a rise of secrecy in recent times, in which upper class members withhold information, making it more difficult to identify their connections. This chapter has only investigated the most easily located connections that were available on the Internet, such as the IES, NFS, UW, and UO websites. Thus the evidence supporting the arguments in this paper is somewhat pedestrian. One can assume that more and stronger relationships are present that connect the individuals depicted here, as well as those who escaped scrutiny, to corporations, think tanks, governmental agencies, etc., such that the conclusions of the paper are not weakened by the shallowness of the research. CONCLUSION

An overall pattern of university COE faculty relationships with corporate funding streams, directly and through foundations, etc., provides strong support for Soley’s contention that corporations have leased the university and Marx’s claim that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class. Domhoff described distributive power as the power over other groups, the ability to influence outcomes. In answering his question “Who wins?” it is clear that the corporations have the upper hand in influencing what will be researched in university COEs. The orientation towards large-scale high-stakes standards-based assessments, and the quantitative methods that support them, are in evidence. Graduate students seek out research opportunities at research shops dominated by the new “eternal law,” rational scientific assessment. What counts as knowledge is controlled in this fashion, unless a graduate student provides her own funding, finds her own subjects, and maneuvers the selection of her committee to include other outsiders. This fits well with Marx’s notion that elites organize the prevailing ideology to support the material needs of their class. The relationships described in this chapter foster a mechanistic/structural orientation in education policy. Standards alignment requires that the textbooks must support the curriculum that is being assessed with high-stakes tests. This corporate influence on texts and other school-consumed content has produced a currently accepted paradigm of teacher and school accountability for student outcomes on a narrow selection of testable standards and benchmarks. The ruling ideas of this epoch frame education such that the goal of education is not the

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development of the individual but rather a score on a bubble test which then defines the value of the student. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

How do corporations influence national education policy? How do corporations influence research goals and instructional content at universities? What ethical dilemmas do faculty researchers in university colleges of education face when they seek grant funding to do research? What effect do corporations have on graduate students in university colleges of education? How does the influence of corporations over educational policy affect the practices in public school classrooms? Marx wrote that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” How is this related to modern American educational policy? REFERENCES

Achieve. (2011). Achieve. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.achieve.org/. AEI. (2011a). AEI outlook series: From school choice to educational choice. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.aei.org/outlook/101043. AEI. (2011b). History of AEI. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.aei.org/history. AIR. (2011). Board of directors. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.air.org/about/?fa=view Content&content_id=99. America’s Choice. (2011). Common core standards. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.americaschoice.org/. Attain. (2011). Who we are. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.attain.com/who-we-are/ index.php. Baker, M. (2010, December 3). Game’s toughest drive: To Corvallis. The Register-Guard, pp. B1-B2. Brookings. (2011a). Brookings: About Brookings. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.brookings.edu/about.aspx. Brookings. (2011b). Trustees. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.brookings.edu/about/ Trustees.aspx. BRT. (2010a). Behavioral research and teaching. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://www.brtprojects.org/. BRT. (2010b). Funding sources. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://www.brtprojects.org/about/ funding. Carnegie Corporation. (2011). Board of trustees. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://carnegie.org/ about-us/board-of-directors/. Cavanagh, S. (2007). Former ‘Reading First’ adviser to leave federal post. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/ 16/38resign_web.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/05/16/38resign_web.h tml&levelId=2100. CEL. (2011). Our partners. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://www.k-12leadership.org/aboutcel/our-partners. Center for Media and Democracy. (2010). Scaife foundations. Retrieved November 27, 2010, from http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Scaife_Foundations. Corwin. (2011). Home. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.corwin.com/aboutCompany.nav.

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THE RULING IDEAS IN THE TEXTBOOK CTB. (2011). CTB/McGraw-Hill’s acuity leads the educational assessment industry in 2010. Retrieved July 26, 2011, from http://www.ctb.com/ctb.com/control/aboutUsNewsShowAction?newsId=19457 &p=aboutUs CTL. (2010a). History. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://ctl.uoregon.edu/about/history. CTL. (2010b). Home. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://ctl.uoregon.edu/. Datawise. (2011). News & Events. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.datawise-ed.com/ DatawiseWebsite/news.php. Delta Education. (2011). About Delta. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.delta-education.com/ delta/aboutdelta.shtml. Domhoff, G. W. (2010). Who rules America?: Challenges to corporate and class dominance. Boston, MA: McGraw Hill Higher Education. Donovan, J. (2010). The psychological corporation and Harcourt Brace. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://www.learn-usa.com/education_transformation/cgs001.htm. DQC. (2011). Managing partners of the DQC. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/about/partners/managing. EPIC. (2010). David T. Conley. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://www.epiconline.org/about_ epic/dr._david_conley. EPIC. (2011a). EPIC’s clients and associates. Retrieved July 30, 2011, from https://www.epiconline.org/about_epic/clients_and_associates. EPIC. (2011b). History. Retrieved July 30, 2011, from https://www.epiconline.org/about_epic/history. ETS. (2011). Frequently asked questions about ETS. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.ets.org/ about/faq/. Forbes. (2011). Kurt M. Landgraf. Retrieved August 5, 2011, from http://people.forbes.com/ profile/kurt-m-landgraf/23288. Gates Foundation. (2011a). About the measures of effective teaching project. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/college-ready-education/Documents/preliminary-findingsresearch-paper.pdf. Gates Foundation. (2011b). Measure of effective teaching project. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/college-ready-education/Pages/measures-effective-teachingproject.aspx. Gates Foundation. (2011c). Topcs: College-ready education. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/college-ready-education/Pages/default.aspx. Harcourt, H. M. (2011). The education group. Retrieved July 26, 2011, from http://www.hmhco.com/atschool.html. Heck, R. H. (2004). Studying educational and social policy: Theoretical concepts and research methods. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. HEDCO Foundation. (2006). Return of private foundation. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2006/237/259/2006-237259742-03135afe-F.pdf. Hoover Institution. (2011a). About. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.hoover.org/ about/mission-statement. Hoover Institution. (2011b). Institutional initiatives. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.hoover.org/research/institutional-initiatives. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2011a). About us. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.hmhco.com/ around-the-world.html. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (2011b). Home. Retrieved April 27, 2011, from http://www.hmhco.com/. IES. (2010). National Board for Education Sciences. Retrieved November 27, 2010, from http://ies.ed.gov/director/board/members.asp. Integrity Schools. (2011). Home. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://k12.integrityts.com/. ISB. (2011a). Board of directors. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.systemsbiology.org/ Introduction_to_the_Institute/Board_of_Directors. ISB. (2011b). Bridging the gap between academia and industry. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.systemsbiology.org/Introduction_to_the_Institute/Affiliations.

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SHELLEY J. JENSEN ISB. (2011c). Commercialization and spin-off companies. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.systemsbiology.org/Introduction_to_the_Institute/Affiliations/Commercialization_and_ Spin-off_Companies. ISB. (2011d). Our history. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.systemsbiology.org/ Introduction_to_the_Institute/Our_History. Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of the nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in America. New York, NY: Crown Publishers. Marx, K., Engels, F., Pascal, R., Lough, W., & Magill, C. P. (1947). The German ideology, parts I & III. London: International Publishers. Mathematica. (2011a). Passing Muster: Evaluating teacher evaluation systems. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/publications3.aspx. Mathematica. (2011b). Selected clients. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.mathematicampr.com/About_Us/selectedclients.asp. Measured Progress. (2011). Leadership. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.measuredprogress.org/leadership. Morelli, B. (November 28, 2010). Personal communication. nanoSec. (2011). nano Science Engineering Corporation. Retrieved April 17, 2011, from http://www.nano-sec.biz/aboutus.html. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. NCIEA. (2011a). About us: Our board. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.nciea.org/aboutboard.php. NCIEA. (2011b). Home. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.nciea.org/index.php. NMG. (2011a). Optimizing resource performance. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.noveladvisors.com/presentations/capability.pdf. NMG. (2011b). Our team: Novel Management Group wins contract with US Department of Education. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.noveladvisors.com/home/content.asp?menu_category= About%20Us&menuid=724. NMSI. (2011a). NMSI doard of directors. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.nationalmathandscience.org/about-us/nmsi-board. NMSI. (2011b). The NMSI strategy. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.nationalmathandscience.org/solutions/our-approach. NSF. (2011a). About the National Science Foundation. Retrieved April 17, 2011, from http://www.nsf.gov/about/. NSF. (2011b). Members. Retrieved July 30, 2011, from http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/members/. OHSU. (2011). HEDCO foundation grant advances OHSU’s effort to build ‘artificial pancreas.’ Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/about/news_events/news/2010/2010-06-29hedco-foundation-gr.cfm. Pearson. (2011). Pearson’s AIMSweb launches new reports tying assessment to instructional recommendations. Retrieved July 26, 2011, from http://www.pearsonassessments.com/pai/ai/about/ news/NewsItem/2010/newsrelease120610a.htm. Pearson, S. (2011). Ex-Washington Mutual officials Killinger, Rotella sued by FDIC over losses. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-17/fdic-sues-formerwashington-mutual-ceo-kerry-killinger-for-negligence.html. PF. (2010). 25 Years: The Panasonic Foundation. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://www.panasonic.com/meca/foundation/publications/PF25_final.pdf. Questar Assessent. (2011a). Our clients. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.questarai.com/ AboutUs/Engagements/Pages/default.aspx. Questar Assessent. (2011b). Questar: Success by your standards. Retrieved April 29, 2011, from http://www.questarai.com/Documents/Questar_broch_05a_X.pdf. Rockerfeller Foundation. (2011). Board of trustees. Retrieved April 17, 2011, from http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/about-us/board-trustees.

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THE RULING IDEAS IN THE TEXTBOOK SEI. (2011). Who we are. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.seiservices.com/Who.aspx. SIF Association. (2011). General overview. Retrieved April 25, 2011, from http://www.sifinfo.org/ us/general-overview.asp. Soley, L. C. (1995). Leasing the ivory tower: The corporate takeover of academia. Boston, MA: South End Press. State Farm. (2011a). Impacting education. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.statefarm.com/ aboutus/community/education/education_chairman_ceo_speak.asp. State Farm. (2011b). Meet our board of directors. Retrieved April 30, 2011, from http://www.statefarm.com/aboutus/company/leadership/meet_our_board_of_directors.asp. Teachscape. (2011). News & Press releases. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://www.teachscape.com/html/ts/nps/news_press_releases.html. Tucker, R. C. (Ed.). (1978). The Marx-Engels reader. New York, NY: Norton. U.S. DOE. (2009). Race to the top program: Executive summary. Race to the Top Fund. Retrieved July 14, 2011, from http://www2.ed.gov/programs/racetothetop/executive-summary.pdf. U.S. DOE. (2011). Stronger accountability: Testing – frequently asked questions. Retrieved August 20, 2011, from http://www2.ed.gov/nclb/accountability/ayp/testing-faq.html#4. UO. (2010a). About the vice president. Retrieved November 27, 2010, from http://research.uoregon.edu/ content/about-vice-president. UO. (2010b). College of Education three year quantitative methods course schedule. Retrieved November 1, 2010, from http://education.uoregon.edu/uploads/166/3yr_quant_sched_112009_rev.pdf. UO. (2010c). Edward J. Kame’enui. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://education.uoregon.edu/ faculty.htm?id=89. UO. (2010d). Leadership. Retrieved November 27, 2010, from http://www.uoregon.edu/leadership UO. (2010e). National rankings. Retrieved October 31, 2010, from http://education.uoregon.edu/ feature.htm?id=709. UO. (2011a). Building project. Retrieved April 16, 2011, from http://education.uoregon.edu/ feature.htm?id=1114. UO. (2011b). Educational methodology, policy, and leadership faculty. Retrieved July 31, 2011, from http://education.uoregon.edu/faculty_results.htm?call=field&id1=78. UW. (2011a). Faculty directory. Retrieved July 30, 2011, from http://education.washington.edu/faculty/ UW. (2011b). James A. Banks. Retrieved July 29, 2011, from http://faculty.washington.edu/ jbanks/longbio.htm. WestEd. (2011a). Board of directors. Retrieved April 24, 2011, from http://www.wested.org/cs/ we/print/docs/we/board.htm. WestEd. (2011b). Funding sources. Retrieved April 24, 2011, from http://www.wested.org/cs/we/ print/docs/we/fund.htm. Whitehurst, G. J. (2011). Opportunity through education: Two proposals. Retrieved May 1, 2011, from http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/03_education_opportunity_whitehurst.aspx.

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APPENDIX Table 1. Dichotomous sort of accountability and assessment terms and concepts Mechanistic/structural

Humanistic/organic

Commerce, business, industry, science, technological innovation, blueprint

Educated populace, enlightened participation, social responsibility

Cost-benefit, inputs/outputs, efficiency

Respect for the individual

Produces workers, world markets

Individual responsibility, freedom, and benefits

Competition to succeed, winners and losers

Collaboration among peers

Accountability, blame, failure, sanctions, punishment

Support, professional development

Choice, privatization

Funding, opportunity to learn

High standards, setting the bar high

Zone of proximal development

High expectations for all students

Optimal outcomes for each student

Meritocracy / sorting by “ability” to prepare students for jobs in business and industry

Basic life skills, developing human consciousness

Summative assessments drive performance

Formative assessments inform instruction

Measuring for effective teachers; VAM

Teacher learning communities

Testing, measurement, college- and career-ready

Active learning

Large scale testing, accountability

Needs of the whole child

Invisible hands of the economy, free markets, laissez-faire capitalism

Play is the work of children

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)

Art, music, theater, history, political science, citizenship, philosophy, sports, physical education, health education, home economics, vocational education

B.F. Skinner, Adam Smith, A Nation at Risk, No Child Left Behind

Vygotsky, Piaget, Dewey, Jefferson

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THE RULING IDEAS IN THE TEXTBOOK

Table 2. Some University of Washington faculty connections Name / Title

Connections / Revenue claimed

James A. Banks / Director: Center for Multicultural Education, Killinger Endowed Chair in Diversity Studies

Past president of American Educational Research Association (UW, 2011b)

Ana Mari Cauce

National committees, task forces, foundations, institutes, Carnegie Corporation* / $23,000,000

John R. Frederiksen

Carnegie Corporation*, Teachscape*, ETS*, national committees and task forces / $7,000,000

Nathalie Gehrke / Professor Emeritus of Curriculum & Teacher Education

Getty Foundation, Texaco Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation* / $5,000,000

Elham Kazemi

WestEd*, state panel / $9,000,000

Morva McDonald

Curriculum developer Creative Publications**, research assistant for Carnegie Foundation*

Jessica J. Thompson

Carnegie Foundation*, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation* / $2,000,000

Sheila W. Valencia

Carnegie Corporation*, Houghton Mifflin**, state departments of education

Mark A. Windschitl

NFS National Board and grant reviewer, Carnegie Foundation* / $6,000,000

Kenneth Zeichner / Director of Teacher Education, Boeing Professor of Teacher Education

Consultant to Carnegie Corporation*, advisor to Teach for America, John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation / $2,500,000

Source: UW. (2011a). Faculty Directory. Retrieved from http://education.washington.edu/faculty/

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Table 3. University of Oregon leadership connections Name / Title

Connections

Richard W. Lariviere / President

Consultant for American and Indian companies in information technology and business process outsourcing

James C. Bean / Senior Vice President; Provost

General Cable; General Motors; Michigan Consolidated Gas Company; IBM; Bethlehem Steel; Tektronix

Michael Andreasen / Vice President for Development

Development roles in major gifts and campaign leadership at UC Santa Barbara; annual giving at UC Irvine

Rich Linton Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies

Oversees sponsored research, research compliance, technology transfer, and the Riverfront Research Park

Rob Mullen / Director of Intercollegiate Athletics

Expanded the operating budget in the athletic dept. at University of Kentucky by 70%

Michael W. Redding / Vice President for University Relations

Secured new private and public resources

Source: UO. (2010d). Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.uoregon.edu/leadership

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Board Members: CEO of Attain*, a venture partner at Morgan Stanley Private Equity (AIR, 2011)

Non-profit behavioral and social science research organization Publisher of texts for K–12 educators Non-profit provides longitudinal student data systems to improve student achievement

Markets a turnkey assessment management system Producer of curriculum-based elementary school science kits

Global education company (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011b, ¶ 1)

Provides policy research, including “how states and the federal government can incentivize local education agencies to evaluate teachers more rigorously” (Mathematica, 2011a, ¶ 2)

American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Corwin Press

Data Quality Campaign (DQC)

Datawise

Delta Education**

Houghton Mifflin Company**

Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR)

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation*; The Rockefeller Foundation*; American Enterprise Institute *; ETS*; The Brookings Institution* (Mathematica, 2011b)

Harcourt, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, McDougal Littell, Saxon math texts, testing products, Edusoft benchmark software (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011a)

Educators Publishing Service (Delta Education, 2011)

Renaissance Learning** (Datawise, 2011)

Achieve*, Schools Interoperability Framework Association* (DQC, 2011)

Affiliate of Sage Publishers** (Corwin, 2011)

Subsidiary of Pearson Publishing** (America's Choice, 2011)

Sells reform resources for school administrators

America’s Choice

Relationships

Function

Entity

Table 4. Selected Entities from the businesses & nonprofits that fund WestEd

THE RULING IDEAS IN THE TEXTBOOK

63

64 Board Member: Senior Vice President for Policy Evaluation and Research, ETS* (NCIEA, 2011a)

IT Service Management, US Department of Homeland Security (NMG, 2011a)

Nonprofit provides support for assessment and accountability needs (NCIEA, 2011b)

A consulting firm recently won a four ear contract with the US Department of Education (NMG, 2011b)

For profit producer of large-scale assessments to help “drive greater accountability”(Questar Assessent, 2011b, ¶ 2)

Provides insurance, mutual funds and banking services. Has publishes goals of “accountability-based education that identifies goals, measures results” (State Farm, 2011a, ¶ 1).

“Directly involved in … education initiatives of Federal, state, and international agencies; Along with corporate support of government initiatives and research, we have relationships with key researchers, scholars, and analysts who have specialized expertise in various areas of public education and … magnet and charter schools” (SEI, 2011, ¶ 1).

National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment (NCIEA)

Novel Management Group (NMG)

Questar Assessment, Inc.

State Farm Insurance

Synergy Enterprises, Inc. (SEI)

Source: WestEd. (2011b). Funding Sources. Retrieved from http://www.wested.org/cs/we/print/docs/we/fund.htm

Customers: U.S. DOE; U.S. Department of Defense; U.S. Department of Homeland Security; U.S. Department of Transportation; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; U.S. Department of Energy; U.S. Department of State

Board of Directors: Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute* (State Farm, 2011b)

Numerous states contract for assessments including: New York and Florida (Questar Assessent, 2011a)

Officers generated statewide assessment business and managed portfolios for major academic publishers (Measured Progress, 2011)

Non-profit develops K-12 student assessments

Measured Progress

Relationships

Function

Entity

SHELLEY J. JENSEN

YVES LENOIR & VALÉRIE JEAN

THE COMPETENCY-BASED APPROACH IN AFRICAN TEXTBOOKS An Approach Dominated by Economic, Political, and Cultural Interests from the North

INTRODUCTION

From 2007 to 2009, the first author participated in an international scientific commission1 studying curricular reform in basic education within five Frenchspeaking African countries that use the competency-based approach (CBA): Cameroon, Gabon, Mali, Senegal, and Tunisia. This study, undertaken at the request of international financing organizations, was headed by the Centre international d’études pédagogiques de France (CIEP).2 The study stemmed from the questions, in this early 21st century, of certain donors who wondered whether this approach – which has its origins in developed countries to the North and was introduced into the educational systems of French-speaking African countries –had produced all of the anticipated results. Questions and criticism also emerged regarding the effects and effectiveness of international aid. Indeed, many voices criticized a neocolonialism in which the aid provided served to disguise the exploitation of natural resources, the destruction of basic agriculture and social and cultural structures, and the support of corrupt dictatorships in view of maintaining –––––––––––––– 1 The scientific commission was composed of Françoise Cros, member of the Centre de recherche sur la formation [training research center] and Professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et métiers de Paris [national conservatory of arts and crafts in Paris] (France); Jean-Marie De Ketele, Emeritus Professor at Catholic University of Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium); Martial Dembélé, Professor at the University of Montreal (Canada); Michel Develay, Emeritus Professor at the University of Lyon 2 (France); Roger-François Gauthier, Inspector General of administration of national education and research and consultant for UNESCO (France); Najoua Ghriss, Professor at the Institut supérieur de l’éducation et de la formation continue [higher institute of education and continuous training] (Tunisia); Yves Lenoir, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Educative Intervention, Professor at the University of Sherbrooke (Canada); Augustin Murayi, international consultant (Belgium); Bruno Suchaut, Director of the Institut de recherche sur l’éducation [institute for research in education], Professor at the University of Bourgogne (France); and Valérie Téhio, program manager at the Centre international d’études pédagogiques de Sèvres [international center for pedagogical studies in Sèvres] (France). 2 In addition to the CIEP, four organizations financed the study: the French Development Agency, the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MFEA), the African Development Bank (ADB), and International Francophonie Organization.

H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 65–85. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

YVES LENOIR & VALÉRIE JEAN

dependency to countries of the North, etc. (Abbas & Niyiragira, 2009; Duchatel & Rochat, 2009; Moyo, 2009; Tandon, 2009). It is therefore not surprising, even if economic analysis is hardly convincing, to see the flourishing of publications declaring that “development aid increases poverty, encourages corruption, and is a source of conflict”3 (Moyo, 2010, p. 21). Three central objectives guided the work of the scientific commission: – to examine the current state of curricular reforms founded on the CBA in the five countries considered; – to help those in charge of educational systems in the African countries to understand what is at stake in the implementation of the reform; and – to offer recommendations to policy-makers and suggestions to donors for their negotiations with the different countries. To meet these objectives, the scientific commission called for field studies to be carried out in the five countries, each with a researcher from the North associated with one or more educational players from the South, thus yielding five “country reports.” The commission also produced several documentary analyses: the characteristics of the African educational systems, conceptions of the notion of competency and the CBA, and a meta-analysis of research results on reforms in Africa. Given our research on instrumental devices and their use in teaching practices, we undertook to examine the textbooks used in the five countries. This text presents the results of the study, as well as their explanatory factors and related socio-educational consequences. Two publications resulting from the works of the scientific commission shed light on these results (Cros, de Ketele, Dembélé, Develay, Gauthier, Ghriss, Lenoir, Murayi, & Suchaut 2010; Téhio & Cros, 2010). Following a brief description of the socio-educational contexts in which the educational system reforms have unfolded in the five countries, we will specify the frame of reference that led to the analytical grid for available textbooks. This will be followed by a presentation of the data gathering and treatment procedures used, then of their interpretation from an educational and social standpoint. SOCIO-EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS

The five countries differ strongly. Tunisia is a Westernized country of some 10 million inhabitants, with an urbanization rate (66%) on the rise. Under a dictatorial regime at the time of study, Tunisia’s belonging to the Maghreb sets it apart in many ways (ethnically, historically, culturally, and socially) from the four SubSaharan countries. Together, these four countries have a population of 750 million across 48 states. According the World Bank, this number will reach 1 billion in 2020. The structural transformation at work since the beginning of the 1990s has had considerable repercussions for this part of the continent. It is the only region in which poverty has increased over the past 20 years. One fourth of inhabitants are affected by political crises and armed conflict. Politically, these countries with fragile democratic processes are often described as “democratorships.” It should –––––––––––––– 3 All translations in the text are ours.

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also be noted that the region is home to 60% of the world’s HIV-positive people. Economically, Gabon benefits from rich subsoil and considerable oil revenues; however, the population scarcely benefits from these riches. Cameroon is characterized by its agricultural, mineral, and oil resources. Mali, a very poor country, has a territory of which 65% is made up of desert or semi-desert regions. Senegal, a country with very few natural resources, is nevertheless one of the most industrialized West African countries. Table 1 presents the percentage of the population under 14 years old, the literacy rate of adults, and the enrollment rate at the elementary level for the five countries according to 2008 data from various sources (Mundi Index for the literacy rate). Table 1. A few indicators for the five countries studied

Country

Total Population

Cameroon

19,088,000

Gabon

1,448,000

Population 0-14 years old (%)

Literacy 15-49 years old (%)

Elementary enrollment (%)

43.5

68

80

42

86

88

Mali

12,706,000

48.2

23

64

Senegal

12,211,000

40.8

43

73

Tunisia

10,169,000

24

74

96

Source: UNICEF, Pôle de Dakar, ISU, World Bank, UNDP

The data show that of the five countries considered, only Tunisia has made its demographic transition, in fact even more markedly than the three other Maghreb countries (Morocco, Algeria, and Libya). The proportion of young people under 14 years old in the total population of Tunisia is only 24%, whereas it exceeds 40% for the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa. The schooling needs of these countries are therefore increasing even more substantially. The populations of Mali and Senegal are largely rural, with major consequences in terms of schooling challenges to be met. It is in Tunisia (34%) and especially Gabon (16%) that the proportion of rural dwellers is the lowest relative to the country’s overall population. In other countries, this proportion ranges from 45% in Cameroon to 69% in Mali. Tunisia’s adult literacy rate of 74% and elementary enrollment rate of 96% clearly differentiate it from the four Sub-Saharan countries. Among these, Gabon – and, to a lesser extent, Cameroon – are relatively advanced when it comes to 67

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schooling. Mali and Senegal, whose situations are typical of other French-speaking countries in West Africa, are the least advanced in terms of schooling. The director of the UNESCO Office in Dakar and Regional Bureau for Education in Africa, Ann Ndong-Jatta, declared in March 2010 during a sub-regional consensus workshop in basic education organized by the National Commission for UNESCO that in Sub-Saharan Africa, “40% of children have been described as illiterate after five years of elementary schooling.” In a concern for global justice, it appears evident in this context – even crucial and necessary – for rich countries to contribute to the development of basic education in the poorest countries. Such aid has existed for many years, often implemented in a disorder which, over the years, has sought greater organization and especially the avoidance of any and all internal intervention, leaving these countries to manage this aid in the frame of national consultation and, sometimes, between African states. This raises the question of the difficult balance to strike between aid that is meant to be well-targeted and effective, and the internal management of countries subject to political, cultural, social, and economic uncertainties. In addition to financial forms, this aid has also taken the form of foreign advice and expertise4 relating to the designing of teaching curricula, pedagogical approaches, in short elements concerning means for improving basic education. According to the Ugandan intellectual Tandon (2009), donors and stakeholders impose a form of conceptual control whose most insidious consequence is the imposition of an “ideological aid.” Cultural and intellectual dismantling, by means of imported models (yesterday the objective-based approach, today the competency-based approach), is thus inflicted on African educational systems from without. Finally, when it comes to schooling, the African countries first opted in the 1980s for objective-based curricula and pedagogy as was implemented in developed countries over the course of the 1970s. This approach, strongly criticized in these developed countries for its ineffectiveness in the intellectual development of children and especially in regard to the development of autonomy and creativity, has widely been abandoned in favor of what is commonly referred to as the competency-based approach (CBA). Francophone countries (Frenchspeaking Belgium and Switzerland, France, Quebec) have, each in their own way, more or less adopted this approach. At the dawn of the 21st century, international aid for education in African countries promoted if not imposed this CBA, which was presented as the magic solution consistent, according to experts, with the results of Western research on the learning of youth and supposed to be suitable for children all over the world. Willingly or not, under the double pressure of –––––––––––––– 4 For example, see Ravitch (2010), who, in the last chapter of her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, titled “The Billionaire Boys Club,” criticizes the takeover of educational systems – beginning with that of the United States – by extremely wealthy individuals and families promoting a form of education as a business, a market within a paradigm of competitiveness and privatization. The analysis of education reform in the United States sheds light on the aid-related aims and practices of international organizations.

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international donors and Western consultation firms, African countries turned to curricula and pedagogies calling on competencies and their implementation in their school systems. It should be mentioned that in most of these countries, the choice of the CBA was made at the level of ministry authorities rather than national meetings and the decision making was more or less applied, as certain countries began the reform immediately (for example Tunisia) and others took several years to begin implementation. The reform has not always been based on an in-depth diagnosis, but has often been constructed based on a diagnosis of opinions, in discussions with social partners that have taken little part in subsequent processes. As a result, international aid and internal management at the national level constitute two issues that will be addressed later in this text. FRAME OF REFERENCE

Two notions require clarification, namely that of the school textbook and that of competencies. The Notion of Textbook5 There are numerous definitions for the notion of textbook, some too broad (for instance that of Richaudeau, 1979), others quite vague, as Choppin (1980) illustrates when delimiting two categories of school books: “some, stricto sensu textbooks, defined by the intent of the author or editor … others, books that come to be used in schools following their permanent and generalized use in schools” (p. 5). Stray (1993) likewise distinguishes between schoolbooks used for teaching and learning, but whose educational aim is not necessarily the priority of the author or editor; and on the other hand the textbook, “a book designed to give a pedagogical or didactic version of a certain area of knowledge” (p. 73). We limit our discussion to textbooks which, according to the definitions of Stray and Choppin, include student books, teaching guides, exercise or learning booklets, locally produced pedagogical documents, and explicitly pedagogical reference tools such as school atlases or timelines. According to Stray (1993), the textbook “is at the crossroads of culture, pedagogy, publication, and society” (pp. 77-78). This statement echoes those of Choppin (1980, 1992), for whom the textbook is at once a consumer product, a medium for school knowledge, an ideological and cultural vehicle, and a pedagogical instrument. Venezky (1992) considers the textbook “both as a cultural artifact and as a surrogate curriculum” (p. 437). This notion of program substitution is also taken up by Woodward, Elliot and Nagel (1988), who mention that, “Significantly, in the last several decades, textbooks have taken over the curriculum in many schools of this nation, particularly at the elementary and junior high levels. Teachers rely on textbook programs to supply not only subject matter –––––––––––––– 5 See Lebrun, Lenoir, Laforest, Larose, Roy and Spallanzani (2002) for an in-depth discussion of the notion of textbook.

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content, but also teaching strategies and tactics in the form of elaborately worked out approaches to the presentation of the major school subjects and detailed lesson plans. Local curriculum development has been largely replaced by the work of authors, publishers and textbooks selection committees” (p. 1). Purves (1993) underscores the need to situate the textbook in a global context: “Textbooks exist within a political context no less than do schools; we cannot discuss either as if they were representations of an isolated entity called ‘pure knowledge’ or ‘pure pedagogical practice’” (p. 14). In a similar vein, according to Johnsen (1993), “A textbook is neither just object content, nor pedagogy, nor literature, nor information, nor morals nor politics. It is the freebooter of public information, operating in the gray zone between community and home, science and propaganda, special subject and general education, adult and child” (p. 330). The Notion of Competency First, it should be recalled that a competency is a social construct. It can be neither observed nor measured directly: it is a notion inferred based on action. A competency is defined through the task that it enables one to complete. The notion is therefore social in nature, and consists in giving recognition and attributing responsibility to the subject who completes the task. Hence, when an individual is seen as capable of carrying out an action, it is inferred that he or she has the competency required to complete it. Although there are many definitions of the notion of competency, for the purposes of this study we suggest the following simple definition, whose attributes are generally shared: a competency targets effectiveness and is geared toward an aim, since it exists only in its implementation (action – reflection): it is accomplished in action and within a specific context. It is defined by a number of elements of learning or knowledge put into relation, as it mobilizes various resources in situ – be they cognitive, affective, affective, social, sensory/motor, procedural, etc. – which attests to its complex and singular nature. A competency is directed toward action and applies to a family of situations rather than one in particular. Authors such as Burchell (1995) and Rey (1996) have distinguished three levels of competencies:6 – Behavioral competencies (or skills) have to do with the mastery of an ability expressed in the completion of a specific task, through all of the behaviors that prove that the ability is acquired. Example: “the proven ability to see a particular task through and to carry it out under specific and detailed conditions” (Colardyn, 1996, p. 59). – Generic (or functional) competencies deal with the mastery of a set of knowledge, know-how, and savoir-être (literally “knowing how to be”) that –––––––––––––– 6 NB the terms here used are those of Burchell, which are similar to those of Rey (provided in parentheses).

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enable appropriate implementation of a role, a function, or an activity. Example: “a system … of declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge … organized into an operational schema … which, within a family of situations, enables not only the identification of problems but also their resolution through effective action” (Paquay, 1995, pp. 1-2). – Generative (or interactive) competencies refer to the ability to mobilize cognitive resources when facing complex problem situations, to integrate multiple cognitive resources in the treatment of complex situations, within families of situations. Example: “The ability to implement an action in a given context and to transfer the knowledge to new tasks and contexts” (Colardyn, 1996, p. 59). METHODOLOGY

Sampling Procedures We had access only to the textbooks available from the CIEP or obtained by the CIEP through procedures undertaken in each of the countries. A total of 34 documents were analyzed: 11 for Cameroon, 10 for Tunisia, 10 for Gabon, and 3 for Mali. The few exclusively prescriptive and methodological excerpts from Senegal did not enable even a minimally enlightened analysis. With one exception (a textbook on environmental education in Gabon), all documents – student textbooks, pedagogical guides, and activity books – dealt with the teaching of French and mathematics. The four mathematics textbooks in Arabic (Tunisia) were treated by a Moroccan research assistant, a doctoral student in education. Analytical Procedures Based on the conceptual frame and thus on the characteristics of the CBA in teaching practices, according to dimensions supported by scientific publications in education science, we identified the following criteria to produce an analytical grid and examine productions. It should be noted that we considered only criteria in line with the CBA, that is, our analysis has addressed neither the intrinsic quality (scientific value, relevance, clarity, accuracy, rigor, and accuracy as well as disciplinary specificity, etc., of knowledge; layout and internal organization of teaching-learning activities) nor the extrinsic quality (form and formatting), but only the CBA. The dimensions chosen were as follows: characteristics of the competencies, competency levels, the problem situation, mobilization and coordination of a set of resources, contextualization of situations presented, organizational modes, teaching devices, teaching approaches, learning processes, and evaluative modes. Each of these dimensions was specified by indicators. For example, the “competency levels” were subdivided into behavioral, generic (functional), and generative (interactive) competencies. The “problem situation” component referred to different types of meaning: epistemological (for knowledge), psychological (for the 71

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subject), and social (for reality); and the “mobilization and coordination of a set of resources” component referred to knowledge, know-how, and savoir-être. RESULTS

We will provide a subdivision by CBA component before briefly presenting the analytical results of the school documents studied, followed by an interpretation. Characteristics of the Competencies Though it emerges clearly that the proposed activities are geared toward action, this action is very often proposed in a limited perspective: finding the answer to a question, doing an exercise, etc. It is exceedingly rare that teaching-learning situations are found to promote the mobilization of various resources. Globally, the textbooks remain influenced by the objective-based approach and by questions relating to information extraction and exercises. The second-year integration guide for mathematics in Gabon, for example, asks students to help a carpenter find measurements to build a piece of furniture. The chosen activities are all compartmentalized and require little reflection. For instance, one question has to do with measuring a log of timber: 60 kg, 7.6 m in length. The third-year textbook for French in Mali is essentially organized around questions whose answers can be found in the text (i.e., “Copy and complete the following sentences …”; “Complete the following sentences …”; “Rewrite the following sentences in the plural”; “Answer the following questions”; etc.). Competency Levels This is why, although here and there one finds suggested activities or situations targeting the actualization of generative (interactive) competencies and, more often, generic (functional) competencies, most activities are situated at the behavior level and pursue skills, with a trend toward restoration exercises (for example fill-in-the-blanks, questions simply involving transfer based on observation of an illustration or text). The richest activities in terms of the CBA can especially be found in the mathematics activity booklets in Gabon or in the grade six methodological guide for mathematics in the Republic of Tunisia, and not in French, in which suggested activities are generally centered on exercises. Although the questions in the textbooks and guides are almost all closed – or open questions of information explicitation or extraction that at best call for skills – the environmental education textbook in Mali stands apart by offering a few open questions that require students to use a procedure in order to answer. In addition, the teaching-learning situations are anchored in the realities of the country. Faced with the problems due to the progressive silting of sand in the Niger River valley, the textbook suggests that research be done on causes, as well as measures for halting this disaster. It also proposes that a letter be written to an authority in charge of environmental protection, an invitation to a discussion/debate. 72

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The Question of the Problem Situation We have observed a wide variety of conceptions of problem situations. We should note that these are often treated as pretexts (mere “triggers,” which is typical, for instance, in the pedagogical guide for French in Cameroon). A more integrative approach can nevertheless also be found, for example in the integration guides for mathematics in Gabon. Though most of the hypothetical situations are no more than pretexts for traditional activities, without any true link to them, the Cahier de situations cibles en mathématiques in Gabon presents problem situations related to everyday life (for example, developing a plot of land and dividing it into parcels; planting banana trees; building a fence, etc.). The mathematics activities broach these situations but, unfortunately, involve instrumental use and simple operations. Contextualization of the Proposed Situations However, the productions of Cameroon and Gabon – and this is also the case with the two available documents for Mali – systematically refer, especially in French, to local situations. References to life in these countries are very much present. The same cannot be said of productions in French from the Republic of Tunisia, in which texts and illustrations alike are completely disconnected from the realities of the country. Officially, the designers of these African textbooks justify their choices by the desire for developing openness to foreign cultural and social perspectives. But from an operational standpoint, a dual motive can likely explain these choices: a strong acculturation, on their part, to the French-speaking world – highly valorized – together with massive “borrowings” from French textbooks. Cultural and social contextualization is very much absent in French (one would think one was in French-speaking Europe based on the content, situations, referents – e.g. first names, illustrations) and in mathematics. The example of the environmental education textbook in Mali is interesting in that it proposes highly contextualized situations, but they are poorly implemented and essentially boil down to general questions of text comprehension. In this sense it is hardly any different, owing to a lack of genuine problematization, from a reading textbook. Mobilization and Coordination of a Set of Resources In the analyzed documents, students’ prior knowledge is rarely called on. The question of knowledge is most often considered independently from the realization of this knowledge in new or more complex situations within proposed activities. However, within integration activities and expression activities (Cameroon) as well as consolidation and integration activities (Gabon and Tunisia), one could hypothesize that they can favor the mobilization and coordination of various types of knowledge according to the use made by the teacher.

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Organizational Modes Organizational dimensions are largely absent in the documents, and more particularly the guides. The grade three methodological guide for French in the Republic of Tunisia nevertheless occasionally provides work modes at the individual, group, and class levels. In point of fact, individual work is systematically favored. Teaching Devices The interdisciplinary approach, regardless of its conception, is entirely absent from the analyzed productions. Hence the possibility of constructing human, social, or natural reality on a “scientific base” (which is the function of history, geography, and the sciences) before expressing it in French is not taken into consideration. Project-based pedagogy, for its part, is limited to integration activities – that is, traditional teaching of three to four weeks followed by a week of activities said to be integrative – consistent with a suggestion made by a Belgian organization, the Bureau d’Ingénierie en Éducation et en Formation (BIEF). The problem-based approach is present in mathematics, but not at all systematically. Its presence is strong in mathematics, but it is completely absent in French in the documents produced by the Republic of Tunisia. Problems also appear to be mere stimulants, hypothetical situations introduced before moving on to drill and practice, which is often the case for example in mathematics in grades one and five in Gabon. Teaching Approaches The documents most often include a presentation of aims, objectives, and competencies, with the exception of documents from Mali. But in the textbooks, the objectives have more to do with knowledge to learn than competencies to develop. This is the case with textbooks from Cameroon, Gabon, and Tunisia. In the case of both guides from Cameroon and Gabon in French and mathematics, the mentioned objectives often concern the knowledge to acquire. In the case of Tunisia, competencies and objectives centered on the acquisition of knowledge are intertwined in the guides. As for knowledge, it is frequently treated as an end in itself, rather than as an indispensable resource to mobilize, an indispensable tool, an essential means to realize competencies. The most complex tasks can be found in the integration activities – which is normal given the structure of the documents. However, while the teaching-learning situations presented can be rich, especially in the workbook of targeted situations in Gabon and in the textbook for environmental education in Mali, the use that is made of them – in both French and mathematics – remain limited. They are in fact compartmentalized and rest on imitation, various forms of information extraction (“Find in the text …”; “True or false”; “Rewrite the sentence”; “Trace the shape”; “Draw …”; “Find …”; “Calculate …”; etc.). Let us take an example in French and mathematics illustrating a competency-based approach in line with the previously stated criteria. 74

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In the context of the harvesting theme proposed in the fifth-year Cahier de situations cibles for elementary school mathematics in Gabon, the following activities could have been advanced: First, carrying out an investigation in the village to find out the duration in days of the harvest and the amount in tons of cocoa pods harvested (instead of imposing them), as well as the operations required to store, transport and sell them, which may have led to a use of the language and of science; and, second, carrying out mathematical operations on storage, drying, transport and the sums acquired from sale. Within the workbook, the use is limited to prescriptions: “Find the mass of cocoa”; “Underline the distance covered” (in fact, find the word “meters”); “Find the monetary sum” (all data are indicated and merely require the combination of an addition and a multiplication). Concomitantly, in French, the study would have called for an identification of aspects to consider, the establishment of a protocol for data collection and analysis, the presentation of results obtained, and their dissemination in the village. In a word, the suggestion of use that we summarily present here involves, among other things, an aim embedded in social realities; implies a set of innovative actions; requires calling on acquired knowledge; and, as a result, adopts attributes of the competency-based approach, which is characterized by the development of knowhow through the use of a variety of resources, including cognitive ones. The treatment of error as a source and means for the learning process is also quite absent in the analyzed documents as a whole. Analysis reveals that error is either ignored or penalized. It is not understood as a fulcrum required for learning. There is undoubtedly a link between this observation and the predominant question type: the closed question is ubiquitous, with the exception of integration activities, which generally feature situations to use. In these activities, students are prompted to carry out research. Open questions, though rarer, can also be observed. When the answer is contained directly in the text, as is frequently seen in French, the closed question is more of a question that, for all intents and purposes, already contains the answer in itself. Examples in the different textbooks are endless. To give but one, an activity in the Tunisian reading textbook is titled ‘La jeune acrobate’ [the young acrobat]. After the reading, the students are asked to answer questions for which answers can be found written within the text (“From what height does Tatania jump to finish her stunt?”; “What does she jump on and bounce off of?”; etc.), in line with an activity model of reading comprehension normally outdated today. Finally, these documents also include support measures (consolidation, remediation, and integration activities), though they only mention correcting student work and providing support for students experiencing difficulties. However, although remedial measures for example are mentioned in the grade four student guide for mathematics in Gabon, they are not presented explicitly. In addition, many activities are designed based on the mode of imitation (consolidation situations and integration activities that mimic what was taught). In the guide for grade six French in the Republic of Tunisia, suggestions for integration remain traditional and without means for implementation, while integration modules are more dynamic owing to their proposed tasks. In the case of Mali, one can find interesting examples of situations in mathematics, but the 75

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insufficiency of information precludes identification of a clear perspective, save that their implementation is strongly instrumentalized. The questions in both documents analyzed are essentially closed and very traditional. In the grade three manual for French, the situations from the book leave no room for real initiative (example: “At the end of this unit, you will ask your principal for permission to create a school garden,” p. 73), while situations open the way for a rich use. The Learning Process Although the CBA is characterized among other things by an approach requiring the mobilization of various resources, it is essentially in the integration activities that one finds this approach to learning. It is the integration situations that offer the conditions favoring student implementation of integrative cognitive processes. Thus, for example, the concern for the implementation and activation of knowledge can be observed in the situations found in the Cameroon documents. The documents do value the product of these processes, that is, the learning acquired and potentially integrated, but they largely neglect the acquisition and integration processes themselves. It is especially the conceptualization process that is missing: it would imply an investigative phase enabling one to establish and construct the problem and formulate a research question, preparation of a mechanism for gathering and analyzing data, the treatment and interpretation of results, and a summary. In addition, though scenario-based simulations are present, they do not suggest the collection of prior learning and conceptions of students concerning a problem situation and, at the end of the process, the (meta)cognitive modes ensuring integration of the learning process and new knowledge are absent (What were my thoughts at first? What has changed? What have I learned? What did I do or what path did I follow to learn what I learned?). As for the approach to problem resolution, while it is indeed present, it is not really developed systematically. Problem resolution mainly involves stereotypical solving of small problems that require basic operations, or classic problems such as, “A power shovel has a 220 dm2 bucket. How many buckets are required to fill an 8 m2 truck box?” Finally, as we will examine more closely in the interpretation section, a problem of conception can be detected when it comes to the interaction between knowledge and competencies. INTERPRETATION

These results warrant discussion on at least two levels, namely that of factors tied to teaching-learning and that of social factors, which in turn can be approached from two angles: international aid and national internal management. Factors Related to Teaching-Learning There can be no doubt that the analyzed academic texts express an apparent preoccupation with the CBA. But these documents, like the official documents, 76

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reveal the existence of a difficult gap between the approach based on behavioral objectives and the CBA, which rest on discrete teleological, epistemological, psychological, sociological, and praxeological foundations. Hence, only the official documents of the Republic of Tunisia explicitly advocate the development of competencies. At the other end of the spectrum, Cameroon calls for a “new pedagogical approach” said to be inspired by the CBA. It is also worth noting that the official documents do not specifically state the theoretical foundations of the CBA, with the exception of Gabon, Senegal, and Tunisia, where the CBA is associated with socio-constructivism and constructivism. It can in fact be seen that the conception of the CBA conveyed in the documents (and in particular those of Cameroon and Gabon) is very elementary and that the CBA appears to be more visible in the documents for the end of elementary school. While a certain effort can be seen, analysis reveals these considerable gaps with regard to both teaching approaches and learning processes. What emerges is a strongly cumulative conception of knowledge that reflects a focus on the accumulation of textbook knowledge. This trend hinders or prevents the realization of competencies and translates an encyclopedic conceptualization of knowledge, while the CBA should rest more on a logic of reflected-upon action that draws on the required knowledge. Problem situations are thus approached as pretexts that ensure a generalized separation between the learning of knowledge and the realization of this knowledge in the frame of competencies. This can be likened to learning the subtleties of solfège before being able to touch an instrument. Such a tendency is clearly expressed in integration activities consisting in a series of activities said to be integrative and that take place over a given time period (often one week) following a period (often four to five weeks) of teaching centered on the acquisition of knowledge from a more traditional standpoint or based on an approach geared toward objectives. This conception of a logic of acquiring knowledge before applying it, which carries the risk of deviating toward an aim of knowledge primarily apprehended as an end in itself, is distinct from a logic of action that integrates the acquisition of knowledge required to develop targeted competencies, a logic much more supported by the CBA. The pedagogy of integration is not without raising an important question: Does the prescription of the same program of activities with the same progression and the same duration not intrinsically carry with it problem elements, or even failure? On the one hand, the diversity of paces of learning is officially acknowledged and the adaptation of pedagogical interventions to the needs of students is insisted upon. On the other, however, what is proposed is a “standard monolithic” program that ignores the constraints inherent to time, space, didactic materials, the training of teachers... Is there not a risk of dismissing the rationales of the CBA (differentiation, integration of students with learning difficulties, putting the student at the center of educational action, learning assistance, etc.)? Moreover, juxtaposing the words “competency” and “objective” maintains a confusion, if not a collusion, between the CBA and objective-based pedagogy – between two different modes of learning. Finally, as we have already pointed out, 77

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it should be kept in mind that textbooks are a compromise that must be studied as such. The relevance and accuracy of the cognitive content must of course be carefully examined, but the textbook is first and foremost a ‘hammer,’ to use a metaphor. There are different types of hammers according to the use one has in mind, just as there are hammers of varying quality. Hence the importance of high-quality textbooks! But in the final analysis, what really matters is the hand holding the hammer, the use that is made by teachers and students, but teachers above all. It is worth repeating that it is teachers who establish the conditions (situations, devices, etc.) with which students will be confronted. (Lenoir, 2006, p. 25)

Consequently, the best textbook can be used utterly ineffectively, and a mediocre textbook can be used intelligently and to advantage. Though textbooks need to be analyzed from an instrumental and internal angle, as we have just done, they also need to be studied from a procedural standpoint, in a situation of use. We will come back to this point. As the final report makes apparent (Cros et al., 2010), there is in fact a major discrepancy between the orientations and content of the textbooks and the orientations and prescriptions of the curricula that in various ways promote the CBA, the constructivist or socio-constructivist approach, diagnostic procedures, the differentiation of remedial interventions, and the status of error as a lever for learning. In this respect, the direct observations made in the elementary classes of the countries over the course of the field studies indicate that teachers hardly master the CBA and struggle to appropriate the tools. For example, Lafontaine and Ben Fatma (2009) mention that “the observation of practices and discussions with the observed teachers pointed to major difficulties resulting either from inadequate knowledge of the essential characteristics of the CBA – and this in spite of frequently exemplary planning – or from the inability to integrate these characteristics into everyday practice” (p. 69).7 It is worth noting, first, that the often excessive number of students per class undoubtedly has a substantial impact on this matter. In a class of 100 students, for example, the teacher has 27 x 100 (or 2,700) problem situations to correct. Second, the availability of tools in the classes strongly varies from one country to another or within the country itself, with uneven and sometimes highly belated distributions over the school year, a point that draws bitter complaints from teachers.

–––––––––––––– 7 In addition, a situation of “discomfort” with the CBA emerges from focus groups led with teachers in the countries studied. Two trends could be identified: a moderate one that, all while recognizing its relevance, is critical among other things of the CBA’s limiting nature, its cumbersome conceptual baggage, its evaluation system that is time-consuming and rather ineffective with regard to the quality of learning, an increase in the teacher’s workload, etc. The second trend, stronger, goes so far as to question the CBA’s usefulness and the applicability of its pedagogical choices in current African educational contexts. But over and beyond these controversies, a consensus can be found: the CBA is seen to be a good, active, effective, and equitable method, insofar as all of the conditions for success are met.

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THE SOCIAL FACTORS

We could restrict our discussion to presenting the factors tied to teaching/learning processes to seek to explain the results obtained. However, this would radically distort the perspectives of interpretation or, in any case, remain at a superficial level of analysis. It is indispensable to underscore a certain number of social factors that in our view appear to be much more at the root of the observed problems. We will consider social factors from two standpoints: national management of the educational system and international aid. National management of the educational system. Regardless of the country considered, one finds an absence of prior epistemological reflection that should question the meaning and scope of the reforms being considered. Fundamentally, before launching such a wide-scale reform, coordinators should state clear socioeducational aims; transparently specify the targets pursued, taking into account financial, human, administrative, logistic, and other resources available; put together an accurate portrait of these resources; reflect on the devices to use before implementing the reform, particularly in light of a national debate on the orientations of the reform and of teachers’ training and professional development. They should equally guarantee the sustainability of the reform by establishing a task force for guidance and regulation. Moreover, the various studies show that in most of these countries the choice of the CBA was made at the level of ministry authorities rather than national meetings and the decision making more or less produced results, as certain countries began the reform right away and others took several years to begin the reform. The reform has not always been based on an indepth diagnosis, but instead often constructed based on a diagnosis of opinions, in the frame of discussions with social partners that have been little involved in later processes. A second factor explaining the situation has to do with the ways various players are trained. First, initial teacher training does not deal with the CBA, but upholds a form of training founded either on the objective-based approach or on the traditional approach of exposition-transmission-reception-memorization. This observation, made in each of the five country reports, is surprising at first glance. But it can be better understood in light of the fact that structures are most often compartmentalized at the organizational level, with decision makers in competition, and as a result there are no links between training settings and practice settings. Second, the training of trainers has not been a priority, with the exception of Tunisia where the corps of inspectors has been strongly involved in the implementation of the CBA, twenty or so of them having even received specific training for writing school textbooks that call on the CBA over the course of a program financed by the World Bank. On another note, teachers – the first players concerned – have pointed out the low number of training days they are given in line with the CBA. This was especially the case in Cameroon where only one training (if not information) day was offered on the topic, while in Mali the training was, in addition, very theoretical. However, school administrators were 79

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able to benefit from awareness days, which is explained by the importance of per diems in the functioning of these countries where they make a significant contribution to income. A third factor relates to the somewhat loose management of human, organizational, and financial resources. When it comes to management, randomness can often appear to be the norm. It is for example impossible to get a complete and accurate portrait of financial investments and their allocation, which inevitably leads, in some cases, to hypotheses of corruption and embezzlement of funds. Since the policy of donors is to avoid any internal intervention within the country once the funds are granted, the absence of regulatory mechanisms and control makes accountability all but impossible. The international aid in question. The reforms, by and large imposed by international donors, have been carried out with extensive assistance from foreign organizations. Aside from independent agents that contribute punctually or on a longer-term basis (in this case, dwelling in the country), French, Belgian, and Quebec organizations have systematically intervened in these countries with a view to profitability. And yet the conceptions of the CBA conveyed by this aid mostly originating from different countries have generally diverged and led to ambiguities and confusion, sometimes cacophony. In Tunisia, for instance, the Bureau d’Ingénierie en Éducation et en Formation (BIEF), an organization associated with the Catholic University of Louvain-La-Neuve, supervised the writing of the political-educational orientations; the production of curricula could be likened to an adaptation of Quebec programs in one of the preliminary versions; the TECSULT ÉDUPLUS, a business that is today part of the Canadian AECOM, oversaw the training of trainers; and a Quebec university team trained the inspectors to write the school textbooks. In Mali, Canadian “experts” were succeeded by the Centre d’études pédagogiques pour l’expérimentation et le conseil (CEPEC), which led to disagreements at the level of the two ministry administrations concerned. In all the countries, outside intervention from various sources has led to incoherencies. The CBA thus constitutes a polymorphic reality which, additionally, coexists with other pedagogies. It becomes the pedagogy of integration in Cameroon, the pedagogy of convergence in Mali, a structure based on basic competencies and “intermediate objectives” for integration in Gabon, and the “new pedagogical approach” based, according to the official presentation, on active methods and the development of inferential thought in Senegal. It would appear that three training teams have carried out the vast majority of interventions in the five countries studied: the CEPEC (French organization), the BIEF (Belgian organization), and TECSULT ÉDUPLUS (Canadian organization). In many cases, it is (self-proclaimed) experts who have acted as consultants. Those responsible for the country-reports frequently noted the extent to which the countries off-loaded responsibilities upon experts. Instead of having a coordinator of the reform seconded by a group in charge of strategic piloting within a country, it is often the foreign expert who implicitly, or even explicitly, occupies this role of coordination, consistent with a logic in line with political, economic, cultural, and 80

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other parameters foreign to the reality of the country. The result is dependence, if not subjection. In terms of tools, in Mali, since the testing of the CBA no manual centered on this approach has been published or distributed, while in three of the countries – Gabon, Senegal, and Tunisia – all planned media were apparently produced for elementary schools: curricula, student textbooks, teacher’s guides, and accompanying documents for students. But in Cameroon as in Gabon, textbooks were produced by a French editor. Let us take the example of Cameroon. Its teaching is considered to be essentially book-based. Hence in mathematics, teaching/learning situations are generally borrowed from official texts (Nouveaux Champions written in terms of competencies), but the same situation is developed throughout the lesson without taking advantage of possibilities for transfer to a family of situations. In languages, problem situations are primarily implemented in the context of written production activities, but foremost involve contextualization. Despite the use of textbooks geared toward the development of competencies and proposing problem situations, integration activities, and avenues for the use of knowledge, the pedagogical practices of most teachers remain dominated by the “new pedagogical approach.” And it is the objective-based pedagogy that very broadly dominates evaluation processes. Finally, training and the availability of appropriate didactic material are required, as is usually the case for teachers all over the world during curricular reforms. In the textbooks produced for Cameroon and Gabon by French publisher EDICEF in collaboration with authors from the country, an effort of contextualization has been made, but the Francophone European influence remains. For example, in the activity booklet of the “Super en … français” series intended for grade two students in Gabon, page 80 has the following: “Pierre is adding: he is doing …,” “Juliette is repairing her bicycle: she is doing a …,” “Paulette is subtracting: she is doing ….” Many situations and names are clearly European. The content and illustrations in the textbooks are very often inspired by French textbooks. The most pronounced case can be found in the Tunisian textbooks, even though they are produced within the country, as a series of illustrations and texts refer to the French context outside any consideration of local realities. Two examples taken at random (Figures 1 and 2) suffice to illustrate this decontextualization, which is systematic. Figure 1 is drawn from the grade three reading textbook for basic education, Le français … pas à pas (p. 116), and Figure 2, from the grade six reading manual in basic education, Un pas de plus … vers le collège (p. 109). They attest to the firm control maintained by Francophone countries on education in the country in question. Furthermore – and this can be observed in the textbooks of all the studied countries – learning situations, particularly in French, are essentially addressed to students from the middle and upper classes of society.

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Figure 1. A family that hardly reflects Tunisian realities

Figure 2. Two typically European children

CONCLUSION

In light of the results concerning the appropriation and use of tools produced in the frame of the CBA, we are led to underscore four principal and inter-related problems that appear to be at the root of weaknesses observed among teachers and that touch on national management of reforms as well as international aid. The first problem is without a doubt organizational in nature. It has to do with the management of the reform, policies meant to support the CBA, and regulatory and control mechanisms for its implementation, in a word, logistics, for instance control of the number of students per class and the distribution of minimal required resources within suitable time frames. The second problem has to do with the production of tools required to ensure teaching/learning processes consistent with the characteristics of the CBA. How can an educational reform be introduced without training, without support, without the resources it requires? The need for rigorous planning, both vertical and horizontal, of required means and their distribution, is the guarantee for an easier implementation of the reform. The third problem that emerges relates to the difficulty or inability of teachers to appropriate the CBA, as well as the use of tools that are in no way harmonious with the characteristics of the CBA. The need for structure, for ongoing supervision and follow-up required by any integration process, necessitates the participation of determined and competent teams. 82

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Last but not least, the fourth problem concerns international aid. When considering only the textbooks in themselves, the CBA is almost absent or often takes on a distorted form. The weight of a supremacy of Northern countries, here Francophone, emerges strongly and with very few exceptions, as shown by the efforts made by the Republic of Djibouti, which produces its own school textbooks. The issue is not that these textbooks are distinguished by their intrinsic qualities and a better application of the CBA, but rather that they are produced locally, that they more closely correspond to the realities of the country, and that their content takes these realities into account. However, the textbooks produced by the countries of the North or under their direct influence are strongly informed, in general, by situations that are barely or not at all related to the African context. Nor do they adopt the CBA. This raises the question of whether this absence, in the minds of textbooks designers, might be related to an implicit belief in African school systems’ inability to implement the CBA (or even their inability to operationally translate the CBA in textbooks), even as these school systems adopt the model, at least officially. But the textbooks cannot be examined only in themselves. The analyses reveal that the political, economic, and cultural contexts are, with few exceptions, ignored by international aid. This neglect is all the stronger as the curricula providing the framework for these textbooks are strongly inspired by – and sometimes almost exact duplicates of – French, Belgian, or Quebec curricula, and promoters and consultants come from organizations foreign to obvious economic interests and impose their values, their cultural perspectives, and their social and educational norms. What, then, can be said of international aid in these African countries? In our view, it appears to be part of a form of neocolonialism that maintains links of dependency and submission between the countries of the South and North. Financial injections, the interventions of experts and consulting organizations, together with an abdication of responsibility and self-interested complicity on the part of leaders and decision makers in these countries, make for relations of dominance on the educational and cultural planes that favor the establishment of other, more economically profitable links. As Tandon (2009) points out, this financial “aid,” which he describes as surreptitiously ideological, undermines the legitimacy of states that sidestep their responsibilities to their populations and instead focus on the demands of donors. By injecting substantial funds and imposing a mode of reform hardly compatible with economic, political, cultural, and educational realities, international donors believe to have found a way to support a cause that may have appeared noble, with the CBA meant to constitute a response to objective-based programs and a panacea for the problem of school failure, as well as a vehicle for increased justice and equity in educational systems. For their part, experts and consultants have found a source of speculative and financial gratification in return for their services. To speak of aid in such a context is, in our view, a euphemism. [Translated by Joachim Lépine] 83

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2.

3. 4.

5. 6.

Why has the competency-based approach been imposed by international organizations such as the OECD or the World Bank in African countries where French is the principal language of communication? How can it be explained that textbooks for African countries are designed and produced in France and that, for instance, the designers of Tunisian textbooks wrote the textbooks for students in their country by borrowing examples and illustrations from Francophone European realities? With what problems relating to organization, production, and dissemination of textbooks are these African countries confronted? Where do these problems come from? What factors might account for them? In Mali, an interviewee said the following: “Populations no longer knew where we were going. Peasants say that children finish their studies and have nothing waiting for them. The state must transform the school and ensure that it leads to prospects for those who finish their studies; and for those who did not finish their elementary education, we see that they are incapable of reading a letter or carrying out operations.” This discourse appears to attest to the need to implement the CBA. What economic, political and educational stakes can be identified based on this testimony? And to what extent does the CBA constitute an appropriate or inappropriate response to the needs of the African countries considered? If you had to decide on the aid to provide to these African countries, what, in order of priority, would be the measures to take to help them improve the lot of their populations? What are the implications of this work on US educational material production and use?

REFERENCES Abbas, H. & Niyiragira, Y. (Eds.). (2009). Aid to Africa: Redeemer or coloniser? Cape Town, Dakar, Nairobi & Oxford: Pambazuka Press. Berman, L. M. (1987). Perception, paradox, and passion: Curriculum for community. Theory into Practice, 26 (special issue), 346-350. Burchell, H. (1995). A usefull role for competence statements in post-compulsory teacher education? Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 20(3), 251-259. Choppin, A. (1980). L’histoire des manuels scolaires: une approche globale. Histoire de l’éducation, 58, 137-164. Choppin, A. (1992). Les manuels scolaires: histoire et actualité. Paris: Hachette Éducation. Colardyn, D. (1996). La gestion des compétences. Perspectives internationales. Paris, France: Presses universitaires de France. Cros, F., de Ketele, J.-M., Dembélé, M., Develay, M., Gauthier, R.-F., Ghriss, N., Lenoir, Y., Murayi, A., & Suchaut, B. (2010). Les réformes curriculaires par l’approche par compétences en Afrique. Paris: Agence française de développement, Direction de la stratégie, Département de la recherche (Document de travail nº 97). Duchatel, J. & Rochat, F. (Eds.). (2009). Efficace, neutre, désintéressée? Points de vue critiques du Nord sur la coopération européenne. Geneva, Switzerland: Cetim.

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THE COMPETENCY-BASED APPROACH IN AFRICAN TEXTBOOKS Eisner, E. W. (1985). The educational imagination. On the design and evaluation of school programs (2d ed.). New York, NY: Macmillan/Collier Macmillan. Gérard, F.-M. & Roegiers, X. (1993). Concevoir et évaluer des manuels scolaires. Bruxelles: De Boeck Université. Gundem, B. B. & Hopmann, S. (Eds.). (1998). Didaktik and/or curriculum. An international dialogue. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Johnsen, E. B. (Ed.). (1993). Textbooks in the kaleidoscope. A critical survey of literature and research on educational texts (Trad. L. Sivesind). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Lafontaine, L. & Ben Fatma, M. (2009). Étude sur les réformes curriculaires par l’approche par compétences en Afrique. Le cas de la Tunisie. Rapport final. Sèvres: Centre international d’études pédagogiques (CIEP). Lebrun, J., Lenoir, Y., Laforest, M., Larose, F., Roy, G.-R., & Spallanzani, C. (2002). Past and current trends in the analysis of textbooks in the Quebec context. Curriculum Inquiry, 32(1), 51-83. Lenoir, Y. (2006). Orientations épistémologiques du nouveau curriculum et contribution des manuels scolaires à leur mise en œuvre. In J. Lebrun, J. Bédard, A. Hasni & V. Grenon (Eds.), Le matériel didactique et pédagogique: soutien à l’appropriation ou déterminant de l’intervention éducative (p. 13-32). Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. Lenoir, Y., Larose, F., Biron, D., Roy, G.-R., & Spallanzani, C. (1999). Le concept de compétence dans la formation à l’enseignement primaire au Québec: un cadre d’analyse. Recherche et formation, 30, 143-163. Moyo, D. (2010). L’aide fatale. Les ravages d’une aide inutile et de nouvelles solutions en Afrique, Paris: J.-C. Lattès. Paquay, L. (1995). Transmettre des connaissances ou développer des compétences? D’un faux dilemme à de vraies priorités! (Document de travail). Louvain-la-Neuve: Université catholique de Louvain, Faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l’éducation. Purves, A.-C. (1993) Introduction. In E. B. Johnsen (Ed.), Textbooks in the kaleidoscope. A critical survey of literature and research on educational texts (trad. L. Sivesind) (pp. 13-17). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ravitch, D. (2010). The life and death of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Rey, B. (1996). Les compétences transversales en question. Paris: ESF. Richaudeau, F. (1979). Conception et production des manuels scolaires. Guide pratique. Paris: UNESCO. Tandon, Y. (2009). En finir avec la dépendance à l’aide. Geneva, Switzerland: Cetim. Téhio, V. & Cros, F. (Eds.). (2010). Politiques publiques en éducation: L’exemple des réformes curriculaires. Actes du séminaire final de l’étude sur les réformes curriculaires par l’approche par compétences en Afrique, 10-12 juin 2009. Paris: Centre international d’études pédagogiques, Département enseignement général. Tochon, F. (Ed.). (1999). Didactics in the francophone world. Instructional Science. An International Journal of Learning and Cognition, 27(1) (Thematic issue). Stray, C. (1993). Quia nominor leo: Vers une sociologie historique du manuel. Histoire de l’éducation, 58, 71-102. Venezky, R.-L. (1992). Textbooks in school and society. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum. A project of the American Educational research Association (pp. 436-461). New York, NY: Macmillan. Woodward, A., Elliott, D. L., & Nagel, K. C. (1988). Textbooks in school and society. An annoted bibliography and guide to research. New York, NY: Garland.

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MATH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION

MICHAEL FISH & ANTHONY PERSAUD

(RE)PRESENTING CRITICAL MATHEMATICAL THINKING THROUGH SOCIOPOLITICAL NARRATIVES AS MATHEMATICS TEXTS

OVERVIEW

In our professional work as mathematics educators we are often suspicious of reform or nontraditional approaches to teaching at the secondary level (Hu, 1996; Klein, 2003; Schoenfeld, 2004). We want what is best for our students: to thrive and succeed both in class and in life. Our role as mathematics educators is to help our students appreciate and be empowered by their mathematical knowledge. The authors’ philosophical orientation towards education reflects other transformative mathematics educators who have recently begun to use broad social issues to interpret the value of mathematics that students are learning. This philosophical orientation has given rise to mathematics curriculum oriented toward understanding workplace encounters and meeting the needs of students’ life experiences. However, in the modern era, it has become important to promote access to mathematical ideas for everybody regardless of class, ethnicity, and gender. It has become important to represent traditional mathematics curriculum as a more reflective curriculum, one that enables students to explore their lived experiences through understanding how to make socially aware decisions and to critically interpret information. Literature suggests that mathematics educators’ attitudes about the subject can transfer to, and be expressed in, our own students (Relich, 1996) and that mathematically self-conscious or anxious teachers are less likely to approach their pedagogy from a constructivist perspective (Ball, 1988). This chapter adopts the perspective that reality is constructed of lived experiences and that our own meaning making, particularly in mathematics, is not derived a priori but instead through social human interaction and discovery. This steps away from Platonic thinking to reframe mathematics from its “traditional dependence on an assumed” (von Glasersfeld, 1992, p. 3) set of preexisting ideals that is independent of the individual. A wholly different type of mathematics text is needed to support curriculum as moving past algorithmic or procedural fluency towards empowering students with mathematics’ understanding for critical participation in society. Toward encouraging and empowering our students to be ready to participate in society, mathematics educators need to wrestle the mathematics textbook from its absolutist H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 89–110. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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histori-political grasp to be repositioned as a new mathematics text enriched by values of social justice and based on egalitarian and democratic perspectives. Should we choose not to do this and If the schools of a democratic society do not exist for and work for the support and extension of democracy, then … at best [schools] will educate people who will go their way and earn their living indifferent to the obligations of citizenship … and of the democratic way of life … [or schools] will educate people to be enemies of democracy … who [will] back movements and rally round leaders hostile to the democratic way of life (Mursell, 1955, p. 3)

It is then through accepting a more egalitarian and socially just text that stresses mathematical knowledge as social and humanistic, in contrast to traditional absolutism, that the teaching of mathematics becomes capable of interacting with a changing society and cultural experiences and away from promoting mathematical knowledge as skills and mastery in equations of numbers of pizza slices or speeds of trains traveling toward each other from opposite directions, to an ideology in which the mathematics text and its associated pedagogy promote critical discourse, public analysis, and debate. Pedagogical strategies for this text type that support students with skills and knowledge needed to better understand their roles and capabilities as agents of social change are discussed throughout the chapter. METHODOLOGY

The authors debated several methodological approaches in examining how best to describe our reflections on the benefits and challenges to this mode of teaching secondary mathematics. Our primary concern was to maintain a critical voice in an effort to acknowledge such mathematical instruction, which often goes unrecognized. The basis of our methodology was to engage in ethnography, which details the positionality of the authors (Madison, 2005), and to disrupt neutralstatus-quo on the politics of dominant mathematics (Gutiérrez, 2002). As the common positionality of both authors was that of mathematics educators, we next concerned ourselves with a research approach situated in both personal experience and social context (Romero, 2004, p. 181), in this case, a social context of teaching mathematics. Autoethnography was initially decided upon as it allows researchers to investigate their personal experiences as the main agent and provides flexibility to include others as co-practitioners in the study. However, deeper discussion between the authors was concerned with arguing for the emotionally engaging, expressive, and subjective positions in which mathematics educators often find themselves. In seeking to better understand our need to engage in deep reflection upon personal lived experiences we decided to apply the work of analytical autoethnography (Anderson, 2006; Chang, 2008; Denzin, 2006; Ellis & Bochner, 2006) reorganized in a collaborative sense. That is to say, the authors are seeking to extend the work of previous analytic autoethnographers in a more collaborative direction while still maintaining the spirit of autoethnography. This recognizes that the authors are members of a particular culture (that of secondary mathematics 90

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educators) and have acquired the characteristics, traits, and cultural affiliations of this group through personal lived experience in teaching. However, in contrast to analytic autoethnography, jointly constructed and overlapping personal experiences shape part of the set of combined personal lived experiences. Scholars remind us to consider how “our ability to remember is at risk in a culture where only the present moment matters….We have to value conversation and storytelling, because our memories and histories are shared and kept alive through these practices” (hooks & Mesa-Bains, 2006, p. 112). The authors of this chapter then are attempting to further develop a methodology which values personal narratives as methods (Chase, 2005) and the importance of memory of the “dramas that mark our worlds and work” (Lincoln, 1997, p. 51), while jointly exploring the self and acknowledging personal subjective and emotional memories and experiences. The collaborative autoethnographer (Lapadat, 2009) draws on memory and personal narrative as data in order to elicit research methods specific to personal experience and, in our case, sociopolitical didactics. Thus, collaborative autoethnography seeks to acknowledge the personal lived experiences of self in cultural participation not solely as a form of memory-work and storytelling representative in biographical forms of social participation. NARRATIVE FORMAT

As a collaborative autoethnographic work, both authors shared similar personal lived experiences as secondary mathematics teachers, concerns for the cultural and social relevance of mathematics education pedagogy, and in empowering and transforming our students in order to change class inequities (Frankenstein, 1995). Additionally, written personal narratives, cooperative ethnographic interviewing (Heyl, 2007; Spradley, 1979) between both authors generated data for this chapter. Finally, although both authors engaged in this process, we felt it best to represent Anthony’s story due to his experience with social justice and critical thinking mathematics: hence, when first person perspective is used in the remainder of this chapter, is it that of A. Persaud. That said, all ideas included here were developed and recorded through discussions between both authors. An example of such a discussion is included in the section on mathematics as a tool for critical thinking in order to clarify this use of collaborative autoethnography. FINDINGS

Key personal ideas developed in this chapter include – nurturing critical thinking over time – mathematics as a tool for critical thinking – transitioning from teacher-centered to student-centered lessons – the Critical Mathematics Narrative We consider these ideas in the context of changing cyclical reinforcement of student capabilities, based on societal expectations. With a change in delivery of 91

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curriculum and expectations of students, a change may be made in students’ future abilities to participate positively in a democracy. NURTURING CRITICAL THINKING OVER TIME

Critical thinking is not something that develops overnight; indeed, we argue that our education system often seems ready to suppress it. For one, it might be that critical thinking skills get whittled away by the large influence of the role of competition in education shifting “from student needs to student performance and from what the school does for the student to what the student does for the school” (Apple, 2001, p. 416). As teachers and parents, we often encourage our students and children to focus on the individual, “to be the best you can be; try to be better than the others,” and not on cooperative activity. In fact, it may be that our role models’ expectations take critical thinking away from us, suggesting that mathematics is not a useful subject (Iben, 1991), particularly during students’ middle school years. When I was a student in junior school, I was in a special program for gifted students. One of our first such activities involved answering the question, “Who would you most like to meet?” The teacher gave an open-ended question and expected a range of answers that we could discuss in groups and learn from in a flexible system. I can see that now that I look back as an educator and have tried the same sorts of things with my math students. My answer at the time was that I wanted to meet the owners of Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds, identifying with these transnational companies as “symbol[s] of affluence and wealth” (Kincheloe, 2002, p. 2). As a child, my answer related to what I enjoyed most at that moment on a seemingly superficial level. When I discussed the day’s activities with an important role model in my life, he was very upset that I didn’t have a “meaningful” answer. I remember that he would have accepted my answer, “If only I had wanted to meet them to discuss their business skills.” Although the teacher did not expect a right answer to the question, my role-model did. It does not take much to stop a child from thinking about options and instead make him or her try to get answers right, or at the least to try and avoid being wrong and never “stand back from [his or her] own personal knowledge [and] evaluate its antecedent assumptions, argue about the foundations of its legitimacy” (Lampert, 1990, p. 32). I spent the rest of my school career in mainstream education classrooms successfully avoiding being wrong and never really thinking deeply and critically again. This was particularly easy in math and science as there is typically one answer for each question and that answer is often found at the back of the textbook. Thoughtfulness is fragile and it must be nurtured through all grades and teaching moments. One momentary event from a respected person was enough to change me for years. On the other hand, with many more years of practice, I am often now able to evaluate a situation and think about missing information and other points of view. One of our challenges as part of an education system is to develop and 92

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maintain an environment conducive to critical thinking in students for an extended period of time; i.e. to reinforce critical thinking over years of a child’s education, not just during a particular lesson or unit. That is, mathematics teachers should not interpret our subject as static, culture-free, or as knowledge to be transmitted from teacher to student, but rather as a process of human inquiry and thereby necessarily fallible and subject to growth, change, and improvement. Given this, an even bigger challenge is to motivate and empower children and adults to act on their ideas and to implement necessary changes in society. MATHEMATICS AS A TOOL FOR CRITICAL THINKING

Mathematics provides teachers with an opportunity to develop critical thinking in our students, if we choose to take advantage of it. The curriculum requires that we teach specific skills, but we are enabled to teach virtually any application in any way. That flexibility lets us bring a topic or subject into the math classroom and use math to analyze it. We are not restricted to a specific textbook or text form. Consider that, for example, the high social status of mathematics in Western culture plays a role in class stratification (Christensen, Stentoft, & Valero, 2008). Students whose parents appreciate this idea push school systems to replicate and maintain the status quo privilege, leading to the subordination of minority culture to the dominant one with respect to the value and reproduction of mathematical knowledge (Martin, Gholson, & Leonard, 2010). This positions traditional mathematics texts as gatekeepers for access to improved socioeconomic and cultural opportunities (Martin, 2000; Moses & Cobb, 2001; Popkewitz, 2004; Tate, 1995). When I started teaching, I thought that I could use math to teach social justice and use social justice applications to engage students in learning math. I created guided projects with scripted responses so that students would arrive at the understanding that I wanted them to. This is reminiscent of a lab experiment where a student would follow a recipe and arrive at a scientific discovery. While it is true that social issues engaged some students more than traditional text forms, there was only slightly more critical thinking involved on the part of the student because everything was so scripted. Through classroom experience, my thinking has evolved to accept the aims of mathematics education to prepare students for citizenship (D’Ambrosio, 1990) and to be able to intelligently and wisely participate in the democracy or society in which they currently live (Frankenstein, 1994). In essence it is the process and understanding not the absolute answer, which mathematics educators need to prioritize. Ball (2001) writes, “suspending [the teacher’s] desire for students to get answers right and thinking mathematically about what a child might mean are among the most difficult problems of teaching” (p. 19). As mathematics teachers, we must recognize that the ability to analyze an issue and determine what makes sense for students as individuals is more important to achieving democratic citizenship than understanding specific individual issues scripted through a problem solving exercise. If all individuals were educated and empowered to 93

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participate in and change the democracies in which they exist, there are people in power who would have to share what they already have and some of those people might resist this change. As teachers, we can facilitate participation and positive change by modeling democracy in our classrooms, sharing power and encouraging students to use their voice and take responsibility for their learning. Students can develop good democratic habits that carry through past graduation. When a teacher chooses social issues that don’t matter to students and applies math that is not obviously valuable for them, it does not have the same impact as giving students choices and repercussions. Including students’ voices and concerns within the classroom community revives “the ideals of a democracy by producing greater representation of those directly involved in schooling … [encouraging] the responsible citizenship of the child” (Popkewitz, 2004, p. 17). Cyclical reinforcement of student capabilities. At this point in our research, the authors were deeply concerned with ideas of a cyclical relationship between teachers and society to reinforce student capabilities and social conditions. In our inquiry into a new kind of mathematical text, the authors discussed how this relationship is realized in society. Michael: How might you describe the relationship among teachers able to counteract society? Anthony: I think teachers, to a large extent, there’s sort of a cycle that happens between the teacher and society that if a teacher sees that society needs or expects a certain thing, then they teach to that level. And once they start teaching to that level, then society connects with it [in terms of level of expectations for student achievement.] M:

Expects that?

A:

Expects it, exactly. This sort of cyclical reinforcement needs to get broken. And it definitely starts with the students. Get out from the students what they are capable of. If you don’t think they are capable of anything, that’s all you’re going to get. Let me explain. I had a 10th grade student in a prior mathematics class; she was ready for university. She got in the mid-80s; good, hard worker; answered everything that I was looking for. I had her again a couple of years later as a 12th grade student. I asked her why she switched [to an easier mathematics class]. She decided that was what she needed for her program, meaning a more challenging mathematics course would not help her succeed after graduation. She told me, in front of all the other students, that this was the first year she had been made to feel stupid by her teacher [the impression she gave was that nothing was expected of her and that she was fed knowledge without inquiry]. It didn’t have anything to do with her; it

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was the fact that she was in [a less rigorous mathematics class]. The bar is set low, depending on what [mathematics class] you’re in. And that’s so not right. M:

So if I can rephrase that, what we’re talking about is basically tracking?

A:

[Tracking happens to students in university and community college programs] and a vocational level student would be treated as if, well, all you’re going to do is dig ditches, so you don’t need to think.

M:

How do you think this connects to your beliefs about society?

A:

There’s a lot of fixing to be done. And unfortunately, [people in positions to promote needed change] who have different ideas and have an opportunity to change things, virtually instantly buy into the system as it is. [Often citizens] perpetuate … inequalities … because they are successful and I don’t think it’s a conscious thought.

M:

It sounds to me what you might be describing is that there is, within society, some kind of inequitable situations which are occurring. But maybe for the most part, you might be aware of them, but larger society might not be?

A:

I suspect most people don’t think about it. Or they think it’s not that bad here. Or, they don’t have the skills to really think critically about what’s happening and what they can do about it. If they think there’s a problem, they may not think that they can do anything about it.

M:

So, how might we best describe that kind of inaction? Civic ineptitude?

A:

[It seems] … the real [complication] that’s happening [is] that people who see the problem tend to be from outside. And when someone moves into the mainstream of society, they either don’t see the problem anymore, or they don’t see it as a problem anymore.

This conversation discusses the idea that society drives teacher expectations and that those expectations, high or low, are a determining factor in student success and choice of mathematics class. Over time, mathematics curricula have moved from their original purposes of facilitating success at different levels to becoming a way to pigeonhole a child into a labeled box. Originally, the basis for different mathematics curricula was that students in advanced classes would learn theoretical foundations of mathematics, those in 95

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general mathematics classes would learn similar concepts but through hands-on activities with manipulatives and those in remedial mathematics could learn the necessary math skills for success for workplace and life. Each mathematics curriculum needs to have a clearly defined purpose and objective, so that students not pursuing advanced mathematics in post-secondary institutions can focus on real world applications, for example. In such a track, a student would never need to ask: “When am I ever going to use this?” This makes the inclusion of critical thinking possible for all tracks. With teachers promoting the value of such a curriculum as an alternative, not a substitute, students will eventually take appropriate, meaningful tracks and share that value with their parents and peers. There is a need for great teachers and high expectations in all curriculum tracks so that parents develop the trust that a proper choice of program will give their child the best chance of success. Engaging, encouraging and expert teachers are still at the forefront of necessity to break the cyclical reinforcement of student capabilities. Student discovery of the value of math. I am in a place where, as a teacher, I ask open-ended questions, give students problems to solve and have them ask their own questions about social issues they care about. This is not only more engaging, but it is also affords more opportunity for students to develop critical thinking skills. This approach presents students with constructive challenges, often because the students need to research information on their own topics and there is not necessarily a text with decisive answers for them. The math that students learn in answering their questions is attached to a specific application and tends to be connected in their minds. With a traditional text form, math skills are often taught in isolation and then expected to be connected after mastery. I have had numerous discussions with teachers who taught through the textbook section by section, not thinking about the big ideas or curriculum expectations. I have seen teachers who made photocopies for the entire year before even meeting their students. Such presumptions assume that mathematics is static and unresponsive to human activity, disregarding the need for mathematics curriculum to “offer experiences that allow students to see that mathematics has powerful uses in modeling and predicting real world phenomena” (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2000, pp. 15-16). All of the students that I currently teach have Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and as such are required to have specific accommodations and/or modifications for their learning styles. Teaching in this environment has allowed me to re-evaluate my philosophy to the point that I give all students choices and varied learning opportunities. These options are not often available using traditional text forms. The success that I’ve seen among students when learning math in context motivates me to continue developing projects in this way. It is sometimes difficult for students to transfer their knowledge from one application to another, but that seems to get easier for them with practice and time. This becomes a process less about having a teacher as a fountain of knowledge standing at the front of the room and more about a teacher facilitator who helps students to come up with a problem of their own to solve, and who helps them to find information about how to solve 96

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that problem. A lot of impetus for this process needs to come from students. A student might say, “I’m trying to help solve poverty but don’t understand what this graph from the Internet means.” If the student can’t get the help that they need from their classmates, that’s where a teacher can step in to deliver a lesson on the mathematical topic (perhaps graphing in this case; to just the one student or to a larger group). “I’m trying to build this bird feeder for our neighborhood, but can’t figure out how.” That sounds like a need for measurement or geometry lessons. This approach requires a lot of flexibility and openness as well as professional expertise on the part of the teacher, and takes training and practice to engage in “teaching and public schooling that revive the values of democracy, citizenship, and social justice … [fostering] critical pedagogy, one that values student experience and student voice” (Giroux & McLaren, 1986, p. 301). Mathematics educators need to recognize that students come to their own understanding of the value of math as a tool for critical thinking through rich, lived classroom experiences. There is no curriculum expectation that says math should be taught as a tool for critical thinking. However, curriculum resources often speak of “implement[ing] problem solving, reasoning, and critical thinking” (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2006, p. 10) or overlapping critical thinking with analytic reasoning (Schoenfeld, 1992) or with problem solving (Leader & Middleton, 2004). Mathematics educators are also uncommonly aware that critical thinking should be part of classroom pedagogy (Applebaum & Leikin, 2007). But for me, and certainly for the students that I’m teaching, critical thinking is the most important thing that I need to get across in my classroom. I don’t think that I can transfer that knowledge directly from me to my students, but if they have a real life problem they can’t solve without understanding math then, through the process of engaging with that problem, they will come to their understanding themselves. Let’s consider a locally-developed course1 where students have already learned how to procedurally find a percentage over the previous four years. They’ve already learned how to procedurally deal with simple fractions or simple integers. I don’t need to teach them more procedures. What I do need to teach a student is how this might apply to a problem they are dealing with at that moment. For example, they might need to analyze the amount of money spent on fighting gun crime and where that money goes. They have a large amount of tabular information and the information is all in percentages. When they express their ideas as fractions or percentages, what do they mean to say? We need to come to an understanding of what the mathematics means. Even more importantly, we need to ask ourselves, “How do we know that this information is correct?” This goes beyond asking if the –––––––––––––– 1 Locally-developed courses are established by individual schools “in cases where students’ educational and/or career preparation needs cannot be met by courses authorized by the [local] curriculum” (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2004, p. 2) or are appropriately modified to meet students needs (Prince George Board of Education, 2004). Ross (2004) discusses the larger role of teacher, students, and curriculum in approaching a mathematics-oriented locally developed course. For further practical classroom examples see Sokol, Balcom, Watson, & Marshall (1971) and Taylor (1989). A more thorough discussion on the professional knowledge of teaching a locally developed course is outlined in Connelly, Clandinin, & He (1997).

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mathematics procedures are correct to asking if the data was collected appropriately and represented fairly. Students don’t do enough of this on their own, and teachers likely don’t ask them to do it often enough. This situation arises for me when I get students who have learned procedurally for years before coming into my classroom. Most of my time in the early part of a course is spent trying to undo damage and bad habits that my students arrive with. Students who have learned in a wholly-procedural format often know how to perform a skill, but not when or why to do so. I have taught several very young children in an open learning environment and can see that they are developing far more complex interactions with math skills than if I sat them down and explained what to do step by step. By the time that my in-school courses reach the half-way mark, my teen-age students have usually progressed to the point that my own young children are, in terms of openness to learning and critical thinking. Critical thinking continuum. To enable students to be agents of change, they need to be able to think critically about issues. One of the strongest tools for being able to think critically is math. A typical data analysis question would be to show students a graph and have them explain what the graph means or what the author of the graph is trying to say. To move further along the continuum of critical thinking would be to have students answer questions such as “Why is the author trying to convince you of that?” “What is the agenda of the author?” or “What’s missing from the information?” It is even more important to eventually have students ask these questions, instead of simply answer them. Students and non-students alike seem to think that math is about facts. Again, think about transitioning away from the perspective that the teacher must enable students to focus on the right answer. It is clear that math-based facts can be misleading and are especially dangerous because they would seem to brook no argument. How much more important is an error when analyzing a voting choice, budget announcement or selection between two job offers? When students have reached the point of questioning in depth, then they will be critical thinkers, and frankly, they will be better citizens. In mathematics particularly, students often search independently for a single, right answer. Meaningful discourse between students often opens up different ways of arriving at an expected answer, but does not necessarily lead to different possible answers. With the introduction of open-ended questions and rich problem solving tasks, students might move to richer critical thinking where they discuss a range of possible solutions to problems. Finally, students might eventually reach the apex of critical thinking, where they develop their own questions and try to find solutions to their own problems. TRANSITIONING FROM TEACHER-CENTERED TO STUDENT-CENTERED LESSONS

Another way to think about my change in instruction is a shift from a teachercentered model to a more student-centered one. Four facets of my teaching that have shifted include: 98

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– moving from front of the class lessons to more group exploration and investigation – giving students a choice of social issues rather than specifying issues to analyze – using open-ended rich problems rather than small, single solution questions – facilitating as a teacher rather than directing Having students interact directly to explore ideas without me acting as an intermediary was essential element of this shift. Discussions used to go from a student to me to another student, but I now have students directly discuss and share ideas and trust that they will get to an appropriate place eventually. My role has become a facilitator to address misconceptions and help students stay on task, as well as to remediate skills for those students who are lacking them. Intellectual conflict and multiple sources of information. When students reach a point of tension or intellectual conflict over multiple sources of information there is potential for abstracting and critical thinking; in fact, “the questioning of how curriculum content gets legitimized … [is a] critical concern for equity” (Secada, 1989, p. 75). An example of such a situation was a graphing lesson on hurricane strength and climate change (see Appendix for a summary lesson plan). Students were secretly given either a graph showing decreasing (Figure 1) or increasing (Figure 2) hurricane strength over the past few decades. They were only given one graph or the other and asked to make conclusions from the graph they were given. Students did not typically question the information they were given, but simply got to analyzing what their graph meant without thinking deeply about it. Students were then grouped so that both graphs were represented in each group and informed that both graphs were made from the same data. When the moment arrived that students joined together with the same data but different conclusions, there was dramatic intellectual conflict! This conflict initiated a student discussion of the relative validity of their conclusions based on mathematical evidence they brought from one source. Students began to ask questions such as, “Who chose that it was strength three hurricanes? What would it look like if it was strength four? Why did you pick that scale the way you did?” The questions were no longer about what the graph was saying, but had become about why the graph was saying it. We are doing students a disservice if we don’t take them to the level where they can question data shown by one source. We can help them develop the tools to think critically by showing conflicting data in this way. Through mathematically

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Figure 1. Data manipulated to show decreasing hurricane strength

Figure 2. Data manipulated to show increasing hurricane strength

interacting with conflicting data we help students “[make] responsible decisions … handle and critically evaluate information, [and] communicate effectively” (Skovsmose & Valero, 2001, p. 37). Eventually, students will be able to understand that someone is trying to convince them of something. It will be up to them to find other possible explanations and other sources of data in order to make an informed decision. This process will take time and mathematics educators need to nurture it regularly. 100

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Forms of text. Ideally, students will reach the point where they don’t believe something just because someone else said it. They will engage in a process where they do research, gather mathematical evidence, understand what that evidence means and where it came from, and then come to a legitimate defendable conclusion. The Internet is increasingly the first place students look for information, and as such is a key resource as I educate students on what they need to do in order to find multiple sources of valid information and to think about that information. The exercise of looking for information on the Internet becomes an exercise in critical thinking as they judge for themselves. That is a skill set that is transferable and necessary for the rest of their lives, no matter what their career path. Newspapers or articles that I print off from recent news reports at an appropriate level for the students further compliment this. Listening to talk radio stations that discuss what society and callers think about issues may source further material. We have class discussions about topics such as unemployment, immigration, gun crime, or any topic of media hype at the moment. Students will often have to analyze articles by first trying to determine the author’s opinion just from a headline. They will then go through the article and look for math that supports the author’s opinion. Finally, they will go through the article again but try to find math that supports a different or opposite opinion. Within one article, students can often support different opinions and then they begin to think about why the author wrote it to try and convince them of just one choice. This gives students a chance to see different perspectives from the same mathematical evidence. Third world country game. Consider an example of critical mathematics thinking situated in a locally-developed mathematics class. The course evolved over time and was based upon the idea that students would develop aspects of a third world country, including government and laws, maps, flags, resources, trade, time zones, and military forces. Use of third world countries opened up possible discussions of equity on a local and global level, and allowed students to explore a range of topics including globalization, world health and economics. As students created their countries, they used math in terms of percentages, measurement, integers, fractions, and proportional reasoning. Some students needed peer or teacher remediation to grasp particular math concepts while others used pre-existing math skills in a different way than they were used to. Students were able to observe effects that their decisions had on their relationships with their neighbors and their own people. There were numerous opportunities for critical thinking about social issues in real life through simulation in a game. Some students eventually started to go to war with each other as what they thought was the best strategy. Even that process was based on calculating the percentage of their committed troops and using odds to determine losses. After about a month of fighting, one student finally asked how they could win. I had them brainstorm answers in groups and they came up with the following, accompanied by my response based on what actually happened during that month.

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– Become the biggest, strongest or richest country – this approach just made them into a target for an alliance of two or three other countries – Defeat the biggest country – they had been trying to do this for at least 20 turns and had bogged down into a war that drained resources from all of them – Get friends to help – this simply turned their conflicts from limited engagements of two to four countries involved into conflicts with everyone split into two sides, still with no winner Even when a small country that was controlled by a student who was often absent was taken over, terrorist attacks (or freedom fighter espionage) were ongoing and there was a constant need to spend money on troops to deal with them. After more than half of the period and a long discussion with plenty of brainstorming, one student said that they would, “Become friends and make alliances with everyone.” Another replied, “So who would you fight?” “Oh, I guess we’d have peace.” As a class, they finally reached a conclusion that made sense and could work. I couldn’t have been prouder of them! We talked about it for quite a while and the rest of the discussion about winning took the better part of the period. Finally, one frustrated student spoke up and said, “So what was the point of fighting for the last month?” This returns to a point I was trying to make earlier, that critical thinking takes time and experience. Students needed to experience for themselves that war was expensive and did not lead to glory or victory. They have to have time to try out different options and discuss what they learned. Social justice projects cannot be effectively incorporated as add-ons to a course and be expected to explode into deep insights among students. If a project is designed sufficiently well, it can be worked on for an extended period – with math learning goals being reached all along the way – and can engage students in the need to think about their actions and inaction. THE CRITICAL MATHEMATICS NARRATIVE

This final section will examine the structure of lessons involving social justice and critical thinking. The Critical Mathematics Narrative consists of three parts: Minds On, Action, and Consolidation (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2008). The narrative draws from ideas of critical social theory and fallibilist ideology. Critical social theory permits the mathematics educator to become concerned with the means by which established social institutions and cultural dynamics interact to construct a social system (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 49), while a fallibilist ideology permits the conceptualization of mathematics pedagogy as resistant to dominant mathematical knowledge and culture which “exhibits numerous antidemocratic tendencies ranging from political apathy to institutionalized racist and sexist practices” (Peterson, 2007, p. 45) and embraces social justice and the advocacy of democratic values as goals for a system of mathematical pedagogy (Ernest, 1991).

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Fallibilist ideology empowers mathematics educators to move past a Platonic representation of mathematical knowledge as pre-existing ideals to a more global system in which we can explore things as they are situated in our common, lived societal and cultural experiences. Once we begin to interpret mathematical knowledge in contrast to traditional Platonism, we can see that the teaching of mathematics must not only be capable of interacting with our changing society and cultural experiences but also must be seen as not being capable of entirely interpreting what is to be taught as a priori or certain. As mathematics educators we move away from seeing mathematical knowledge and its pedagogy as skills and mastery in numbers of gallons of gasoline or slices of pizza, to an ideology in which mathematical knowledge and pedagogy now become susceptible to critical discourse, public analysis, and debate. Such pedagogy emphasizes the students’ generation of knowledge whereby the mathematics teacher and students cycle within a system of knowledge generation in which beliefs, facts, experiences, and concepts pass through realms of the individual (“I conjecture that the sum of 3 angles within a triangle is 180 degrees.”) to public (“As a group, we have measured and added all angles in 4 different triangles to agree that all individual triangles’ angles sum to 180 degrees.”). This, in turn, contributes back to the individual’s mathematical knowledge and allows for the generation of new considerations (“I wonder if there is a triangle whose angles do not sum to 180 degrees?”). This perspective considers how the individual’s and public’s understanding of “mathematics each contributes to the creation and re-creation of the other” (Ernest, 1991, p. 43) and aims to facilitate critical thought and questioning. CRITICAL MATHEMATICS NARRATIVES IN METACOGNITION AND THREE-PART LESSON DESIGN

The Critical Mathematics Narrative is a vehicle through which mathematics educators may engage students in critical mathematical thinking by situating understanding in factual, popular culture, activist, or historical environments. A Minds On activity to initiate a Critical Mathematics Narrative can be as simple as a reminder of where they are in a game, a headline to read and decipher or a review of a concept already discussed in class that will be used as a springboard to the day’s lesson. It can be as complex as a discrepant event such as a demonstration or video clip to engage students in the topic to be introduced. Students will be more ready to engage in the topic of the day if they have been prepared and reminded of what they already bring to the table. Using a Minds On sets a context for critical mathematics thinking. Within the Critical Mathematics Narrative, contexts provide space for critical thinking and can be used by students to attach further learning through the remaining phases of the lesson. Contexts can be divided into four categories: – Counter culture/activism – as resistance to mainstream and questioning status quo; 103

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– Factual – as based in actual “data” often public (e.g., from an NGO/NPO) or private (e.g., from a private institution); – Popular culture – rooted in music, television, media, newspapers; – Historical – involving conceptual ideas/beliefs (e.g., free market system), events (e.g., revolutionary war), or social/historic institutions. The Action component of a narrative positions students to create awareness, mathematically interpret data, understand exhibits of community action and cultural events, and clarify understanding. Students attempt to solve a problem and discover an idea as they do so. As part of a lesson plan, the teacher can focus on what student activities should be and student thinking about problem solving. The problem can be a long-term one, such as, “How can I take over my neighbors?” It can also be a short-term one, such as, “How many dollars might fit into this classroom?” The idea behind this is that the teacher acts as a facilitator and the students find as many sources of knowledge as they can to solve a problem on their own (as individual students or in groups). The teacher also watches for misconceptions and fills in blanks. In the Critical Mathematics Narrative, the responsibility of the Action part is to create space for mathematical thinking and understanding, such as enabling students to mathematically explore, interpret, or engage in mathematics within contexts. For example, in a problem-based course, to be authentic to real-life, teamwork needs to be encultured into students. This includes the social and mathematical skills necessary as future professionals. The opportunity to conduct research and access prior knowledge is also critical to make problem-solving realistic. Even when working on a computer game, my students work in pairs so that they can record their learning to share with their classmates afterwards and learn from each other. Individuals often see things from just one point of view. With more brains involved, the discussion takes longer but is richer in the end. To demonstrate this need, take a social justice presentation on poverty, specifically in Africa, that one of my students gave. The question came up, “Was Africa ever a continent that wasn’t poor?” Most students had stereotypes of Africa that it has always been poor, is poor everywhere and will always be poor. Over the span of about forty minutes of facilitated class discussion, including several guiding questions from me, students eventually understood that slavery had something to do with it and perhaps Africa was developed before people came in and started taking out resources and population. This crucial piece of understanding did not occur within isolated students and was not given by me. It was through shared experience that students were able to pool their existing information into a larger coherent picture. The next step was to understand that we have all benefited from slavery, living in a country built on the wealth from that peculiar institution, and have an ethical need to help our fellow humans. During the Consolidation phase, students share their ideas with each other, discuss the concept of efficiency of process, discover misconceptions, and are open to the idea of new ways of thinking. The teacher can organize this phase in any number of ways and has the opportunity to have students really learn from each 104

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other. It is also critical when teaching social justice math that both the math and the social justice concepts are consolidated. Many social justice topics can be controversial for learners and it is important that students get a chance to talk through their ideas and possible misconceptions in a safe environment. As the last part of the Critical Mathematics Narrative, this Consolidation brings together space and awareness to raise students’ “knowledge about the sociopolitical conditions of [their] immediate and broader existence” (Gutstein, 2008, p. 156), build students’ sense of mathematical confidence (Steen, 2001), and promote understanding of sociocultural decisions by means of countering ignorance and understanding social, moral, or policy issues. Space and awareness are consolidated into actionable events. These events are often based on something important to students based on race, heritage, culture, gender, or of a political nature. They are folk results in that the student has created a result that has significance to him/her. Consolidation here is teleological in nature as the results of actions become the seeds of reason through which students change. It is at this point that critical mathematical skill must be consolidated and students will likely have to be shown ways that their skills can be transferred beyond their initial circumstances to wider applications. Eventually, students will develop the ability to transfer their understanding for themselves, if nurtured sufficiently. When working on projects, the Minds On and Consolidation phases are reduced for day-to-day lessons. For example, when students were building up their countries in the third world country game, how to build up was introduced each day for a few days then most lessons did not repeat that information. The Minds On was simply, “Get to work!” There were brief consolidation-type questions, but really those are to help students proceed through the discovery process. Questions such as, “Why did you choose to do that?” or “What do you think their next actions might be?” are questions that teachers have been asking their students for years. The discussion that lasted for a whole period on how to win the game would consolidate social justice concepts for this project. Scope of the discussion (everyone included or just one individual or group) and scale of the discussion (the entire lesson or one specific moment or concept) determine for me whether it is part of Action or Consolidation. As the class progresses through a narrative, new meaning, understanding, questions, and perhaps events are generated. In essence the progression produces a new narrative based on the Consolidation of a prior narrative. Returning to the example of the third world country game, a possible starting narrative might be that a student should spend their time and money building up their forces. With experience, their narrative might morph into either avoiding conflict because they have seen what happens to other countries or creating an alliance to try and win a conflict. The students described here ended their particular narrative with the understanding that war could not be won and peace is preferable. That is a long way from where they started and involved a great deal of experiential learning. Specifically when dealing with social issues, I conjecture there is another continuum along which students move towards social action. This activism continuum exhibits that while a teacher might get most students to recognize there 105

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is a problem, fewer students will use math to help understand the nature of the problem and only a small proportion of students will see that they are empowered to act and attempt solutions to problems. Encouraging all students to become real life problem solvers is one of our biggest challenges as mathematics educators, but it offers some of the greatest potential rewards for the students, and for our society as a whole. CONCLUSION

This chapter expanded, through a collaborative autoethnography, how a secondary mathematics curriculum originated from the need to focus on social justice issues that were not present in our traditional secondary mathematics textbook. The authors emphasized the need to reconceptualize what an understanding of textbook encompasses and, through classroom action, shifted their pedagogy to allow for alternative forms of text more oriented toward critical mathematical thinking that engages students to contribute in the process of positive social action and civic engagement. It is imperative that we, as mathematics educators, strive towards an egalitarian classroom model, in which students have input into what topics they will study, how things are graded and where students have responsibility for their learning. One of our main goals is to empower students: to show them they have a voice and that they can use their voice. At the same time, we help students to develop the mathematical tools they need to defend their arguments, to make creative arguments, and to judge other people’s arguments to see whether they are realistic. Modeling in class and empowering mathematical knowledge, together, will help students eventually become better citizens. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

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How might your personal background influence your facilitation of a Critical Mathematical Narrative in your classroom? What might be some ways that you could help your students to progress to the apex of the Critical Thinking Continuum? What might be some ways that you could encourage your students to generate alternative Critical Mathematics Narratives on social issues, especially ones that are not often found in traditional textbooks? What are some ways that a Critical Mathematical Narrative approach to social justice problem solving might promote belief in the value of many cultures and heritages? What are some ways that it might reduce dominance of a single race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, language, religion, etc. that might occur through use of traditional texts? How might your classroom pedagogy be influenced, or changed, by this book chapter?

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Critical Mathematics Narrative – Action

Critical Mathematics Narrative – Minds On

APPENDIX – SIMPLIFIED 3-PART LESSON PLAN EXAMPLE

Topic (As discussed in the text of this chapter and Figures 1 and 2) – Hurricanes and Global Warming Minds On (To engage students in the activity, remind them of prior learning and set up the Action phase) – Provide students with temperature and wind speed data – Have students graph the data and make a conclusion regarding possible relationships in the data, including graphical analysis appropriate to the math course being taught – Students respond to the question, “If global warming is a real problem, consider what effects it might have on the strength of hurricanes and tropical storms. What message might you send and to whom might you send it?”

Action (For students to perform an inquiry-based analysis of a problem) – Divide students into separate pairs and provide each pair with the same graph, either Figure 1 or 2. – Pairs of students analyze their graph mathematically and come to a conclusion about what the graph might mean in the context of this situation, i.e. hurricanes and global warming.

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Consolidation (To bring students back together to discuss their mathematical thinking and the implications of the social issue they are analyzing) – Bring pairs of students together so that each set of four has different graphs; i.e. ensure that each set of four students has both Figures 1 and 2. – Let students know that both figures were created from the same data – Have students discuss what questions they could have asked to help understand the meaning of the graph in the context of this situation. For example, “Why were hurricanes of strength 3 or more chosen? Why were the axes drawn that way? Would the graphs have been different if strength 2 hurricanes were included too?” – Students respond to the question, “How was math used to influence the way that you might think about this problem?

REFERENCES Anderson, L. (2006). Analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 373395. Apple, M. W. (2001). Comparing Neo-Liberal Projects and inequality in education. Comparative Education, 37(4), 409-423. Applebaum, M., & Leikin, R. (2007). Looking back at the beginning: Critical thinking in solving unrealistic problems. The Montana Mathematics Enthusiast, 4(2), 258-265. Ball, D. (1988). Unlearning to teach mathematics. For the Learning of Mathematics, 8, 40-48. Ball, D. (2001). Teaching, with respect to mathematics and students. In T. Wood, B. S. Nelson, & J. Warfield (Eds.), Beyond classical pedagogy: Teaching elementary school mathematics (pp. 11-21). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Chang, H. (2008). Autoethnography as method. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Chase, S. E. (2005). Narrative inquiry: Multiple lenses, approaches, voices. The Sage Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 651-679). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Connelly, M., Clandinin, D. J., & He, M. F. (1997). Teachers’ personal practical knowledge on the professional knowledge landscape. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(7), 665-674. D’Ambrosio, U. (1990). The role of mathematics in building a democratic and just society. For the Learning of Mathematics, 10(3), 20-23. Denzin, N. (2006). Analytic autoethnography or déjà vu all over again. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 419-428. Dummett, M. (1999). What is a theory of meaning? In G. Evans & J. McDowell (Eds.), Truth and meaning (pp. 67-137). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Dummett, M. (2000). Elements of intuitionism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ellis, C., & Bochner, A. P. (2006). Analyzing analytic autoethnography. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 35(4), 429-449. Ernest, P. (1991). The philosophy of mathematics education. London: Falmer Press. Frankenstein, M. (1990). Incorporating race, gender, and class issues into a critical mathematical literacy curriculum. Journal of Negro Education, 59(3), 336-347.

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(RE)PRESENTING CRITICAL MATHEMATICAL THINKING Frankenstein, M. (1994). Understanding the politics of mathematical knowledge as an integral part of becoming mathematically numerate. Radical Statistics, 56, 22-40. Giroux, H. A., & McLaren, P. (1986). Teacher education and the politics of engagement: The case for democratic schooling. Harvard Educational Review, 56(3), 213-238. Gutiérrez, R. (2002). Enabling the practice of mathematics teachers in context: Toward a new equity research agenda. Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 4(2&3), 145-187. Gutstein, E. (2008). Connecting community, critical, and classical knowledge in teaching mathematics for social justice. In International perspectives on social justice in mathematics education (pp. 153167). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. hooks, bell, & Mesa-Bains, A. (2006). Homegrown: Engaged cultural criticism. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Hu, H. (1996). The mathematician and the mathematics education reform. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 43, 1531-1537. Iben, M. F. (1991). Attitudes and mathematics. Comparative Education, 27(2), 135-151. Kincheloe, J. L. (2002). The sign of the burger: McDonald’s and the culture of power. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Kincheloe, J. L. (2008). Critical pedagogy Primer (Second). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. Klein, D. (2003). A brief history of American K-12 mathematics ducation in the 20th century. In J. M. Royer (Ed.), Mathematical cognition (pp. 175-259). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Lampert, M. (1990). When the problem is not the question and the solution is not the answer: Mathematical knowing and teaching. American Educational Research Journal, 27(1), 29-63. Lapadat, J. C. (2009). Writing our way into shared understanding: Collaborative autobiographical writing in the qualitative methods class. Qualitative Inquiry, 15(6), 955-979. Leader, L. F., & Middleton, J. A. (2004). Promoting critical-thinking dispositions by using problem solving in middle school mathematics. Research in Middle Level Education Online, 28(1). Retrieved January 7, 2011, from http://www.nmsa.org/Publications/RMLEOnline/tabid/101/Default.aspx Lincoln, Y. S. (1997). Self, subject, audience, text: Living at the edge, writing in the margins. In W. G. Tierney & S. Lincoln (Eds.), Representation and the text: Re-framing the narrative voice (pp. 3755). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Madison, D. S. (2005). Critical ethnography: Method, ethics, and performance. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Mursell, J. (1955). Principles of democratic education. New York, NY: Routledge. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2000). Principles and standards for school mathematics. Reston, VA: Author. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. (2006). Curriculum focal points for prekindergarten through grade 8 mathematics. Reston, VA: Author. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2004). Guide to locally developed courses, Grades 9 to 12: Development and approval procedures. Toronto, Canada: Author. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2008). GAINS Home. .EduGAINS. Retrieved July 1, 2011, from http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/index.html. Peterson, B. (2007). La Escuela Fratney: A journey toward democracy. In M. W. Apple & J. A. Beane (Eds.), Democatic schools: Lessons in powerful education (2nd ed., pp. 30-61). Portsmouth, VA: Heinemann. Popkewitz, T. (2004). The alchemy of the mathematics curriculum: Inscriptions and the fabrication of the child. American Educational Research Journal, 41(1), 3-34. Prince George Board of Education. (2004). Policy 6141.31: Board authorized and locally developed courses. Prince George: Author. Relich, J. (1996). Gender, self-concept and teachers of mathematics: Effects on attitudes to teaching and learning. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 30(2), 179-195. Romero, J. (2004). Experience and context in the making of a Chicano activist. The High School Journal, 87(4), 95-111.

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MICHAEL FISH & ANTHONY PERSAUD Ross, V. (2004). A story of reform: Math, Science, Technology Investigations (MSI) in room 34 at Bay Street Community School. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(5), 587-603. Schoenfeld, A. H. (1992). Learning to think mathematically: Problem solving, metacognition, and sense-making in mathematics. In D. A. Grouws (Ed.), Handbook for research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 334-370). New York, NY: MacMillian. Schoenfeld, A. H. (2004). The math wars. Educational Policy, 18(1), 253-286. Secada, W. G. (1989). Education equity versus equality of education: An alternative conception. In W. G. Secada (Ed.), Equity in education (pp. 68-88). New York, NY: The Falmer Press. Skovsmose, O., & Valero, P. (2001). Breaking political neutrality: The critical engagement of mathematics education with democracy. In B. Atweh, H. Forgasz, & B. Nebres (Eds.), Sociocultural research in mathematics education: An international perspective (pp. 37-57). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sokol, A. P., Balcom, M., Watson, E. P., & Marshall, J. C. (1971). A locally developed humanities program in Missouri. Theory into Practice, 10, 212-215. Steen, L. A. (2001). Mathematics and democracy: The case for quantitative literacy. Princeton, NJ: National Council on Education and the Disciplines. Taylor, R. (1989). The potential of small-group mathematics instruction in grades four through six. The Elementary School Journal, 89(5), 633-642. von Glasersfeld, E. (1992). A constructivist approach to experiential foundations of mathematical concepts. In History and philosophy of science in science education (pp. 551-571). Kingston: Queen’s University.

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SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOK PROGRESSION Textbooks, Testing, and Teaching

INTRODUCTION

At today’s historical juncture, the relationship between testing and teaching continues to be one of the most debated topics among classroom teachers, administrators, parents, and policy makers. The efforts of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have put the testing and standards movement into overdrive, as politicians demand a method for accountability in attempts to ensure equitable teaching and learning for all students. Additionally, the new wave of testing and accountability, in the form of student performance-based teacher evaluations, is forcing entire states to abandon common sense practices because of the need for the federal funding offered by the Race to the Top initiative (Department of Education, 2011). The incentives offered by federal funding have important power to sway educational practices, especially in light of the budget cuts that schools are currently facing. For example, the Race to the Top initiative requires a method for linking teacher pay with performance, thus forcing a business model way of thinking upon the educational system. It is policies such as this that have shifted the demands on teachers to focus on teaching for the test as their job security is threatened. In principle, most educators do not argue the merits of the standards-based movement, as students are exposed to inquiry-based learning and the teachers become more of a facilitator of learning; it is the accompanying high-stakes testing that exasperates educators. Because of the stress of making Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), this movement has had a negative impact on many K-12 teachers’ classrooms. With focus placed on repeated testing and achieving measurable results, teachers have had to reallocate their efforts, taking as many shortcuts as possible and eliminating enrichment activities to ensure that their students produce higher test scores on state mandated assessments. It is no surprise that these adjustments diminish the emphasis placed on critical thinking, inquiry based teaching and learning, but instead promotes rote student learning with instructional practices that only foster mastery of content. This is particularly troubling for math and science teachers who have been guided by reform efforts that originated during

H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 111–131. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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the 1990s to focus on critical thinking, problem solving, and application of knowledge. Alongside preparing students to pass examinations, K-12 schoolteachers in the United States also encounter an unprecedented number of challenges that necessitate them to be pulled in too many directions. Inclusive classrooms, increased content demands in mathematics and science, data driven decisions, overcrowded classes with more diverse populations, budget cuts, and numerous other issues make teaching an even more challenging profession. As teacher educators, we find it nearly impossible to provide teachers with the all of the content and pedagogical knowledge including the complex set of skills needed to juggle these demands. The focus of this chapter is to offer an exploration of the resources which teachers rely upon in order to contend with the realities of standards-based classrooms. Specifically, we examine the use of textbooks as a crutch to support both new and veteran teachers. Unfortunately, the over reliance on textbooks can be detrimental to both teachers’ development and student learning. In this chapter, we offer an analysis of the influence of textbooks on how mathematics and science is taught and learned in today’s standards-based classrooms. One concern of many educators is the way that teachers have reverted to using the textbook as the major source of instructional support (Chiappetta, Ganesh, Lee, & Phillips, 2006). Instructional support refers to the use of the textbook as the primary guide for teachers to prepare for daily lessons, create assessments, prepare for standardized testing, align with national and state standards, and present material. There is evidence that demonstrates the over reliance on textbooks by teachers, especially by early career teachers (Apple, 1986; Grossman & Thompson, 2004). We contend that the assistance provided by textbooks does more harm than good for math and science teachers, specifically. Because many textbooks are aligned to national and state standards, teachers may find that they provide a level of convenience in today’s high stakes classroom. Therefore, teachers who are drawn to the template of textbooks overuse them to reinforce the use of testing. This then negatively influences teaching, as teachers focus less on allowing students to discover new knowledge and apply material in rigorous manners and concentrate more on asking questions exactly the way students may see them on standardized tests. While we are not naive to think that there is no value in the textbook, we do see alarming practices that are detriments to the education of our students. To explore the impact of textbooks on mathematics and science instruction, we will examine the relationship among teaching, textbooks, and testing. It is our view that testing is negatively influencing mathematics and science education, while textbook companies are benefiting. These companies are experiencing financial gains as changes in content focus and the addition of individual state standards are providing a market for new textbooks (Spring, 2005). It is essential that teacher educators remain aware of the over reliance of textbooks and how this practice only reinforces the emphasis on testing and standardization of instruction.

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This chapter begins with our anecdotal experiences of the transition into the standards-based movement. We then provide an overview of the testing movement, as well as a brief history of textbooks. Following, the intersection of these two politically driven entities, identified as teaching practices, is explored. We aim to demonstrate how control is being taken out of the classroom teachers’ hands, while they are being held more and more accountable to policy makers. We conclude with suggestions of how teachers can begin taking back some of this control by relying on the assistance provided by national organizations, as well as having the ability to critically examining the resources at their disposal. Finally, we implore that educators need to have confidence their understandings of the needs of students and the willingness to challenges practices which go against these needs. TEACHING AND PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES

Two Views: Rob and Vida’s Pedagogical Perspectives The day-to-day practices that teachers use to guide their instruction have taken on a new look for K-12 classrooms in the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top era. The lessons we learned about teaching a mere 20 years ago pale in comparison to the type of demands currently placed on teachers. During my (Rob’s) M.Ed. program in the 1990s, the focus was on challenging students with science content and its applications. An easy way to find the cream of the crop students was to create challenging tests that often only measured an ability to memorize large quantities of facts. This form of instruction and assessment would allegedly lead to finding students who would enter science careers because of their capacity to master facts and then to test well. Unfortunately, this also led to the alienation and marginalization of the majority of the students. I found much of my teaching time was spent on ensuring that my students became masters of content matter and this was demonstrated through tests. This paradigm is commonly referred to as the scholar academic ideology, where content mastery is the main focus of teaching in K-12 classrooms (Schiro, 2008). Science standards were not firmly in place and thus the source of guidance for me was the textbook. As the teacher, my goal was to cover as much material by using the most efficient means possible. Unfortunately for my students, this meant too much lecture, with hands-on lab activities sprinkled in to keep students’ attention. National science standards did not begin appearing on the scene until my sixth year teaching high school biology. It was during this time that reform documents such as Benchmarks for Science Literacy were getting into the practitioners hands. The emphasis was still on content, but the guide seemed to move away from the textbook, as national standards began competing for attention. In 1996, the presentation of the National Science Education Standards ushered in a series of benchmarks to help guide science teachers to promote “quality” science instruction. A few years later, the National Science Teachers Association published a much anticipated multicultural science education position statement, which called for efforts to diversify the way that science was taught and embraced the idea of 113

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science for all students. These reform movements forced me to reconsider my goals for my students and caused me to shift to an adoption of a learner-centered approach to my teaching. This also caused a movement away from rote memorization on testing, and I adopted a new emphasis on critical thinking skills and conceptual understanding. Ironically, I left the high school classroom before the emphasis on high stakes testing began to make its way back into an educator’s daily lexicon. Like Rob, I (Vida) began teaching prior to the adoption of a statewide standardsbased curriculum. Although the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published a series of documents regarding professional and assessment standards throughout the 1990s, the full impact of NCTM’s recommendations were not recognized until Principles and Standards for School Mathematics was published in 2000. This updated version emphasized the necessity of a quality mathematics education for all students. As a new teacher, I wholeheartedly adopted the philosophy that all students are capable of being successful in mathematics, and attempted to find a variety of approaches to reach this goal. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, my geometry and Algebra II classes consisted predominately of textbook exercises. It was not until I began my M.Ed. program in 2006, my third year teaching, that I really understood the ramifications of a standards-based curriculum. In 2006, as Georgia was beginning to construct a new mathematics performance standards-based curriculum, I was able to witness and incorporate the upcoming changes well before my colleagues. They, on the other hand, were largely unaware of the drastic adjustments to the curriculum, teaching strategies, and assessments which were forthcoming. Georgia’s new curriculum arrived to secondary mathematics fall of 2008 and emphasized collaborative, discovery-based learning. Teachers were meant to act as facilitators to student learning as students were given more responsibility for their learning. The new curriculum has forced me to consider why we teach what we do in secondary mathematics and how to make the material accessible for all students. At the beginning of my career, I (like Rob) was very much a subscriber to the scholar academic ideology, believing that students needed to learn all the mathematics possible so that they could eventually impart their knowledge on future generations. As I progressed through higher education, I began to question the necessity for students to learn all aspects of upper-level mathematics and began to transition to a more social efficiency ideology. This theory focuses on teaching the fundamentals so that students can live a meaningful and successful life in society (Schiro, 2008). Now, through the emphasis of a standards-based curriculum, I am again amidst a paradigm shift and hope that my students will develop the critical thinking skills and creativity necessary to reform the current society. I still believe that all students are capable of learning mathematics; they simply need to overcome their fear of failure and attempt the material. The experiences we shared represent our transitions to teaching in the standardsbased classroom. The most current literature provided by the math and science communities offer a series of best practices that lend advice to math and science 114

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educators in light of the challenges with which they are faced. For science teaching, the emphasis on making science more experiential and hands on, rather than lecture and teacher centered has been advocated by most science reform documents (e.g., National Science Teachers Association). Constructivist models of instruction have been found to be more effective with content retention (Covill, 2011) as they move away from the emphasis on facts and move toward the application of knowledge to inquiry and embracing students’ prior knowledge (Minner, Levy, & Century, 2010; National Research Council, 2005). Exemplary math practices follow those found in science (Slavin, Lake, & Groff, 2009) such as a focus that is geared towards applications and problem solving and less on rote learning. The goal of standards-based mathematics is to engage students with active strategies that promote the utility of math in everyday applications (e.g., National Council of Mathematics Teachers). The standards-based movement has forced teachers to re-evaluate their teaching practices and use new strategies to present mathematics and science to their students. The impact of the national and state mathematics and science standards compound the demands for assessment and accountability measures that districts are using to make teachers accountable. Despite the subtle shift away from content overload by national math and science organizations, teachers still feel the pressures to cover material to ensure student success on standardized testing. The emphasis on testing by administrators and political entities creates potential concerns regarding the methods of instruction utilized by teachers. The movement away from reform and constructivist based instruction toward an orientation that focuses primarily on raising the test scores undermines the teaching profession (Ravitch, 2010). TESTING

Educators are under increasing pressure from the public, administrators, and legislators to hold teachers accountable for their students’ learning. High stakes testing is not a new phenomenon, but has come under renewed scrutiny as federal and state money has become tied to student performance. Many educators point to the Coleman Report in 1966, also known as the Equality of Educational Opportunity Study, as the first major examination of student achievement (Ravitch, 2010). The Coleman Report highlighted the problems inherent with the funding and testing in United States public schools. Regarding testing, the report found that current tests were not measuring intelligence, but the ability to learn and perform in the current American classroom. Thus, there was a large under emphasis on the importance of a student’s background, socioeconomic status and culture. This landmark study paved the way for a closer examination of the inadequacies in schools and led to the creation of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the 1970s to continue to examine inequities in achievement. With the increased emphasis on college admissions testing, advanced placement programs, and achievement tests, the testing movement continued to flourish in the 1980s and 1990s. The pinnacle of testing comes from the passing of the 2001 No Child Left

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Behind Education Reform Act, which expanded state-mandated standardized testing as a method for assessing a school’s performance. The charge against the standardized testing movement owes a debt of gratitude to Alfie Kohn (2000) who wrote extensively of how the emphasis on testing places focus on what matters the least for good teaching. Scholars who argue that high stakes testing is the overstepping of the federal government to attempt to control all schools, when clearly not all schools are the problem, have forwarded similar critiques to those of Kohn. Nel Noddings (2007) argues that money placed to raise test scores should be redirected to provide schools with the adequate resources needed to provide proper facilities and adequate resources. One critique of the standardized testing movement is the concern that there are not adequate resources for teachers to raise the achievement levels of all students. In addition, the most recent passage of the Race to the Top funding initiatives, places an increased emphasis on holding both students and teachers accountable for student achievement. This shift places an increased pressure on under-resourced schools to hold teachers accountable for student performance. While we need teachers to be held accountable for their performance, tying their salaries to a student’s test results, given the number of uncontrolled factors such as prior knowledge, home situations, faculty turnover, etc., seems counterproductive to entice the best and brightest to join the teaching profession. The standardized testing movement continues to place low performing schools at a disadvantage by adding additional restrictions which limits the curriculum and instructional needs to serve these populations of students (Watanabe, 2007). In addition, school systems perpetuate the inequality facing the schools that are in the most need of funding and support (Lipman, 2004; Au, 2009). The preceding overview of the testing movement helps remind readers of the current climate that teachers face in their classrooms. Many of our best teachers live with a constant sense of fear, both for their jobs as well as for the type of learning atmosphere that is being fostered in classrooms. The state of our economy and its impact on funding for education exasperates the increased pressures looming on schools and educators. Across the nation, teachers repeatedly respond to their fear of losing their jobs, fear of additional furlough days, fear of having salary tied to student performance, and fear of their choice of entering the teaching profession (Nichols & Berliner, 2007). The case of the Atlanta Public Schools scandal offers one sad example of how testing created a culture of fear in their schools. It was found that 178 teachers and principals were involved in a cheating scandal that impacted 44 schools in Atlanta. Interestingly, most of the schools involved in the scandal are located in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the state of Georgia. It is cases such as this that ultimately influence the methods of instruction utilized in the classroom. It is in these same classrooms where teachers have been mandated what to teach and how to assess it. For example, Georgia teachers are required to post the daily essential question, the standard to which it relates, and the method of assessment for each lesson on the board (Georgia Department of Education – Classroom Keys, 2011). A principal who walks into a class expects that any student can recite the essential question and standard for the 116

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lesson when prompted. Students take pretests prior to learning new content and are given posttests after completion of the material. They take benchmark tests each term, take practice tests in preparation for the state mandated end of year testing, and spend weeks and in some cases months, preparing for high stakes tests. In one county, the spring break was placed two weeks prior to the end of the year to ensure the break did not interfere with preparation time for the state testing. The message to any teacher is that the most important aspect of their teaching is students’ achievement on the state’s assessments. We hypothesize that these pressures influence the methods that teachers use for instruction. This is apparent in many of the classrooms we spend time in where the time devoted to teaching for the test is increasing. The time spent on student testing is overbearing to the point that even the President Obama has commented on the impact of testing. He explained, One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you’re not learning about the world, you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math. All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting. (Werner, 2011, para. 5)

Despite these seemingly wise words, they are in direct opposition to the message being sent by the Race to the Top legislation. When states began to apply for these funds, many were surprised to find that schools were required to have some aspect of pay for performance as an element of the evaluation system. Thus, this legislation sends the message that test scores are the most important indicator of education. As teacher educators, our concern is that despite the reform efforts of math and science instruction, teachers are reverting to a strict focus on content and testing and moving away from the engaging active methods that allow real opportunities for learning. TEXTBOOKS

The concern raised over the increased focus on high stakes testing in K-12 classrooms has provided a fertile ground for opportunities to capitalize on the concerns and challenges that teachers face at all levels of instruction. However, the pressures for teachers depend on factors such as years experience and content expertise. New teachers, for example, are often very cognizant about looking for curricula aids to use in their classrooms, in particular teachers of math and science. It is during the first years where these teachers frantically look to acquire resources. In most schools, those new to the profession will look to veteran teachers as one source for instructional and curriculum support. Both new and veteran teachers often find more difficulty locating quality science and math materials because the history of these two subject areas is rooted in content heavy, text driven material. We find this is particularly the case for elementary teachers as it is often this population of teachers who traditionally struggled with math and science content areas. Research studies confirm that elementary teachers often have 117

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a lower self-efficacy for teaching math and science when compared to other content areas (Buss, 2010; Wingfield, Nath, Freeman, & Cohen, 2000). It is also not uncommon that elementary teachers report that they lack the background needed to teach math and science. Most often, these students deliberately chose to avoid college math and science courses and in many cases, have weak background, in these content areas, as a result of their high school experiences. The forces that drive the accountability movement have always recognized math scores as important; however, the focus on science has only become important in recent years. In 2012, science achievement is being used as a second indicator for Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) in Georgia. This is being followed by many other states, as science testing has become part of each state’s assessment systems. For those involved in teaching pre-service science methods classes, it has become a great challenge to improve content knowledge in elementary teachers while also addressing the realities of high-stakes testing. Speaking to the science side of this situation, we see in-service teachers struggling both with understanding the content as well as learning the best methods to promote positive learning experiences. Unfortunately, despite the increased attention that is being placed on science scores and science learning, the resources to better support teachers have not followed. Science is a high cost subject to teach, as the need for equipment, consumables, and technology can be a burden to a district. One can simply consider how colleges typically add a lab fee to normal tuition cost for students enrolled in lab science courses. In addition to these costs are the costs associated with finding science specialists to assist with implementation of the curriculum. Since assessing math knowledge on standardized tests began at the same time as testing reading and writing, schools have had a head start with finding specialists to support math instruction. This has not been the case in science, where many districts share science curriculum leaders between multiple schools or even district-wide. In addition, despite some notions to the contrary (Ingersoll & Perda, 2010) finding and retaining good math and science teachers is difficult, especially in high needs districts. Thus, there is a significant pressure for college science educators to better prepare math and science teachers for the harsh reality of accountability. Ultimately, when teachers leave our pre-service programs, it is their responsibility to find sources that support their math and science instruction. This void is where the textbook companies have been able to insert themselves into the intersection between teaching and testing. A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TEXTBOOK

Textbooks have held a high position in education from the beginning of the first classrooms. One of the earliest textbooks was The New England Primer, which was used by the American colonies in the late 1700s (Urban & Wagoner, 2008). This widely used text contained the standard content of the time and included instructions to facilitate reading and spelling. In addition, a major focus was on teaching the religious values of the Protestant Church. The next set of textbooks to inundate the scene of American education was the McGruffy Readers. They were 118

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used during the mid-19th century through the mid-20th century. Like their predecessors, these books focused on reading, writing, and spelling. In addition, subjects such as mathematics, social studies and human physiology were included. These books featured stories that encouraged an allegiance to the country and focused on values such as goodness and truth (Urban & Wagoner, 2008). Similar to the New England Primer, religious values were threaded through the stories, and it is believed that these books helped to foster the United States moral values and shaped American culture (Vail, 1911). Despite the prevalence of the use of the McGruffy Readers, the mid 1850s also marked the beginning of an age of an increase in availability of textbooks. During this time, the number of textbooks that were accessible to schools had increased to the point where there were thirty-nine different kinds of geography books (Tanner & Tanner, 1995). Finally, in the late 19th century, the availability and variety of textbooks allowed schools to begin adopting specific textbooks for their districts. Ironically, with the condensing of the textbook market, there are fewer viable textbook options available today than there were a century ago (Hannaford, 2007). The process of textbook adoption has a long and complicated history that has led to the construction of a high profit industry. Today’s textbooks begin their marketing by appealing to the states with the most spending power, namely California, Texas, and Florida who account for 25% of the K-12 textbook market (Stream, 2005). This leads to the notion of textbook companies designing texts that will gain adoption in these states, despite the input from the other 47 states. In addition, textbook companies are drawn to the profit that can be made through this process as textbook prices continue to rise. One study of textbook prices found that between 1986 and 2004, prices rose 186 percent in the United States (Government Accountability Office, 2005). Christopher Stream reports that in 2005 the sales of elementary and high school textbooks totaled $4.3 billion (Stream, 2005). This is money that could be spent on improving instructional practices, hiring additional teachers, and professional development. One key factor that contributes to these sales figures is the introduction of state standards and standardized testing. Both of these factors have allowed textbooks to sell a book with the little content changes but with added notations of the state standards and new looking standards-based assessments. New textbooks arrive at schools with the promise of a strong alignment with state curriculum and high stakes assessments. The perpetual promise is that these new textbooks will help guide teachers with negotiating the standards while assuring that these materials will help raise student achievement. Returning to the premise that many teachers, especially at the elementary level, feel weak in math and science content knowledge, in these teacher’s views, these textbooks may provide a solution to their problem. The textbooks’ assurance of alignment to state standards also provides readymade tests and assessments that mirror those given by the state. Ironically, most textbooks do not have the type of quality control expected of a research-based community. Textbooks do not provide assurances of reliability and validity of their material; despite this, they suggest that the use of their materials will increase student achievement (Tarr et al., 2008). 119

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The concern of teacher educators is that teachers will fall victim to a reliance on textbooks as the primary instructional source. We believe that this will only serve as a crutch and can have a negative impact on the teaching practices and overall educational experiences of our students. There is some research that suggests that teachers already employ an overreliance on textbooks. One of the major findings of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) in 1999 was that “86 percent of U.S. eighth-grade students reported that they worked from worksheets or textbooks on their own almost always or pretty often during mathematics lessons in 1999” (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), 2000, p. 6). This finding was significantly higher than the international average of 59 percent. In the Teaching Mathematics in Seven Countries, TIMMS 1999 Video Study, it was reported that in 98 percent of the mathematics lessons in eighth grade classrooms used the textbook or worksheets (NCES, 2003). Given the high utilization rates based on these reports, teachers are clearly using textbooks as a major source of curricula and instructional methods. PROJECT 2061 TEXTBOOK EVALUATIONS

Researchers affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Project 2061 conducted the most comprehensive review of mathematics and science textbooks. Their first study explored middle grades’ mathematics textbooks to explore their strengths and weaknesses. The study examined thirteen of the most commonly used textbooks in United States middle schools published between 1994 and 1999. There were two major elements that were examined. The first was how well the textbooks addressed the depth of content in comparison to the content standards supported by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). The second element of the textbook was an evaluation of each textbook’s instructional effectiveness through measures such as student engagement, development of mathematical concepts, and teacher support. The results of this study indicated that while there were a few excellent middle grades math textbooks, most of the textbooks were considered inconsistent and often weak in their content coverage. In addition, most of the textbooks were weak in their instructional support for students and teachers (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2000). The hope of the research team was that this report would encourage textbook companies to examine ways to improve upon their content and instructional support. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conducted a comparable study, which examined middle grades science textbooks. Since middle school content is divided into earth science, life science and physical science, there are usually three separate textbooks that correspond with the topics. Thus, to fully evaluate each series of texts, the researchers evaluated all three textbooks for each series. In sum, there were nine textbook series that were evaluated. These books were published between 1988 and 1999 and thus provide a similar time span as what was explored in the math textbook evaluation. To evaluate these texts, the evaluation examined one standalone unit from each of the 120

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three content areas. The standards for these content areas came from the Benchmarks for Science Literacy. The evaluation also examined how well the instructional strategies in the student text and teacher’s guide made use of the most effective methods for student learning (AAAS, 2002). The results from this study illustrated that most of the textbook series did adequately address the material under examination. While most of the main ideas were covered in the texts, many of the most important ideas were “often buried between, detailed, conceptually difficult, or even unrelated ideas, making it difficult for students to focus on the main ideas” (Kesidou & Roseman, 2002, p. 527). Obviously, this is problematic for students who are reading the text or looking through the chapters for the pertinent information. In addition, the reader will be bogged down in irrelevant facts that serve as detractors to the key ideas presented in the chapters. This finding corresponds with the notion that science curriculum attempts to cover too much material and in this case, the most important details seem to be hidden among the plethora of facts. In relation to instructional strategies and support, the results were also poor. On one measure, only one of the programs received a score of satisfactory when evaluating the text’s ability to take students’ prior knowledge into account. This is discouraging considering the textbooks included claims to address this issue, however they unable to provide adequate support. This concern was coupled with a lack of teacher support for strategies to help enrich student prior knowledge. The ability to offer appropriate and meaningful assessment activities was another major weakness in these textbooks. It was found that the textbooks often did not “require application of ideas, relying instead on recall of definitions of terms” (Sterm & Ahlgren, 2002, p. 905). The instructional support did not assist teachers to help them probe for understanding nor did the text offer strategies on how to provide feedback to foster a deeper understanding of the key concepts. Thus, the instructional design of these programs did not provide students or teachers with the ability to help gain an understanding of the big ideas. The evaluation found that the textbooks lacked the ability to offer coherent and clear explanations of real world occurrences and connecting them with the main science ideas that were presented in the text narrative (Kesidou & Roseman, 2002). The final evaluation of the middle school science study was that none of the examined textbook series earned a satisfactory score. Since these textbooks are widely used in United States, this finding demonstrates that the commonly used middle school science texts in the late 1990s and early 2000s were inadequate to support student learning or support teacher instructional design. Although the mathematics middle school textbook study provided a stronger evaluation of math texts, the combination of the math and science evaluations depict an unsatisfactory state for math and science textbooks at the turn of the 21st century. The hope of Project 2061 was that through these evaluations, textbook publishers would refocus their efforts to offer higher quality materials in future constructions of these materials.

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CURRENT STATE OF MATH AND SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS DURING THE STANDARDS-BASED ERA

Although large-scale evaluations such as those conducted by Project 2061 have not been completed in recent years, there have been a number of substantial changes in the next generation of math and science textbooks. The most considerable changes in current textbooks are the inclusion of the state and national standards, along with standards-based assessments that are designed to assist teachers with navigating and evaluating the mastery of content. The addition of the standards is one way that textbook publishers may believe that they are providing additional guidance to both the student and the teacher. These changes have ushered in a new translation of textbooks where alignment charts, curriculum guides, standards, and multiple choice tests take up a substantial portion of the textbook. The textbook companies are smart to capitalize on these changes, but in their defense, they are only responding to the mandates handed down by the government leaders who have created the standards and demanded accountability measures through standardized testing. These companies are clearly responding to the political culture, which has created, and attempts to enforce the standards and high stakes testing movements. Although textbook companies are reaping the rewards from these changes, it is the politicization of education that is the driving force for changes in classroom instruction. Not all of the change is bad, as alignment with accepted standards and content does have the advantage of helping guide teachers; however, this presupposes that the standards are appropriate, well researched, and flexible enough to allow teachers to move beyond simply teaching to the test (Resnick, Rothman, Slattery, & Vranek, 2003; Rothman, Slattery, Vranek, & Resnick, 2002). California provides an example of a state whose movement to a standards-based curriculum had an undue influence on the textbook construction and adoption process. The case of California offers insight for how textbook content decisions led by the political climate of education reform are ultimately made. In the case of California and other large states, their changes feed the apparent need for new textbooks. Thus, these publishers play a major role in dictating content to the rest of the nation. As noted earlier, California alone maintains 12% of the textbook purchasing power (Spring, 2005). Thus, as textbooks are reviewed, attending to the needs of the California systems is a primary concern to publishers. There is a clear incentive for writers of textbooks to align as closely as possible to the needs of one of the major textbook buying states (Apple, 1986). California is not unique in its adoption practices, as it is one of the 20 states that implements a state-level textbook adoption program (Zinth, 2005). The adoption of textbooks occurs once every six years for the major content areas. Since California was one of the first states to adopt a statewide curriculum during the late 1990s, they used these standards to develop curriculum material, including using these standards to pick textbooks. Thus, there is a clear relationship between the creation and adoption of state standards of California by state politicians and how textbook publishers would then capitalize on these changes to redesign their textbooks. This, in turn, influences the rest of the nation’s textbook choices.

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Bianchini and Kelly (2003) report their experience serving on the California Instructional Materials Advisory Panel in 1999. Upon reflection of the process, they “question the state’s use of science content standards to dictate the development and evaluation of curriculum materials … as written, the standards document serves as an inadequate resource for textbook publishers and science teachers interested in working toward reform” (Bianchini & Kelly, 2003, p. 382). What concerned the researchers was that the state standards had not been based in the research literature as to the most appropriate content to be included, nor had they been universally vetted through an inclusive evaluation process. Thus, the ultimate decisions on content and assessment are driven through state education agencies, which are then interpreted by textbook companies. A second concern voiced by Bianchini and Kelly was that the “standards-based textbook review process [promotes] the marginalization of practitioners’ voices and professional expertise” (Bianchini & Kelly, 2003, p. 383). They noted that the most critical factor in the adoption of textbooks for California was the alignment of the textbooks with the state standards which is a politically driven process. They explained that textbooks were not to be considered for adoption if a book has even one state standard that was not appropriately addressed. In addition, the members of the textbook review panel were not allowed to question the content standards or even consider material that was not a part of the state mandated standards. The authors found that the actions of the adoption committee did not allow for the voice of the teachers or other educators; thus, rendering them silent in the whole adoption process. The California example is not a unique case regarding the big three states and their impact on textbook content. Much has been written about the influence that Texas has on the content in science and history textbooks, as Texas is the second largest textbook purchaser in the United States (Spring, 2005). In 2009, the Texas State Board of Education adopted a set of state science standards that had been deemed as flawed by many in the science education community (Miller, 2010). Some of the disagreement surrounded the presentation of evolution in the text, as a strong conservative group was calling for equal time to be spent on creationism. The second debate revolved around the presentation of global warming. The same groups who opposed evolution also wanted to alter the language to reflect the voice of those who do not believe global warming is occurring or do not believe it is influenced by man. Dr. Ramon Alvarez, a senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund explained that the Texas Board of Education is ignoring its own science advisors and “supporting its own ideological views rather that those proven by science” (Environmental Defense Fund, 2009). The larger problem posed by these decisions by the board was that their politically motivated positions end up being directly reflected in the textbooks which are produced. Like the issues in California, the decisions by the Texas Board of Educators end up influencing textbook content throughout the nation. The examination of California and Texas forces educators to pay close attention to the materials that are found in textbooks and how this material may not be as accurate or as tested and assessed as people think. McMillan/McGraw-Hill 123

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Glencoe is one of the largest K-12 textbook publishers in the United States, yet they provide an important example of the concerns regarding the content and instructional support presented in their textbooks. At the K-6 grade levels, McMillan/McGraw-Hill produces one of the popular mathematics textbook titled Math Connects. As teacher educators, and consumers of these products, it is our job is to examine the claims that textbook companies make. According to the video on their website (www.mhpdonline.com/tus/35na/engine.html), these textbooks provide a “comprehensive standards based and vertically aligned mathematics program … that ensure[s] that all students master the appropriate standards at the appropriate grade level [and] … provides both students and teachers with the knowledge and skills needed to be successful” (McMillan/McGraw-Hill Glencoe, 2011). While this is a lofty set of claims, we question how much of these are based on empirical research. This information is not readily available on this part of the website, but if one digs deep enough, McGraw/Hill has a research site on their homepage. Upon exploring this site, we found a research section that had no research reports concerning the Math Connects textbooks. We did, however, find some research studies on their other math series. For example, we found one report concerning Number Worlds titled, Program Lifts Students’ Math Scores: Officials: Statewide Gains Are Dramatic. This was a 2007 study that involved an intervention using the Number Worlds program. The details of the study are vague and it appeared to be a funded intervention study without a control group. Thus, there were no statistics for reliability or validity of the textbook’s ability to increase student achievement. Studies such as this make educational researchers uneasy when they hear claims that their textbook produces great results. Despite the critiques of textbooks, there are some features that do provide support for teachers. Most textbooks published in the past five years contain a great deal of information related to the standards that are covered. Returning to the McGraw/Hill math texts, the state standards are often highlighted throughout the chapter to help students and teachers focus on the standards. The benefit of these is debatable, but it can help teachers, especially those new to the classroom to plan instruction. The integration of technology is a second area where textbooks have shown progress. For example, Carnegie Learning provides online versions of their Georgia Mathematics I and II text. McGraw/Hill offers a CD-ROM for students which contains the interactive student edition of the text and accompanying worksheets for their Advanced Mathematical Concepts: Pre-Calculus with Applications textbook, as well as instructions for graphing calculator applications. Many of today’s texts have accompanying websites containing online tutorials, assessments, review materials, and other interactive forms of instructional support. In the age of high stakes testing, the use of online assessment resources can offer positive support for computer savvy students. The use of multimedia resources can also serve as opportunities for teachers to address differentiated instruction, as well as provide different ways to teach material. The mathematics instructional support offered by many textbook companies utilizes current technologies to provide students with more engaging types of 124

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activities, which may not be available in class. Many of these sites contain instructional games that provide problem-solving activities. In one common computer activity, students are required to make change when purchasing goods or services. These activities are often engaging as they provide real life scenarios for children to practice without leaving the computer. While secondary students may not readily find interactive games on their textbooks’ websites, students may find assistance in the form of formative assessments, full solutions to homework problems, instructional videos, and visual glossaries. Science instructional supports offer many of the same experiences as the ones found on math sites. Common activities found on science sites are virtual labs. These are a valuable resource because they offer real lab activities, in a virtual environment. Many of these programs are highly interactive and almost mirror the real experience. The sophistication in some of the virtual dissections has become so realistic that many colleges use them to save money and in cases where students do not want to complete a real dissection. Science interactive tutorials also provide a source of engagement beyond what is found in the text. In addition, some of these resources allow students the ability to see science phenomena in action. For example, a video animation of cell division cannot be replicated in a textbook and thus the technology adds an increased level of instruction. Of course none of these instructional supports necessarily require the textbook and many of these types of activities, tutorials, and assessments can be found online for free. However, they have become increasingly popular by teachers and thus textbook publishers have continued to invest in these products to lure educators to adopt their materials and products. In these cases, the instructional supports have offered an important addition to the textbook. STANDARDIZED TEXTBOOKS AND STATE TESTING

The assessment materials included in current math and science textbooks looks substantially different from what was found even ten years ago. One look at any current math or science textbook and you will find pre-assessments, post assessments, end of chapter assessments, and cumulative assessments. This is certainly indicative of the test-based world we live in and the plethora of assessments sends the wrong message to teachers and students on the importance of testing. One potential advantage of some of these tests is that they allow teachers to gain a better sense for what students know when they start a given topic; however, one major concern with these assessments is that they are often presented as multiple choice tests or quizzes. While this may be a time effective way to manage the numerous tests, there are much better means to attain this type of information that does not involve a series of multiple choice tests. The apparent goal is to teach our children how to do a better job at test taking by having them practice this type of assessment throughout the year. The major critique of these tests is that they often only promote regurgitation of information and do not offer the types of problem solving skills expected with 21st century math and science.

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These types of assessments are becoming the norm in today’s classrooms. In our classes when we teach about assessment, we instruct pre-service teachers how to use alternative forms of assessment. Unfortunately, we are often faced with resistance from the latest generation of students who experienced the growing trend of standardized testing during their own academic careers. These students wonder what purpose is served by assessing student by alternative means when the ultimate determination of their achievement, and in turn the teacher’s success, will be measured with a state mandated test. The continued obsession with testing our children has left educators wondering if the coined phrase “No Child Left Untested” (Ross & Mathison, 2002, para. 4) is indeed an accurate representation of schooling in America. The larger problem, as highlighted earlier, is that this obsession with testing by political leaders can and often does drive the curriculum. The best-case scenario is that teachers know the standards addressed in the curriculum, but make certain to spend extra time on the topics that find their way onto the tests. The problem is that even the most proficient teacher is altering the curriculum by focusing on the content that will be tested. In the worst case scenario, the teacher has no understanding of the official written curriculum of the state or district, but by examining the state assessments, the teacher can reinvent the curriculum by only teaching what will be tested. In this situation, the enacted curriculum may be in stark contrast to the written curriculum. These are real problems in our schools as teachers are under increased pressure to prepare students for tests, even when they know that they do not accurately measure what a child has learned. One common question we field with pre-service teachers addresses the concern for who makes the state standardized tests and who knows their level of reliability. This became a particular concern for a group of teachers who were examining the relationship between end of course testing and retention rates in students who must repeat a grade because they do not pass the end of course test. Georgia is one of the states with a reasonably transparent assessment program. Although one must dig for some of the testing data, we were able to obtain some of the reliability data for end of course tests and also for the Criterion-Referenced Competency Testing (CRCT). According to the Georgia Department of Education, the CRCTs have a high degree of validity because they serve the purpose for which they are intended – to measure student mastery of the state’s curriculum. Validity is established via the process of test development. The careful development from inception of the CRCT testing program and all steps in-between such as alignment with curriculum, creation of test and item specifications, multiple reviews by educators, careful form construction by content experts and psychometricians provide evidence that the CRCT are valid instruments for the uses for which the department has developed the test. (Georgia Department of Education, 2010, p. 7)

These claims may sound impressive but they, at least in their assessment materials, offer no specific support for any of these claims. In one case, Georgia has come under fire for their implementation of the Georgia Performance Standards mathematics curriculum. The state moved to a new integrated curriculum that is 126

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task-based and has been phasing out its previous curriculum that simply provided teachers with a year’s worth of concepts to cover. Complaints from teachers and parents, in addition to concerns over the low test scores, necessitated the state to reexamine the curriculum and the testing. The long-term plan is unclear, but the proposal is to let each district decide what curriculum to continue to use and test. This does not send a message of strong validity or even well thought out planning on the part of the Department of Education. The measures of reliability for the CRCT testing are also reported in the assessment document. The reliability measures are between .86 and .94 using Cronbach’s alpha. According to convention, a reliability score between .80 and .89 is considered a good reliability (Frary, 2011). However, a score in this range is suitable in evaluating an individual student, only if averaged with scores from similar tests with similar reliability. It is only in the range of .90 or higher where a single test can be used to make a decision about the student (Frary, 2011). Given that the reliability values of anything less than .90 indicate that a single test cannot be the only evaluation, several of these tests should not be used to determine grade promotion, which is one result of low CRCT test scores. In addition to this information of the misuse of these tests is the finding that the CRCT testing is contracted through CTB/McGraw-Hill. This is the same McGraw- Hill that is responsible for many of the textbooks used in the state. In fact, the vast majority of state testing is designed by CTB/McGraw-Hill, Educational Testing Service (ETS), Harcourt Assessment, Pearson Educational Measurement, and Riverside Publishing. Four of these companies also account for the majority of textbooks used in schools, with only ETS not participating in textbook sales. It seems a curious link that the companies that create and profit from the textbooks also create and also profit from the standardized testing. In addition, the influence of these companies on the construction of state standards poses serious concerns for educators as to who is really driving the education of our children. The consistent call for teacher accountability only heightens the concern regarding education reform. Unfortunately, not enough educators understand these important yet discouraging relationships. Perhaps if educators and parents became more aware of these relationships, they would be more skeptical of the lure and promises of new curriculum, textbooks, and standards. CONCERNS FOR THE FUTURE

As teacher educators, we struggle with balancing the need to guide teachers to use instruction that is inquiry based, promotes problem solving skills, and embraces creativity with the reality that we must prepare students for the real classroom in which they will be teaching. The increased influence of standardized testing coupled with the way that textbooks can detract students and teachers from the important content and ideas, pose challenges to ways to prepare students to be effective consumers. Unfortunately, since many new teachers lack the ability to judge the resources they have at their disposal and many simply utilize the textbooks that are provided for them, these teachers will fall into the pattern of 127

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using the textbook as the main and often the primary source of curriculum. We implore teacher educators to inform their students of the pitfalls that textbook and standardized test-driven curriculum can have on their students’ learning experiences. We suggest that schools of education provide opportunities for their students to critically examine the impact that textbooks, and their curriculum, and testing have on instructional practices. Future and current teachers need to acquire a set of skills that will allow them to be critical consumers of the instructional materials that they use. Equipped with these skills, teachers will be able to challenge practices and pedagogy that have become pervasive in today’s classrooms. Based on the evidence we have presented in this chapter and our own experience with textbooks and testing, we can see the impact that these are having on teaching. We are skeptical of the promises of increased achievement often presented by textbook companies as well as the political climate that is influencing these reform movements. Textbook companies aim to profit by the sale of their products, but the force of change appears to be in the political and not educational arena. Although these companies may have good intentions to help teachers, their lack of reliability and validity, and influence on the standards based testing movement pose a concern to educators. In addition, the apparent lack of teacher input in textbook construction suggests that teachers are not viewed as important stakeholders. Since teachers and not textbook companies must ultimately take responsibility for student achievement, it would be wise for educators to be better consumers of these products. One critical way for math and science teachers to combat the limitations offered by the decreasing number of available textbooks is to use their national organizations as sources for support. Both the NSTA (www.nsta.org) and NCTM (www.nctm.org) offer terrific websites which contain valuable information to guide teachers. Both of these organizations offer content and strategy books that can help guide best practices in math and science classrooms. In addition, both of these organizations offer sections of their sites that provide teacher-tested and research-backed lessons for classroom use. While we acknowledge the strong presence that textbook companies have in most schools, we encourage all teachers to consider the best resources needed to promote quality instruction, and to use these sources to provide quality experiences that promote critical thinking and problem solving skills necessitated by 21st century instruction. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1.

2.

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The authors share their experiences of transitioning into a standards based classroom. Think of your experiences as a K-12 student and describe how they might be similar or different from curriculum experiences of the students you will be teaching. What are the advantages and disadvantages to paying teachers according to student achievement?

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3. 4.

5.

The authors contend that using textbooks as the primary source of instruction is an alarming trend. Discuss other sources of instruction and how they may be more or less viable options. Thinking about teaching, textbooks, and testing, in what ways should each drive the daily activities within a classroom? The authors discuss that textbooks are at the intersection of teaching and testing. Create a model or diagram of how you think the three should interact. Textbook companies often provide a large variety of supplemental materials with their textbooks. Discuss ways in which teachers can properly use these materials to impact student achievement and the ways that teachers can over utilize these materials. REFERENCES

American Association for the Advancement of Science. (2000). Middle grades mathematics textbooks: A benchmarks-based evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.project2061.org/publications/textbook/ mgmth/report/default.htm. American Association for the Advancement of Science. (2002). Middle grades science textbooks: A benchmarks-based evaluation. Retrieved from http://www.project2061.org/publications/textbook/ mgsci/report/mgbooks.htm. Apple, M. (1986). Teachers and texts. New York, NY: Routledge. Au, W. (2009). Unequal by design: High-stakes testing and the standardization of inequality. NewYork, NY: Routledge. Bianchini, J. A. & Kelly, G. J. (2003). Challenges of standards-based reform: The example of California’s science content standards and textbook adoption process. Science Education, 87, 378389. Buss, R. R. (2010). Efficacy for teaching elementary science and mathematics compared to other content. School Science and Mathematics, 110, 290-297. Chiappetta, E. L., Ganesh, T. G., Lee, Y. H., & Phillips, M. C. (2006, April). Examination of science textbook analysis research conducted on textbooks published over the past 100 years in the United States. A paper presented at the annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, San Francisco, CA. Covill, A. E. (2011). College students’ perceptions of the traditional lecture methods. College Student Journal, 45, 92-101. Environmental Defense Fund. (2009). EDF condemns Texas school board decision to change global warming text today’s vote puts Texas children at economic disadvantage. Retrieved from http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=861. Frary. R.B. (2011). Testing memo 8: Reliability of test scores. Retrieved from http://www.testscoring.vt.edu/memo08.html. Georgia Department of Education. (2010). Validity and reliability for the 2010 CRCT. Retrieved from http://www.gadoe.org/ci_testing.aspx. Georgia Department of Education. (2011). CLASS Keys (Classroom Analysis of State Standards). The Georgia Teacher Evaluation System. Retrieved from http://www.gadoe.org/tss_teacher.aspx. Government Accountability Office. (2005). College textbooks: Enhanced offerings appear to drive recent price increases. Washington, DC: United States Government Accountability Office. Grossman, P., & Thompson, C. (2004). Curriculum materials: Scaffolds for new teacher learning? Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy and Center on English Learning & Achievement (CELA). Seattle, WA: University of Washington. Hannaford, S. (2007). Market domination!: The impact of industry consolidation on competition, innovation, and consumer choice. USA: Greenwood Publishing Group.

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ROBERT CEGLIE & VIDAL OLIVARES Ingersoll, R., & Perda, D. (2010). Is the supply of mathematics and science teachers sufficient? American Educational Research Journal, 47, 563-559. Kohn, A. (2000). The case against standardized testing: Raising the scores, ruining the schools. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Kesidou, S., & Roseman, J. E. (2002). How well do middle school science programs measure up? Findings from Project 2061’s curriculum review. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 522549. Lipman, P. (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization, and urban school reform. New York, NY: Routledge. MacMillan/McGraw-Hill Glencoe (2011). Math Connects Program introduction. Retrieved from http://www.mhpdonline.com/tus/35na/engine.html. Miller, K. R. (2010). Evolution – By the (text) book, evolution. Education and Outreach, 3, 225-230. Minner, D. D., Levy, A. L., & Century, J. (2010). Inquiry-based science instruction – What it is and does it matter? Results from research synthesis years 1984 to 2002. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47, 474-496. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. (2000). Pursuing excellence: Comparisons of international eighth-grade mathematics and science achievement from a U.S. perspective, 1995 and 1999. Washington, DC: United States Publishing Office. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education. (2003). Teaching mathematics in seven countries: Results from the TIMSS 1999 video study. Washington, DC: United States Publishing Office. National Research Council. (2005). How students learn: History, mathematics, and science in the classroom. Washington, DC: United States Publishing Office. Nichols, S., & Berliner, D. (2007). Collateral damage: How high-stakes testing corrupts America’s schools. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Noddings, N. (2007). When school reform goes wrong. New York, NY: Teachers College Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Resnick, L. B., Rothman, R., Slattery, J. B., & Vranek, J. L. (2003). Benchmarking and alignment of standards and testing. Educational Assessment, 9, 1-27. Ross, E. W., & Mathison, S. (2002, January 2). No child left untested. The Courier-Journal. Retrieved from http://www.rougeforum.org/newspaper/summer2002/NoChildLeftUntested.htm. Rothman, R., Slattery, J. B., Vranek, J. L., & Resnick, L. B. (2002). Benchmarking and alignment of standards and testing, CSE technical report 566. Los Angeles, CA: Center for Student and Evaluation, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing. Schiro, M. (2008). Curriculum theory: Conflicting visions and enduring concerns. USA: Sage Publications. Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., & Groff, C. (2009). Effective programs in middle and high school mathematics: A best-evidence synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 79, 839-911. Spring, J. (2005). Conflicts of interest: The politics of American education (5th Ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Stern, L., & Ahlgren, A. (2002). Analysis of students’ assessments in middle school curriculum materials: Aiming precisely at benchmarks and standards. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39, 889-910. Stream, C. (2005, June). Beyond the three R’s: The policies and politics of textbooks. Proceedings from Adoptions, Textbook, and Academic Authors Association Conference. Las Vegas, NV. Tanner, D. & Tanner, L. (1995). Curriculum development: Theory into practice (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Prentice Hall. Tarr, J.E., Reys, R.E., Reys, B.J., Chávez, Ó., Shih, J., & Osterlind, S.J. (2008). The impact of middlegrades mathematics curricula and the classroom learning environment on student achievement. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 39, 247-280. Urban, W. J., & Wagoner, Jr., J. L. (2008). American education: A history (4th Ed.). Routledge.

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SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOKS PROGRESSION Vail, H. (1911). A history of the McGuffey Readers. Cleveland, OH: The Burrows Brothers Co. Watanabe, M. (2007). Displaced teacher and state priorities in a high-stakes accountability context. Educational Policy, 21, 311-368. Werner, E. (2011, March 28). Obama says too much testing makes education boring. ABC News. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=13238926 Wingfield, M., Nath, J. L., Freeman, L., & Cohen, M. (2000). The effect of site-based preservice experiences on elementary social studies, language arts, and mathematics teaching self-efficacy beliefs. Available from Houston, TX: University of Houston. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED441766) Zinth, K. (2005). State textbook adoption. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States.

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POLITICS AND SCIENCE TEXTBOOKS Behind the Curtain of “Objectivity”

Critical theorists have often described public education as a process that results in a grand form of social control. Noam Chomsky (2000) argued that schools are sites of indoctrination, and: [If] the schools were serving the general public, they would be providing people with techniques of self-defense, but this would mean teaching the truth about the world and society. [Students would] develop techniques of self-defense against not only the propaganda apparatus in state-controlled totalitarian societies but also the privatized system of propaganda, which includes the schools, the media, the agenda-setting press, and intellectual journals…which essentially controls the educational enterprise. (p. 26)

Yet, when authors write a textbook for any grade, they pay no attention to the critical views Chomsky provided. They are not concerned with how their work may be contributing to a view of assimilation and social privilege. They need to only attend to one major consideration: will the book sell? Textbooks are written with profit as the driving factor for publication. Claiming that a textbook is aligned to national standards will sell textbooks. How well a textbook critically examines content through power struggles, systems of oppression, or dominant elite discourse are not seen as ways to make profit for textbook publication companies. Given this, it should come as no surprise that middle and high school science textbooks in the U.S. and in many parts of the Western industrialized world perpetuate a similar ideology of ethnocentrism, technocentric hubris, and favorable views of consumerism and capitalism. Science, as a culturally constructed concept described in science textbooks, is created through the cultural values of capitalism, technocentrism, colonization, and globalization because those are the ideologies that supported by the dominant elites and further supported with hegemonic thinking by the disempowered masses. Science textbooks champion norms, metanarratives, and ideologies of the elite European scientists of the Enlightenment period, ideological cultural thinking that marginalizes interconnection and reciprocity with nature, and beats the drum of human’s triumphant rise to taming and controlling a wild and chaotic nature. A practice of objectifying and manipulating nature (a common cultural assertion from Western science ideology) is the norm for any science textbook. Critically questioning this “scientific” relationship with nature is not only identifying a cultural-centrism, but perhaps more dangerous, is a partial or indirect calling out of capitalism itself. Since H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 133–150. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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capitalists rely on their option to objectify and manipulate nature for their personal financial profit, critically examining a traditional “scientific” epistemology could also threaten their sources of profit. Therefore, science textbooks are less about science and more about a rationalization for the objectification of nature so that we may manipulate it for our own gain, convenience, and financial profit. If a mindset of objectification and manipulation of nature is seen as the norm, then science textbooks will ultimately reproduce that same discourse because normative discourse is perceived as neutral or safe. Neutrality sells textbooks. This chapter will focus on how science textbooks are not cultural or neutral, but are deeply entrenched in neoliberal, capitalist, technocentric discourse, the very same discourse that is responsible for hyper-consumerism that has lead to global destruction of ecology. At the core are human views of objectifying and dominating nature, a constant unproblematic view of the ecologically destructive practices of corporations, and a central view of anthropocentrism that dominates the discourse of mainstream science textbooks. In using an ecojustice theoretical frame for analysis (i.e. one that utilizes nature/culture intersections, identifies anthropocentrism and technocentrism, and hubristic views of human’s technological developments), I will demonstrate through vignette examples how mainstream science textbooks are reflective of the power discourse of Western industrial culture (Bowers, 2006; Martusewicz, Edmundson & Lupinacci, 2011). SCIENCE AS BEING WITHOUT CULTURAL OR SOCIAL ROOTS Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. – Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur’s statement is one that scientists and science textbooks operate with as a central assumption of neutrality. Feminist science studies theorist and former primatologist, Donna Haraway (1988) described the process of constructing knowledge in the paradigm of science as being no more or less culturally constructed than any other form of knowledge construction. Haraway argued that scientists often position science knowledge as being a totalizing knowledge, a knowledge that is located in a perfectly unbiased plane where objectivity is achieved via the scientific method and all observations made are without any sociocultural foundations or perspectives. Essentially, the view is that our “humanness” is somehow erased, leaving behind only pure information, and unsoiled by the whims and desires of any cultural, social, or human agenda. It is a total view free from any social or cultural blind spots or biases. Haraway argued that this totalizing view of knowledge is equivalent to being seated above the earth with the gods and goddesses with their ability to look down and see, with perfect objectivity, the happenings of nature. This popularized view of scientific knowledge, Haraway stated, is nothing more than a “god-trick.” Haraway (1989) also challenged the purist notion that science research was grounded in fact.

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Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts “discovered” from organic beings. Organisms perform for the biologist, who transforms that performance into a truth attested by disciplined experience; i.e., into a fact, the jointly accomplished deed or feat of scientist and the organism … Both the scientist and the organism are actors in a story-telling practice. (p. 4)

Understanding how the universe works means understanding the relationship or story of the observer, the story of the object of inquiry, and the story between both of them. Gough (1998) added that there is a benefit to approaching learning from an analytical lens that proposes all knowledge to be considered a story or fiction, rather than fact: If we think of all stories of educational inquiry as being fictions, we may be less likely to privilege without question those that pretend not to be, and more likely to judge each story on its particular merits in serving worthwhile purposes in education. (p. 100)

In other words, the act of scientific inquiry is always going to be located in the confines of the sociocultural dominant narrative of the researcher. Science researchers have repeatedly relied on their privileged standpoints to view the world and produce “scientific” investigations. While not all scientists do this to the harm of others, some do. To demonstrate this, it is important to remember that scientists have a history of connecting their work with social injustices and/or that of the dominant elite: – Scientists researched eugenics prior to and during Nazi Germany (eugenics was exhibited in the 1893 and 1904 World’s Fairs) (Martusewicz et al., 2011). – Scientists searched for an “extra muscle” in Black men that supposedly made them run faster than their White counterparts. – Scientists used deception in the Tuskegee trials to study the end stages of syphilis on Black men without their consent or knowledge of how the researchers were using them. At the time the cure for the syphilis was available. – Scientists used only men in heart attack research, which ignored the different set of symptoms that women have and ultimately resulted in a high number of female deaths and delays in gender appropriate treatment management for at least three decades. – Scientists used deception when performing reproductive research on Puerto Rican women and women in the Caribbean Islands without informed consent that a likely risk was sterilization (Clark, 2009; Mass, 1977). The tests were coerced sterilization in order to perfect techniques with much lower risk for White women in the U.S. Researchers also used the same women as human guinea pigs to test emerging contraceptives such as IUDs. Again, there was no informed consent about the possible risks (Mass, 1977; Stern 2005). This partial list demonstrates the ways in which scientists have used the culturally constructed perception of science as being acultural and unbiased as a shield of protection. 135

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Stating that humans have the capacity to view nature without cultural or social influences essentially means doing so in separation from themselves. How can we step outside of ourselves in order to make observations or interpretations? We often see what we think we see rather than what is present. Humans will always be located behind their own veil of humanness. Stating that we are separate enough to be purely objective as we produce knowledge is a statement and reflection of our own hubris rooted in an ideology of technocentrism and anthropocentrism. The cultural mindset of science is one that sees its own existence as separate from being human, praises itself for new understandings, and pats itself on its back for new technologies. Science is often described as the crowning achievement of humans, a mindset that inevitably marginalizes any other views and relationships of nature that do not play by its culturally-defined, paradigmatic rules. At its core, the culturally constructed philosophy of logical positivism is the guiding set of rules for Western science. The socially normed view is that science (a culturally constructed concept that gained popularity in Europe during the Enlightenment Period) states that we can only know the “truth” of nature through the five senses and the use of logic and reasoning. To be fair, there are some very strong benefits to viewing nature and conducting investigations with this lens as the guiding principle. Quantum physics, space travel, and medical technologies are often placed on the proverbial pedestal, and are a result from following a culturally constructed path of logical positivism within scientific research. These are, without equivocation, largely positive and even impressive accomplishments. However, this normed (often described as neutral) process of collecting information about the universe certainly has it limits, as well. We should not do anything more than honestly and frankly acknowledge these limits. Western science does not need to be defended as an all-encompassing story of nature. It is not unimportant, invalid, or worthless because it is has limitations or blind spots. It can be a very useful and valuable tool for investigating nature. However, by objectifying and portraying nature as a lifeless entity that humans can manipulate as so many of the Enlightenment scientists did and many current scientists and science teachers continue to perpetuate, we also create ourselves as dominators who have a natural right to impose our will and desires onto nature. Because of this mindset within science thinking, science provides the moral ground for capitalism in relationship to nature. Capitalism, which intensifies consumerism, exacerbates the damage of the global ecology. This can be seen clear in science textbooks. Science textbooks provide a steady stream of hubristic, anthropocentric discourse that operates in partnership with logical positivism to perpetuate docility and avoid critically examining the culturally-laden thinking that produced the ecological destruction. In other words, capitalism, globalization, and colonization are all safely hidden behind the veil of objectivity that is promoted as the central discourse in science textbooks. This is not to say that issues of abusive relationships with nature in the form of pollution are avoided entirely. Students are shown that there is a potential ecological problem, but studying the causes in-depth and with critical scrutiny are not allowable because they would question the very

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fabric of our economic structure, our lifestyles, our mindsets, our technologies, and those who are invested in profiting from the current practices and conditions. Is science “bad?” Science is not a “thing” that resides outside of the human mind. It does not exist on its own doing its own morally and ethically sound investigations only to be peer pressured into misbehaving by its human friends who are little more than a bad influence. Science exists entirely within our worldviews, our ideologies, our epistemologies, our ontologies, our limitations, and our blind spots. Scientific research will operate with the same privileged view of the world that the investigator has. Science will view the world with contempt and patriarchy if the philosophers and researchers do the same. Science will fear stepping outside of a paradigm or even redefining the boundaries of the same paradigm if the scientists fear it. Therefore, science has not gone from “good” to “bad” because science is not its own thing. It is ours entirely. Science is a process that is completely within the confines of socio-culturally rooted thinking and will remain an ideological extension of who we are (Plumwood, 2002). Science textbooks follow the same path by creating and perpetuating discourse, interpretations, and descriptions of nature and technology that flow from the dominant elite’s sociocultural and political norms and values. Clean the toxic waste, but don’t question the makers of it. In the high school textbook Modern Chemistry (Davis, Sarquis, Frey & Sarquis, 2006), there are several vignettes throughout the text that briefly discuss the history of science, science careers, and technological innovations. One of the vignettes focuses on an emerging technology that uses ultrasonic waves to destroy toxic waste chemicals. “Paints, pesticides, solvents and sulfides are just a few components of the 3 million tons of toxic waste that flow out of U.S. factories every year. Some of this waste ends up in groundwater and contaminates our streams and drinking water” (Davis et al., 2006, p. 180). The explanation provided here focuses on the end user, the consumer. Even though toxic waste chemicals flow out of U.S. factories, they also do so through jars, buckets, and bottles and are sold at the local big box retail store for the do-it-yourselfers, weekend warriors, as well as contractors and construction managers. It is understood that, in this vignette, the consumers are the culprits. They damage the environment by using the products, while the companies are not at fault because they only make the products. Another aspect of this vignette, in fact the focus of this vignette, is how the ultrasonic tool can eliminate toxic waste chemicals, which can provide the rationale to make more of it. Instead of addressing the manufacturing of the chemicals, the purpose of this vignette is to focus on destroying the chemicals when they reach the waste stage of their life cycle. Nowhere in the textbook is there a vignette, section, chapter, or sentence that addresses the root of the problem, which is the manufacturing of them. Doing so would mean having to question those who profit from their manufacturing and selling of the products, which is something that the authors ignore. In a similar vignette that focuses on mass spectrometry reads, “Tests for locating oil deposits in the ground and detecting dioxins in our food supply are commonly 137

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performed today” (Davis et al., 2006, p. 236). Again, the focus is on a technological “band-aid” for a significant environmental problem. The text identifies the problem of toxic chemicals, but the discourse implies quite strongly that if we could just find a way to manage the problem at the end of the cycle, we can keep manufacturing 3 million tons of toxic waste, forming oil deposits, and creating of dioxins. Toxic waste is portrayed in these vignettes as a serious problem, but there is no discussion throughout the 900+ page textbook about the creation of toxic waste, why factories create these chemicals, what chemical alternatives may exist for factories to use, or how the biochemical pathways in our bodies and throughout the environment are affected. When the topic of toxic waste does appear again (section heading “Chemical Technicians” on p. 300, “Environmental Chemist” on p. 408, “Analytical Chemist” on p. 515), it is consistently and exclusively about the management of that waste. Similarly, when acid rain and its detrimental effects on fish is considered (Davis et al., 2006, p. 510), the focus is again a band-aid approach by changing the pH level of the streams using lime rather than having a discussion on the source of the problem, the burning of fossil fuels. Even though there is an identification of the source of the pollution (i.e. factories, fossil fuel emissions, etc.), these vignettes become “add-ons” that can easily be disregarded by science teachers and students because there is no critical examination of the roots of the pollution which include corporate-funded science experimentation, externalizing the hazardous waste in the environment, and supporting pro-capitalist mindsets where profit rules every decision. Additionally, the portrayal of scientists throughout the textbook is always positive whether the scientist is working for a corporation or the Environmental Protection Agency. An illustrative example is the vignette (Davis et al., 2006, p. 145) focusing on materials scientists. They are championed for their creation of composite materials, polymers, metals, ceramics and semiconductors. If students read through this vignette, they would likely be left with an emotion that materials science is a wonderful field to pursue a career, and there is nothing environmentally compromising that these researchers do, most certainly not being involved in the creation of that 3 million tons of toxic waste. Since only a positive portrayal of this career is portrayed, and no mention of toxic waste is present, it leaves the reader with an uncritical, “shiny” example of a career scientist. However, materials scientists are involved daily in the creation of toxic waste through experimentation and the creation of new materials that are later massproduced and sold to consumers. Similarly, pharmacists are highlighted in a vignette (p. 222) with no mention of the abuses of the pharmaceutical industry whether it is animal testing, forced overuse of antibiotics on corporate farms, or the ways in which advertising is affecting people’s perception of health. “Malaire”: A parable. In the middle school textbook Project-Based Inquiry Science: Air Quality (PBIS) (Kolodner, Krajcik, Edelson, Reiser, & Starr, 2010), there is an attempt made to contextualize science in the problem of air pollution. This is a divergent path in comparison other popular middle school science textbooks such as the 2006 Prentice Hall Science Explorer series of texts that 138

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basically mirror the technocentric, pro-capitalist discourse in Modern Chemistry (Davis et al., 2006). However, there is a parable at the beginning of the book focusing on a fictitious town called “Malaire” (p. 3). PBIS is a textbook that departs slightly from mainstream textbooks that have been produced for decades because it moves towards contextualizing science content in projects and problems rather than providing only explanations of concepts. PBIS used the parable of Malaire as a way to establish a context for students to learn about the science of air, as well as a context for learning about their own communities. To briefly summarize, Malaire is a fictitious town that experiences movement from an agrarian village to an industrious city and, as a result, increases its amount of air pollution. In the parable, one of its residents hikes beyond the city and into the mountains and experiences a healthier air quality. When the hiker returns to the city, he speaks about the pristine quality of air and how Malaire has contributed to its own ailments by polluting the air. The hiker receives statements of denial from other residents, and he ultimately decides that he is not making any progress with them in understanding his argument, so he heads back to the mountains never to be seen again. There is great potential in this parable to discuss and analyze the sociocultural values that are at the very root of this destructive environmental condition. However, neither in the story nor in the questions/reflections that follow is there any critical examination of the driving values of Malaire that cause the environmental pollution or the ignorance and denial that the hiker observes with the community members. Ecojustice theory argues that to understand and be able to change the ecological conditions, there has to be an analysis of the sociocultural values that have produced the conditions. In this parable, the hiker seemingly has a shift in consciousness about his relationships with nature. However, there is no discussion about the hiker’s transition in thinking. In the parable, community members portray a deep ignorance and denial about the conditions and how their decisions (based on values) contribute to the very poor air quality conditions. There is certainly no discussion about the processes of hegemony that are present with the community members, either. There is also no discussion about those who profit financially from the power plants and various other technologies that produce the pollution or how they attempt to keep the community members mindsets in favor of continuing consumption. The Malaire parable sets up the frame of thinking for the rest of the unit. The unit uses the central question: “How can you improve air quality in your community?” (p. 7) This analysis (which is present throughout the unit) puts the responsibility on the student to make changes in the environment. The simple fact in this kind of analysis is that the largest producers of pollution remain in the background largely unscathed. The PBIS text, which admittedly goes farther than most science textbooks at connecting with an existing real-world problem, keeps its analysis at a “safe” distance from analyzing the roots of ecological destruction found in capitalism, colonization, and globalization. An eco-sociocultural analysis (one that intersects sociocultural values/mindsets with ecological conditions) is vital to understanding our own denial/ignorance in 139

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connection with hegemonic thinking and practices of the dominant elites. However, to do that kind of analysis is not part of the cultural norms, nor is it seen as neutral. The PBIS text makes some implications through the inclusion of photographs like smoke stacks, gasoline stations, 18-wheeler tractor trailers, and airplanes, but the discussion in connection with these pictures never produces an ecojustice analysis. SCIENCE CULTURALLY CONSTRUCTS NATURE AS AN “OTHER” “Nature is stupid, dead matter.” – Thomas Hobbes

Science is not neutral when it comes to how we are to view nature. Science forces us to look at nature in a very specific way. Through the lens of science philosophy of the Enlightenment Period, we are not a part of nature. Nature is “out there.” We are, in fact, better than nature. René Descartes argued in 1637 in his Discourse on Method that we can be the masters and possessors of nature investigating nature so that we may have power over it. Science is a human enterprise that positions nature as less than, and contingent on the demands of humans. Nature, being separate from us, is without spirit or intelligence and is always in competition with itself. Nature, according to the values of science, is to be tamed, mastered, and controlled. The relationship with nature via the culture of science is not about cooperation or reciprocity; it is about dominance. Carolyn Merchant (1980) drew attention to this relationship as it was emerging from the elite scientists of the Enlightenment Period in Western Europe. Merchant argued that these “scientists” were deliberately producing a patriarchal discourse that positioned nature as an objectified “other” that men specifically were to conquer. She showed that many of those whom we now look to as the iconic historical figures of scientific thinking and innovation were often doing so to gain social privilege. Thus, science as a discursive practice of empirical inquiry developed with a top-down, humans-overnature, and patriarchal philosophical foundation. Merchant points to many examples such as Galileo Galilei who used a metaphor of a clock and Johannes Kepler who used a metaphor of a machine to describe the very essence of the universe. To them, the universe was mechanical only, lifeless and without spirit. This discourse continues in today with popular and often adored scientist and science philosopher, Carl Sagan (1996) who pronounced that science was rightly moving us out of a relationship with nature that embodied spirit, or as the title of his book suggests, a “demon-haunted world.” Merchant (1980) produced many examples of iconic historical scientists of the Enlightenment Period that divorce spirit and reciprocity from nature, but none as poignant and condemning as the words that the “Father of Modern Science” and creator of the now popular scientific method, Francis Bacon wrote to King James I. Bacon wrote, “For you have but to follow and as it were hound nature in her wanderings. … Neither ought a man to make scruple of entering and penetrating into these holes and corners, when the inquisition of truth is his whole object” (Merchant, 1980, p. 168). Bacon described nature using the metaphor of a woman, who does not have the capacity 140

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to think rigorously and wanders throughout. The Enlightenment scientists reconceived nature as subservient to “man” and most certainly de-spiritualized. Nature was and is now only an object for manipulation according to scientific philosophy. Nature as nemesis. Nature is often portrayed as its own nemesis, and consequently, it is then portrayed as our nemesis. In PBIS, nature exists in this dichotomy as both victim and villain. There are some hints at nature as being both something that we should care for and something that brings a potential danger to human beings. In a chapter on how combustion produces air pollutants, there are two photographs located side-by-side to each other. The first is of a brushfire among a community of houses built in the hills of southern California that are known for the microclimates of fire. The second is of various forms of transportation that rely on internal combustion engines including cars, a bus, tractor-trailer trucks, and an airplane. The second picture is fairly straightforward in its message about transportation technologies producing air pollution, and it seems reasonable to note that students would likely make the connection that humans are the ones making that decision on a daily basis. However, the first picture presents a potentially confusing discourse. In the first picture, nature is the culprit creating pollutants that collect in the atmosphere in addition to threatening the houses that are built on the hills. In this sense, nature is presumably hurting itself, as well as the houses and people who live there. Of course, it is true that brush fires are quite dangerous and produce a great number of particles that float up into the atmosphere resulting in the increase of air pollution. However, there is no discussion about the human impact in this situation. Humans have greatly impacted the area by building houses there, which has exacerbated the fire cycles. These decisions have led to more intense fires and more frequent fires that are generally much harder to manage. These are areas that regularly had fires, frequent enough that plants have adapted their live cycles to its common presence, and yet, the houses were built despite these conditions. Since there is no discussion about this relationship present in the text, students are not very likely to understand why the fires are present, which likely leads students to the overall misconception that nature is the villain in the photograph, and humans are the victims. Again, there is no critical examination of the anthropocentric thinking that is perpetuated in the photograph that led to the construction of the houses (largely for profit and the notion that humans can build large structures anywhere to their liking) that now intensifies the problems with fire in the area. VALUING PROGRESS OVER SUSTAINABILITY

Questioning how sustainability can be achieved inevitably means critically examining a history of colonization that has led to capitalism and globalization. However, this is not a connection that is discussed in the current science textbooks. Sustainability, an issue that may be the hallmark of our times, is kept at a safe distance from the historical roots and current practices that create an unsustainable 141

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pattern. None of the textbooks included in this analysis address the concept of sustainability at all. Why is that? Sustainability is a term that often brings our attention to how we systematically interact with nature. It is not just on the individual level where we can change some light bulbs and carpool more often. Sustainability is about large-scale change in the way that we do things. This means addressing capitalism, global dominance, free-market ideologies, and globalization (not to be confused with global interconnectedness). Sustainability flies directly in the face of the practices, infrastructures, economies, and dependencies on fuel sources. Sustainability is ultimately about a shift in consciousness, and it is direct critique of the dominant elites who are all too happy to not change anything for fear of losing both their power and potentially their wealth. There is an interesting parallel to be made with how slave-owners treated reading with their slaves. Slave-owners oftentimes wanted their slaves to be able to read, but restricted reading only to the Bible. Slave-owners were cautious to introduce reading and many prohibited writing because they did not want their slaves to develop critical reflection and act against their enslavement. Slave-owners certainly valued profit and personal wealth over the rights of humans who they had captured and forced to do free labor. In a somewhat similar light, focusing on sustainability in schools might mean critically examining the sources of unsustainable practices, namely identifying capitalism, large corporations and globalization as the primary culprits. Politicians, CEOs, and even highly oppressed low-paid workers in the Global South all stand to lose power and/or money if the attention of the planet turns toward creating sustainable lifestyles, practices, and consciousness. This is why Al Gore never names the sources of global climate change in the popular movie An Inconvenient Truth (2006). His is a very superficial analysis of sustainability and the ways in which we need to change to bring ourselves back in balance with the planet. For Gore, the goal is to keep the engine of global capitalism running without any significant change while somehow figuring out how to make slight changes to fuel sources so that they become renewable and carbon-free. The question that Gore and politicians in general never approach is: Can social justice and ecological sustainability exist separately from one another? Avoiding the concept of sustainability in an in-depth discussion is necessary if the textbooks are going to be marketed to the wider audience. Much like with slaves, the point here is to give students a discourse that only the dominant elite favor. Point to issues of pollution and not sustainability. Offer fuel cell technology for automobiles (Modern Chemistry, p. 666), but avoid discussions on the possibilities of fully electric cars and their systematic and total destruction (General Motors’ EV1) in California during the mid-1990s as was documented in the 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car? Pollution, albeit a problem that big business contributes to, is an issue that is portrayed and handled much differently than sustainability. As discussed above, pollution is a problem that can be spun towards placing the blame on consumers. Consumers drive 300 million automobiles daily in the U.S. Consumers use electricity from coal-burning plants. Consumers travel on thousands of flights every day. Consumers buy millions of products every day 142

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that the 18-wheelers transport. Consumers are easy targets, and they are the exclusive focus of the blame when pollution is examined in science textbooks. When the hiker in the Malaire parable in the PBIS textbook tries to raise awareness within the city, his frustration is not with the politics or the business practices that support profit at the expense of ecological destruction. The hiker’s frustration was with the ignorance and complacency of the common person, or the consumer. The hiker left the city permanently, we are left to assume, because of his frustration that the common person produced within him. There was no discussion and no call for reflection in the questions that followed examining the profit-seeking practices produced by the dominant elite as well as hegemonically supported by consumers who are largely responsible for resource depletion, pollution, and global climate change. Why is “progress” so strongly favored that it would be to the detriment of the health of our planet? Valuing progress has been closely tied to valuing profit in the form of land colonization and financial wealth. As we look into our history on the North American continent, it is largely built on by a discourse and ideology of progress led by the agenda of the same mindsets that led to globalization, corporate greed, free trade zones, and transnational corporate practices. Many of the European arrivals during 16th and 17th centuries to the continent were interested in pursuing their own greed. They showed up with guns, blinding pride, and a mindset of superiority. From the near and in some cases total extinction of certain species of animals for profit, to the introduction of invasive plant species, to a rush for land, westward expansion, and the search for precious metals like gold and silver, Europeans have dominated and reshaped the continent like no other group. In the name of progress (in partnership with religious ideology that perpetuated self images of moral superiority), they rationalized the world’s greatest genocide and enslavement. Upwards of 95% of the American Indians were killed through direct violence, disease, and land takeovers (Loewen, 1996). Up to 10 million Africans were enslaved (a third of whom died during transportation from Africa to the Americas) (Zinn, 2003). The near complete destruction of American Indians and the torture and violence towards Africans were both rooted in the same mindset of superiority held by the Europeans. This mindset was formed by a cultural value of progress (technocentrism) and profit. A view of technocentrism is at the foundation of the mindset of superiority. Europeans, throughout their history of exploration, trade, and conquest viewed themselves as being dominant to all other peoples as well as being dominant towards nature. It was seen as being their God-given right to colonize, enslave, and kill. They claimed that they were “God’s chosen people” merely because of their relationship to technology, which they viewed as putting them above all things, people, and nature. Techno-hubris and techno-ethnocentrism remain at the root of the denial that is present in our current relationship with science and technology. It is part of the mindset that does not allow for us to put sustainability at the forefront of education in a time when it is needed most. Addressing sustainability means critically examining every aspect of our current lifestyles, patterns, and philosophies. Much like the word science, sustainability is not a neutral word, either. It is not disassociated from the core beliefs of who we 143

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are as a people. Bringing students’ attention to sustainability means connecting to issues like a profit-driven economy, a government that blindly supports growth of the gross domestic product without consideration of the cost to the global environment, a government that tends to support the profit seeking behaviors of large corporations, and a society that pays little or no attention to the environmental destruction associated with its constant consumer-driven behaviors largely driven by addictions. Addressing sustainability means more than turning attention to a pollutant that is present in the atmosphere or water. Since sustainable practices begin in a community’s cultural value system (Bowers, 2006; Martusewicz et al., 2011), authors of science textbooks are either unaware of this relationship or are fearful of even hinting at the word because of this relationship. Science being constantly portrayed as transcending culture and social standpoints is a barrier to understanding sustainability. If the core belief is that science is truly acultural, then the relationship between science and sustainability may be entirely lost on the thinking of the authors of science textbooks. The irony is that the prideful views of the technological accomplishments of science (i.e. cultural values) are generally not lost on authors of science textbooks. Science is often portrayed as the “savior” that produces better health, more convenience via technological innovations, and more knowledge about the universe (Plumwood, 2002). Again, if science is portrayed as both acultural and as the “savior” in science textbooks, then a frank discussion about the roots of sustainability are unlikely to be present. Circuitry and static electricity trumps alternative energy. Developing ways to sustainably generate electricity is paramount at this time in history. Science education has an important role to play in this process because it is has the potential to shift students toward a consciousnesses of sustainability. Yet, popular middle school and high school textbooks dealing with the content of electricity a) make little or no attempt to show that the current ways of generating electricity are unsustainable, and b) reinforce the use of fossil fuels exclusively as the source of energy generation. The high school textbook Science Spectrum Physical Science and middle school textbook Prentice Hall Science Explorer: Motion, Force, and Energy both mirror the discourse and cultural presentations of science and scientists of Modern Chemistry. Science is presented as the same contradiction as being both acultural and the “savior.” Thus, science remains outside of an eco-sociocultural context. However, these two texts offer an additional level of illustration of the influence of the dominant elites regarding issues of sustainability and the generation of electricity. In Prentice Hall’s middle school textbook, Motion, Force, and Energy (Jones, 2005), 30 pages are devoted to a unit on energy. Four of those pages focus exclusively on energy from fossil fuels, while there is no discussion at all throughout the chapter on energy generated through solar panels, wind turbines, geothermal turbines, or even hydropower. There are pictures of coal mining and an offshore oilrig. There is a diagram showing the sun’s energy being transformed by 144

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photosynthesis into a fern frond, it becoming a piece of coal, (we magically skip the coal mining and transporting process in this graphic), we see a coal-burning power plant, a turbine, electrical power lines, and of course the obligatory hair dryer representing the end user. So, millions of years of the sun’s energy being stored in plants, compressed with heat and pressure into a rock of coal, extracted then burned in order to turn a turbine, send the electricity through power lines, which culminates in the blow drying of one’s hair. This represents and reinforces a level of superficiality, isolationism, and individualism, while it omits any sense of interconnectedness or consequence. There is no discussion about a need to generate energy from a different source, and no mention of carbon-dioxide emissions, limited supplies, peak oil, or global climate change. The section emphasizes the consumption of coal only briefly and mentions the other fossil fuels in passing. Similarly, the high school textbook Physical Science (Dobson, Holman, & Roberts, 2006) provides a 34-page chapter on electricity plus another eight pages on how magnets are involved with electric currents. Yet, there is no discussion on the sources of the generation of electricity in those chapters or the possibilities of alternative energies. However, in a vignette at the end of a chapter on the solar system, there are two pages that focus on the potential mining of the isotope, helium-3, on the moon and transported through space back to Earth so that we may use it as a clean, alternative fuel source. How exciting! As if globalization was not enough, some day we can have “interglobalization” via a ridiculously wasteful process (despite already having viable clean, renewable energy sources on our planet). The individual consumer is the problem. Physical Science (Dobson et al., 2006), a 900-page textbook, devotes one graphic (p. 748), and six paragraphs total (one paragraph each on page 749 and 762, and four paragraphs on page 780) to global warming. Similar to the other textbooks, there is no mention of supply-side economics, globalization of manufacturing and longer distances for products to travel to find their consumer, a major push with advertising to generate demand for products that would otherwise be unnecessary, a connection to capitalism in any way, a cultural shift intensifying consumerism, or any efforts to change these actions. The focus is on the end-user, the consumer who is portrayed as the only culprit in this problem because of driving too many cars and building too many houses. The four photographs on page 780 depict a four-lane highway with automobiles (from the late 1970s/early 1980s) almost bumper-to-bumper, a large home being constructed, the cutting down of trees, and a tractor tilling a field on a farm again reinforcing that the consumer is to blame. The last two sections of the textbook include content on alternative energies (5 pages), pollution (8 pages), and recycling (2 pages). In regards to pollution, the consumer is clearly to blame. Three quotes from the same page provide this argument and avoid any meaningful discussion on how companies contribute to a global issue of being well over our limits:

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Currently, each person in the United States throws away almost a half-ton of garbage every year. If current trends continue, parts of the United States will soon run out of landfill space. (Dobson et al., 2006, p. 798)

In this passage there is no mention that the increase in disposal items is tied to a higher profit margin for companies who purposely make products with the intention to be thrown away so that the consumer has to buy another one to replace it. Even greater improvements in the pollution problem come when individuals, communities, and companies make careful choices. Fore example, to reduce the air pollution caused by burning of fossil fuels, people can make an effort to use alternative energy sources. However, even nonpolluting sources of energy, such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, require large amounts of land and are potentially disruptive to ecosystems. Individuals can make a difference by conserving energy. (Dobson et al., 2006, p. 798)

This passage is interesting because it does mention companies; however, the focus of the potential changes goes right back to the consumers who can allegedly choose alternative energy sources. Of course, this is not as accessible as the text would make it sound. Yes, different states have supplementary alternative energy programs available, but this does not mean that the fossil fuel source is still not part of the mix. End-users have very little choices available especially when their personal finances are considered. Because of the trade-offs involved, many people believe that the best solution to the problem of pollution is to reduce our overall consumption. If less energy is used, less pollution is generated. Turning off lights and lowering thermostats are two simple ways to conserve energy. Carpooling or buying a car with higher-than-average gas mileage is another way to conserve energy. (Dobson et al., 2006, p. 798)

Again, the focus here is on the changes that the individual can make. Although changing one’s behavior in relationship to energy use is important, the crisis that we face is not going to be overcome by turning off lights or carpooling. The kinds of changes that have to be made are far more radical in supporting mass transportation, shifting over to alternative “green” energies as primary sources, and living more locally. Similarly, Prentice Hall Science Explorer: Weather and Climate (Simons, 2005) makes little mention of global warming. Three pages (or 10 paragraphs because of pictures) at the end of the textbook are devoted to a discussion. In this case, the author seems to have a bias against a human-induced global warming or to use her words, “the greenhouse hypothesis” (emphasis added) because only one sentence refers to the impact that humans might be having: “Many scientists have hypothesized that human activities that add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere may be warming Earth’s atmosphere” (Simons, 2005, p. 137). Even that is a tentative admission. However, there are four paragraphs devoted to how scientists are researching to see if the increase in global temperature is caused naturally, as well as one paragraph that offers potential benefits of global warming: “Global warming could have some positive effects. Farmers in some cool areas could plant 146

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two crops a year. Places that are too cold for farming today could become farmland” (Simons, 2005, p. 139). There is a discussion that follows about possible destruction to existing farms from increased evaporation and the melting of the ice caps. However, the language of the possible negatives is fairly benign: “Even such a small rise in sea level would flood low-lying coastal areas” (Simons, 2005, p. 139). This sounds less like a global crisis and more like a ruined vacation at the beach. We know that this rise could erase some island countries off the planet as well as produce the world’s largest number of refugees potentially ranging as high as 100 million (Adam, 2005). These textbooks make no feasible arguments and provide no description that is connected to the actual reality of how the world’s major pollution starts with large companies with a hunger for maximized profits above all else. Authors consistently deemphasize or make totally absent the contributions of large, transnational companies. There is no discussion about democratic participation or activism that is connected to environmental policies, and there is a complete lack of discussion about the benefits of localizing economies, becoming more active in the cultural commons, or identifying barriers that prevent a significant shift to living sustainably. One text in the Prentice Hall Science Explorer series does deviate somewhat from this discourse. Environmental Science (Lisowski & Jones, 2005) dedicates a part of every chapter to environmental issues that are caused or influenced by humans. More consistently throughout this textbook than the aforementioned textbooks, companies and industry are named as significant parts of the problem. Companies are shown in graphics as being major polluters alongside individual consumers. Furthermore, there is a serious attempt made to show how different technologies like roof-mounted solar panels for electricity and solar water heaters on houses can be more ecologically sound. When individuals are referenced, it is generally done so with a balanced approach and more thoroughly described throughout the textbook. Even with a more consistent connection to human impact throughout the entire textbook, there is still no connection to cultural values that are the source for these problems. There is still no direct discussion about how companies maximize their profits by externalizing their waste and pollutants. There is still no honest exploration of why these problems are so pervasive and where they have come from. MOVING TOWARDS A CRITICAL AND TRANSFORMATIVE SCIENCE

The mindset of science if constructed through the typical K-12 science classroom is one that will be anthropocentric, technocentric, Eurocentric, and support a human/nature duality. Unless a science teacher has disrupted these patterns of oppressive and hegemonic thinking, a student who is inclined towards science will likely have little critical thought about the relationship of science with politics, power, or social justice. Students will likely see working for Monsanto, BP, Pfizer, or Exxon-Mobil as making a meaningful contribution to society.

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What if science classes throughout elementary, middle, and high schools focused on creating what humane educator, Zoe Weil (2011), calls “solutionaries” or students who were prepared to critically examine the world in which they live and act to create change? In other words, what if science was a learning experience contextualized in historical and contemporary issues like cancer, wellness and nutrition, alternative energies, ecologically responsible technologies, uncovering hegemonic thinking, slow food, clean food, local farming, community gardening, ecologically responsible manufacturing, renewable resources, global climate change, local economies, commons-based practices, “green” construction, and sustainability as a primary measure of progress? Students would have authentic and divergent learning experiences that would be rooted in their own communities as well as learning about how they connect to the larger global community. They would be far more prepared for the necessary changes that likely to come in the near future and are happening already. The common argument against this type of a science is that the “basics” are pushed aside for a newer content, and students will not be prepared for high-stakes standardized tests. It should not go unnoticed that this argument implies quite strongly the overall irrelevance of school. Relevance is not only a key motivator to learning, but it is increasingly important to the health of this planet. This is a common misconception and generally comes from a place of simply not having an understanding of how the basics are connected to the real-world, solutionary contexts. How can learning about the basic properties of electricity and circuitry be separate from wind, solar, and geothermal power? How can we understand disease, wellness and nutrition without understanding cellular biology? How can we understand global climate change without understanding weather? How can we understand “green” construction and design without understanding Newtonian physics? How can we understand community gardening and local farming without understanding plant biology, nutrient cycles, seasons, weather, and nutrition? These are just a few contexts that bring meaning, cultural and social relevance, and power analysis to science education. Science teachers do not have to wait for a textbook to do this work. They have the agency to bring in these contexts and promote textbooks from a place of hegemony to being part of a process of critical examination. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3.

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To what extent is the textbook written in a way that tries to avoid, omit, or ignore a cultural preference? In other words, how is science portrayed as being a universal truth? When the author(s) discuss pollution, how are major polluters like corporations and large farms included? To what extent is there a frank description or examples of how they are involved? To what extent is there any discussion of how for-profit motives turn into innumerable advertisements essentially training people to turn away from more sustainable practices towards higher levels of consumption and

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4.

5.

ultimately production of garbage? In other words, how does the text make connection between the greed of wealthy business owners and executives and the processes that lead to higher profits through increased consumption? How are individual consumers treated in the text? Are they portrayed as the prime polluters over corporations and large farms, which emit enormous amounts of pollution on a daily basis or are consumers portrayed as just needing to make changes like using fluorescent light bulbs, recycling, or carpooling in order to “save” the planet? To what extent are other resources available in the textbook for further investigation? If none are provided, there are many to be found on the internet. However, to further strengthen these connections, consider doing interdisciplinary learning experiences with health, English, social studies, technology & engineering, and math that provide critical questioning and investigations of anthropocentric thinking, technocentrism, intersections between dominant culture and nature, indigenous philosophies, and sustainable processes. REFERENCES

Adam, D. (2005). 50m environmental refugees by end of decade, UN warns [Electronic Version]. The Guardian. Retrieved May 24, 2011. Alexander, K. (2010, May 15, 2010). New science textbooks face budget snag. American-Statesman. Retrieved May 27, 2011, from http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/new-sciencetextbooks-face-budget-snag-690678.html. Bowers, C. A. (2006). Revitalizing the commons: Cultural and educational sites of resistance and affirmation. New York, NY: Lexington Books. Clark, P. (2005). Prejudice and the medical profession: A five-year update. Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, 37(1), 118-133. Chomsky, N. (Ed.). (2000). Chomsky on miseducation. New York, NY: Rowman & Littlefield. Davis, R. E., Sarquis, M., Frey, R., & Sarquis, J. L. (2006). Modern chemistry. Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Dobson, K., Holman, J., & Roberts, M. (2006). Science spectrum: Physical science. Austin, TX: Hold, Rinehart and Winston. Foner, E. (2010). The nation: Twisting Texas history. Retrieved April 23, 2011, from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124861233. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Gough, N. (1998). Reflections and diffractions: Functions of in curriculum inquiry. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum: Toward new identities. New York, NY: Garland. Haraway, D. J. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575-599. Jones, T. G. (2005). Prentice Hall science explorer: Motion, force, and energy. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Kolodner, J. L., Krajcik, J. S., Edelson, D. C., Reiser, B. J., & Starr, M. L. (2010). Project-based inquiry science: Air quality. Armonk, NY: It’s About Time: Herff Jones Education Division. Lisowski, M., & Jones, L. C. (2005). Prentice Hall science explorer: Environmental science. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Loewen, J. W. (1996). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York, NY: Touchstone.

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KURT LOVE Martusewicz, R., Edmundson, J., & Lupinacci, J. (2011). Ecojustice education: Toward diverse, democratic, and sustainable communities. New York, NY: Routledge. Mass, B. (1977). Puerto Rico: A case study of population control. Latin American Perspectives, 4(4), 66-81. Merchant, C. (1980). The death of nature. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Plumwood, V. (2002). Environmental culture: The ecological crisis of reason. New York, NY: Routledge. Sagan, C. (1996). The demon-haunted world: Science as a candle in the dark. New York, NY: Ballantine. Simons, B. B. (2005). Prentice Hall science explorer: Weather and climate. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Stern, A. (2005). Sterilized in the name of public health: Race, immigration, and reproduction control in modern California. American Journal of Public Health, 95(7), 1128-1138. Weil, Zoe. (2011). Tedx-Dirigo – Zoe Weil – The world becomes what you teach. Retrieved April 5, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5HEV96dIuY. Zinn, H. (2003). A people’s history of the United States. New York, NY: HarperCollins. Zinn, H. (2009). Voices of a people’s history of the United States (2nd Ed.). St Paul, MN: Seven Stories Press.

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BEYOND THE COMMON DENOMINATOR Exposing Semiotic (Dis)unity in Mathematics Textbooks

Mathematics teachers (K-12) utilize textbooks to largely determine the scope and the sequence of mathematics concepts taught in their classrooms (see, e.g., Braswell et al., 2001; Clements, 2002; Grouws & Smith, 2000; Grouws, Smith, & Sztajn, 2004; Woodward & Elliot, 1990). However, little is known of the nature of the learning trajectories of important mathematical concepts defined by textbook authors in the written curricula that serve as the conceptual basis for the scope and sequence of what and when mathematics is taught. Olson (2010) identified articulated learning trajectories (ALTs) defined by authors’ placement of concepts within the written text. The ALTs identified were related to the development of algebraic thinking concepts (e.g., functions) through the use of patterning concepts within four middle school mathematics textbook series: Saxon Math (Saxon) (Hake, 2007), Glencoe Mathematics: Applications and Concepts (Glencoe) (Bailey et al., 2006), McDougal Littell Math Thematics (Math Thematics) (Billstein & Williamson, 2008), and Connected Mathematics 2 (CMP) (Lappan, Fey, Fitzgerald, Friel, & Phillips, 2009). Importantly, differences in the development of algebraic concepts were identified among the four textbook series, as was the divergent use of mathematics terms critical in the mathematical development identified in the ALTs examined in the four curricula. In this chapter, we discuss the mathematical language used by authors of these four middle grades textbook series. We provide our commentary regarding the disparate use of mathematical terminology among the textbook series. Finally, we discuss the implications for mathematics education, teachers, and teacher education when mathematics concepts are presented unproblematically in textbooks, particularly when the associated terminology can function quite differently in various disciplinary and institutional discourse communities. The data related to authors’ use of mathematics terminology presented in this chapter is taken from Olson’s (2010) identification of ALTs.1 Importantly, we position our discussion of terminology in mathematics textbooks within the textbook curriculum as outlined by the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum’s (CSMC) Research Framework in Figure 1 (CSMC, 2008). Specifically, the language we identify in this chapter as being used in mathematics –––––––––––––– 1 For further discussion of the methods of the original study, see Olson (2010).

H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 151–162. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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textbooks directly affects teachers use of such language in implementing the curriculum, which in turn affects the ways in which students learn mathematics from the curriculum materials.

Figure 1. Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum Research Framework indicating the influences on and from the Textbook Curriculum with regard to the teaching, learning, and development of mathematics curriculum.

PATTERNING, SEQUENCE, AND FUNCTION IN MIDDLE GRADES MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOKS

Within four middle grades’ textbook series examined by Olson (2010), a total of 1,032 instances 2 of patterning were identified among the four textbook series. Importantly, the use of the mathematical language identified within the instances among the textbook series varied greatly. Among the differences are the textbook authors’ use and mathematical definition of the terms pattern, sequence and function. Specifically, three of the textbook series incorporate the use of pattern and sequence ambiguously. Moreover, two of the textbook series incorporate –––––––––––––– 2 An “instance” of patterning was classified as one of the following: a single student problem, a student super-problem with related subproblems, an author example, or other author text.

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definitions of function that do not incorporate the specification that a function has exactly one output value for each input value. Definition and Use of Sequence The authors of these four textbook series present students with slightly differing definitions of the mathematical term, sequence. The authors of CMP never provide a formal definition for the term sequence. However, the authors of the other three textbook series provide the following definitions: “An ordered list of numbers, called terms that follows a certain rule” (Hake, 2007a, p. 50); “A list of numbers in a specific order” (Bailey et al., 2006, p. 282); and “An ordered list of numbers or objects” (Billstein & Williamson, 2008a, p. 15).3 Moreover, the authors of Glencoe and Saxon interchangeably use both the potentially ambiguous term pattern and the mathematical term sequence when referencing a pattern such as 3, 5, 7, …. Although the authors of Math Thematics interchangeably use these terms less frequently, the authors also use these terms to reference the same type of progression of numbers, which indicates a lack of clarity in the way in which these terms are presented. Furthermore, the seeming lack of clarity with regard to the mathematical term, sequence potentially affects the degree to which the authors can utilize the mathematical structures within the definition of a sequence to build function concepts. In other words, although each of these authors’ definitions employ the notion that a sequence is an ordered list, none of the authors explicitly utilize the term function in their definitions. In particular, such a definition of sequence as a function is exemplified by that provided by Papick (2007): “A function f whose domain is the set Nn= {1, 2, 3, ..., n}, where n is a positive integer, is called a finite sequence [or sequence], and the range of a finite sequence, range of f = {f(t): t an element of Nn}, is written as {a1, a2, a3, ..., an}” (p. 21). The data in Table 1 illustrate the wide range of percentage of instances in which the textbook authors classified a pattern as being a sequence. Specifically, the authors of CMP only used the term sequence twice throughout the textbook series, whereas the authors of Math Thematics and Saxon used the term more than 40 percent of the time when referring to a pattern. Although the authors of these textbook series likely have important reasons for fostering ambiguity between the terms pattern and sequence, we argue that, at very least, such ambiguity potentially affects the clarity of the presentation and development of function concepts with respect to sequence concepts.

–––––––––––––– 3 Although these definitions are from one textbook in each series, they are nonetheless reflective of the definitions provided by the authors in the other textbooks within each textbook series.

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Table 1 Percentage of Instances Involving Pattern Problems Presented in Terms of “Sequence(s)” Textbook Series

Percentage of Instances (Grades 6-8)

Connected Mathematics

0.7%

Glencoe

21%

Math Thematics

40%

Saxon

45%

DEFINITION AND USE OF FUNCTION

In presenting the definition of a function, all of the authors identify a function as a relationship that has an input value and an output value. In two textbook series (Math Thematics and CMP) function is identified as being a relationship between input and output values in which there is exactly one output value for each input value. However, the authors’ definitions for function found in Saxon and Glencoe are respectively as follows: “A mathematical rule that identifies a relationship between two sets of numbers. A function’s rule is applied to an input number to generate an output number” (Hake, 2007c, p. 278), and “A relationship where one thing depends on another … in a function, you start with an input number, perform one or more operations on it, and get an output number” (Bailey et al., 2006b, p. 177). Importantly, the definitions provided in the Saxon and Glencoe do not include the explicit stipulation that, for each input a function has exactly one output. We maintain that these ambiguities pose potential disparate mathematical experiences for students depending on the textbook series used in their classroom. Teachers using one textbook series versus another will be called upon to navigate these ambiguities to different degrees in order to either attempt to reconcile the ambiguities or to facilitate rich mathematical discussions around the ambiguous mathematical structures as a way to build common mathematical understandings within a particular classroom. MATHEMATICS TEXTBOOKS AND THE DREAM OF UNIVERSALITY

When we speak of the difference between terms such as pattern and sequence, we should also speak of deferral to other differences, as in Derrida’s (1982) notion of Différance. Specifically, Derrida argues that, “every concept is inscribed in a chain 154

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or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of differences” (p. 11). That is, what is implied in the deployments of pattern and sequence in these textbook series is that the difference between the two terms is only present by the difference between quality and temporality, the meanings of which are, in turn, inscribed into further diverging chains of difference. We might, for instance, use pattern to identify a sequential string of numbers (a3 comes after a2, which comes after a1), the experience of which is one of temporality. However, rarely would we use sequence to identify “qualities” of things, such as what a rabbit population would look like after a given number of generations.4 In other words, if we qualitatively examine a pattern within a rabbit population, we might observe that the pattern in the population after the 5th generation indicates that there are more white rabbits being born than grey rabbits, and in the 7th generation there are more black rabbits than either grey or white. We are then able to state qualitatively that although the rabbit population looked a particular way to start, certain important changes happened with respect to the color of the rabbits’ fur. However, such a pattern is difficult to describe mathematically as a sequence because the identified pattern is more related the qualities of the population rather than the numeric observations of certain “outputs” for each generational “input” related to the population. The difference between quality and temporality is further only made present by difference between infinitude and finitude. Remember that the definitions of sequence in the majority of texts studied were anchored by the notion of an ordered list, which implies temporal linearity and finitude. An ordered list begins from an end or a telos, and so finding the function of a sequence means discovering how that list was ordered. Thus, the experience of discovering the function of a sequence is one of moving through an idea of linear time. With respect to the analogy of the rabbit population, the experience of looking for the function of a pattern is more one of discovering the quality of the population than it is discovering a relationship between the last given generation and the first generation, as it would be if we were using the language of sequence. We not only associate pattern in everyday language with a visual world of objects, but pattern also connotes the observable states of being within a single phenomenon (e.g. a rabbit population or a crystalline structure). Sequence, on the other hand, connotes a temporal relationship between separate phenomena (e.g. the relationship between a list of numbers or a series of shapes and their specific position within an ordered list or their functional input). Thus, if neither the meaning of sequence or of pattern is truly present in those signifiers, it would make little sense to simply impose a standard definition of function across teaching materials, which would refer only to sequence or only to pattern. However, should –––––––––––––– 4 The common association of pattern with the qualities of a thing is also consistent with the historical usage of the term. Pattern comes to us from the French patron, which, in its earliest use in English, meant an exemplar of a particular thing, something that is imitated or multiplied (Pattern, 1989, pp. 356357).

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we then teach function in reference to both signifiers (sequence and pattern) in order to demonstrate the instability of mathematical discourse to students? We might look at these disparities in the definitions of mathematical terms and argue that textbooks are often doing students a disservice by using ambiguous or imprecise language. For instance, students in one grade might follow an ALT in which thinking about function is developed related to sequence, when in another grade level (or textbook series), sequence might be a subordinate term in the definition of function. Not only would those students, as we have argued, have divergent experiences as they think about function, but they might also find themselves outsiders to other discourse communities within the discipline of mathematics. The larger issue here may not be that students are being confused by an imprecise use of language in textbooks, but that the notion persists as to whether the teaching and learning of mathematics is even capable of operating within a precise metalanguage at all. The universality of science, and of mathematics in particular, is of course one of the great internal contradictions of Modernity. If, as Descartes (1953) argued, individual human subjects can access reality by means of mathematical reasoning, are individuals to trust the preexisting mathematical language and knowledge they must use in the process of reasoning? In other words, Descartes’ objective was to define a systematic way to doubt the knowledge of given reality – that is, to engage actively in the creative destruction of knowledge.5 The contradiction, therefore, lies in the distinction between thought as a process and knowledge as a canon. The latter makes the former possible, but also constrains it. That is, having knowledge makes thought as a process (and development of new knowledge) possible through the negotiation of new knowledge with prior, existing knowledge (see, e.g., National Research Council, 2000). However, the development of knowledge necessarily constrains thought as a process if prior canonical knowledge is ultimately unchangeable to the point that novel perspectives and processes of thought that threaten the truth of the canon are deemed unworthy of further pursuit within one’s own mental constructs. There was no such contradiction between given knowledge and the production of new knowledge in the medieval scholastic tradition in which Descartes was trained. In the scholastic tradition, new knowledge was produced in defense of (rather than in the disputation of) existing, authoritative knowledge, such as the revealed truth of the Holy Scriptures or of Aristotle’s writings. Indeed, the scholastics were largely dedicated to resolving the contradictions between Christian doctrine and the newly discovered works of Classical Greece. However, for the moderns, authority and reason must necessarily exist in tension with one another. –––––––––––––– 5 “The creative destruction of knowledge” is a phrase borrowed from Fuller (2000), who, in turn, borrowed it from Schumpter’s (1962) description of capitalism. Fuller argues that the Humboldtian research university model is based on the premise that the production of knowledge through research builds social capital for the researcher, but that that social capital is creatively destroyed through teaching, which ensures the future production of knowledge.

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That same tension is present in the uncertain function of mathematics textbooks, and it is, in turn, reflected in the disparate terminology within those texts. If the function of mathematics textbooks is to create new language and accessible examples with which to teach students to think mathematically, is there still value in maintaining precise, standardized definitions of mathematical concepts that the intellectual tradition of the discipline recognizes as its own? This is a problem that other sciences do not encounter as much as they are being institutionalized because disciplinary terminology often stands in for numerical properties or equations. For instance, in Chemistry, a mole signifies the amount of a substance equivalent to 6.02x1023 atoms of carbon, and even qualities of chemical substances (gas, metal, etc.) stand in for atomic numbers. In other words, if, in Chemistry, a mole is a signifier and 6.02x1023 atoms of carbon is the signified, then there appears to exist a 1:1 ratio between the signifier and the signified. The reason why language is such a persistent problem in mathematics is that numerical properties must be both signifier and signified. However, in order to make mathematical concepts into ideas that can be communicated (i.e., taught), it becomes necessary to break apart the signifier-signified monad and reenter the messy world of language. Descartes’ way around this problem was to make a distinction between private thought and public language, with the former preceding the latter. For Descartes, the human subject has the innate ability to understand how it knows what it knows, from sense impressions to abstract ideas communicated through public language. Any impression or idea we happen to acquire can, therefore, be translated and organized into the language of the individual mind, which can see itself acquiring knowledge. This is true even for ideas about how to observe, organize and scrutinize knowledge – the kind of which Descartes is imparting to his readers. Thus, for Descartes (1970) the connection between knowledge and language is not in the meaning of signs, but in the order of signs. In other words, what is shared between human subjects is a universal capacity for grammar. The ability to arrange ideas correctly is both Descartes’ description of the human condition, and also his prescription for a more reasonable and transparent society. For example, in discussing the prospect of a universal language, Descartes dismissed the notion of inventing a universal set of symbols to represent common ideas, such as love. Instead, he argues that, “Order is what is needed: all the thoughts which can come into the human mind must be arranged in an order like the natural order of numbers” (1970, p. 5). The world of mathematics is thus universal and perfect. Our own natural ability to organize thought, however flawed, is nonetheless an approximation of the universal order of mathematics. Therefore, in order to move towards a more perfect and universal way of thinking, Descartes thought we must use mathematical principles to structure our private language; in doing so, public discourse would in turn become more rational.

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IMPLICATIONS FOR MATHEMATICS EDUCATION, TEACHERS, AND TEACHER EDUCATION

We argue that mathematics education has inherited and continues to reproduce a Cartesian understanding of mathematics as being outside the ambiguities of language. This approach to mathematical knowledge denies students the opportunity to think critically about how the language of mathematics instruction is shaping their learning experiences. In other words, if students see mathematics as a system of static, a-contextual rules, they are less likely to understand the multitude of ways in which key mathematical concepts can be discussed and applied as they move from discourse community to discourse community during the course of their education. Furthermore, our study of the ambiguous terminology in mathematics textbooks is not meant to be a point-and-grunt exercise showing how sloppy the authors of those textbooks have been with their language. Our concern is, rather, that because mathematical knowledge (and to some extent, the sciences in general) is regarded as both universally accessible and as the foundation for universally rational thinking, it enjoys great prestige in relation to other kinds of knowledge. Indeed, the belief in the universality of reason that emerged out of the application of mathematical principles to the understanding of nature and language served the moderns well. The belief in universally accessible rationality, for which mathematics served as a foundation, in no small way contributed to the challenges to church and state monopolies on legitimate knowledge in the 18th and 19th centuries, which in turn contributed to the creation of more representative structures of government. However, under the current neoliberal knowledge regime, mathematics is not regarded as a prestige knowledge because of its ability to challenge hierarchical epistemic authority, but instead because mathematical skills are seen as a universal means of measuring performance potential among knowledge workers who must now compete with each other on a global market. In other words, the modern ideal of mathematical reason bringing humanity together (outside of the opacity of language) is still very much alive in Postmodernity; it is just that the Enlightenment dream of universality has been supplanted by the neoliberal dream of a pool of reliable workers that transcends national boundaries and wage standards. It is no surprise then that the national conversation about mathematics education is often dominated by the apparent crisis of skill deficits in relation to the low-wage nations, such as China and India. In particular, we argue that international achievement on mathematics assessments (e.g., Programme for International Student Assessment, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) and reports thereof often focus on deficits of United States students’ abilities with respect to other countries. However, as Loveless (2010) identifies, the general relative performance of students in the United States on international assessments has not changed significantly throughout the timeframe in which such assessments have been given. As we have shown, the modern idea that mathematical knowledge taught in a way that transcends individual experiences in language is an impossible ideal. If 158

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mathematics continues to be institutionalized as knowledge that exists outside of cultural values and individual experiences, it will continue to be put to instrumental purposes in the global knowledge economy. We have no wish, on the other hand, to discard the modern universal that mathematical thinking elevates our understanding of ourselves, and the world around us. We believe that if semantic differences amongst mathematics textbooks could be taught as part of mathematical knowledge rather than ignored, students will come to understand mathematics as a living archipelago of dynamic discourse communities and cultural traditions of which they are become active members. The nature of the mathematical terminology provided by textbook authors has the ability to greatly enhance or limit, not only students opportunities to learn mathematical concepts, but also teachers’ opportunities to teach key mathematical concepts. In particular, teachers who have only used one textbook series throughout their career may be unaware of the divergent uses of mathematical terms routinely used in his or her classroom with respect to other textbooks or supplemental materials. One solution to this problem for teachers is simply to become aware of the differences in terminology, and more importantly to highlight the differences for their students through the building of a culture of inquiry in classrooms in which students are expected to question the development of their own mathematical knowledge, rather than simply receive the teachers’ mathematical knowledge. Teacher education programs play a critical role in fostering communities of preservice and in-service in which similar cultures of inquiry must be developed wherein teachers are expected to question the development of their own mathematical knowledge, not only as it relates to the discipline of mathematics, but also the discipline of teaching, learning, and understanding mathematical structures (i.e., mathematics education). In particular, in mathematics courses taken by preserivce mathematics teachers, discourse communities must be established in which students are not only expected to display mastery of certain mathematical topics, but also to display their abilities to pose questions based on their mastery of prior concepts. Furthermore, in mathematics education courses focused on the methods of teaching mathematics, teachers should be expected to actively challenge their prior conceptions of mathematical terminology that were developed either during their apprenticeship of observation (Lortie, 1975), or through their own teaching practices. We argue that by simply teaching to the conflict such challenges to prior conceptions can be made. That is, teacher education programs must highlight the differences in mathematics terminology found across curriculum materials (as well as across public discourse), such as those identified in this chapter, as well as the consequences for the development of mathematical concepts along identifiable ALTs within textbooks. By teaching to these conflicts of terminology and associated development of mathematical concepts in teacher education programs, preservice and in-service teachers can become aware of the critical conflicts within the discipline of mathematics that they must expect and challenge their students to reconcile in the development of the students own mathematical knowledge and thought processes. 159

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

We provide the following questions for reflection. Our intention is to push our thinking, as well as the readers’ thinking, toward important ideas to consider for future research, practice, and policy implications for the way in which language is examined within textbooks and standards documents. 1. How does a perceived semiotic unity in mathematics textbooks help to reify the neoliberal vision of a “flat” world (Friedman, 2005) in which knowledge workers have even access to a free, world-wide labor market, regardless of class inequality, legacies of colonialism, etc.? 2. The recent release of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010), and wide state adoption thereof, has provided an authoritative lexicon upon which authors of mathematics curriculum will draw for future developments and revisions. How does the desire to institutionalize linguistic unity in mathematics limit students’ opportunities to be participating and contributing members of active mathematical discourse communities? 3. In his influential essay, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” Graff (2007) argues that teachers in the humanities should teach disciplinary content knowledge through divisive terms, such as “positivism,” that form political and epistemic fault-lines, which, in turn, come to define those disciplines at a given moment. How might Graff’s call to “teach the conflict” be productively applied to mathematics and science education as well? 4. Key disparities related to the language used in mathematics classrooms (mathematical, colloquial, and so forth) have been well articulated to various degrees for K-12 teachers (e.g., Rubenstein & Thompson, 2002, Thompson & Rubenstein, 2000). To what extent to these disparities manifest themselves in mathematics textbooks beyond the issues of terminology (e.g., pattern and sequence) that we have identified? That is, what similar issues exist across K-12 mathematics textbooks related to various key mathematical concepts? 5. To what degree are teachers equipped to handle the demands of navigating differences in language usage, and foster mathematically robust examinations related to disparities in mathematical terminology? To what degree do we prepare preservice K-12 mathematics teachers to handle such issues; where in preservice teachers’ mathematics content courses are they engaged in identifying the possible differences in definitions mathematical terms in K-12 school mathematics textbooks, and the ALTs associated with those definitions?

REFERENCES Bailey, R., Day, R., Frey, P., Howard, A. C., et al. (2006). Mathematics: Applications and concepts, courses 1 through 3. New York, NY: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.

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BEYOND THE COMMON DENOMINATOR Billstein, R., & Williamson, J. (2008). McDougal Littell math thematics: Books 1 through 3. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell. Braswell, J. S., Lutkus, A. D., Grigg, W. S., Santapau, S. L., Tay-Lim, B. S.-H., & Johnson, M. S. (2001). The nation’s report card: Mathematics 2000. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Educational Statistics. Clements, D. H. (2002). Linking research and curriculum development. In L. D. English (Ed.), Handbook of international research in mathematics education (pp. 599-630). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum (2008). Curriculum research framework. Retrieved April 2, 2010 from http://www.mathcurriculumcenter.org/research_framework.php. Common Core State Standards Initiative (2010). Common core state standards for mathematics. Retrieved from: http://corestandards.org. Derrida, J. (1982). Margins of philosophy (A. Bass, Trans). Chicago, IL: University Press of Chicago. Descartes, R. (1970). Philosophical letters (A. Kenny, Trans). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. Descartes, R. (1953). Oeuvres et lettres. Paris: Gallimard. Friedman, T. (2005) The world is flat: A brief history of the 21st century. New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. Fuller, S. (2000). Thomas Kuhn: A philosophical history of our time. Chicago, IL: University Press of Chicago. Grouws, D. A., & Smith, M. S. (2000). Findings from NAEP on the preparation and practice of mathematics teachers. In E. A. Silver & P. A. Kenney (Eds.), Results from the seventh mathematics assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (pp. 107-141). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Grouws, D. A., Smith, M. S., & Sztajn, P. (2004). The preparation and teaching practices of United States mathematics teachers: Grades 4 and 8. In P. Kloosterman & F. K. J. Lester (Eds.), Results and interpretations of the 1990 through 2000 mathematics assessments of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (pp. 221-267). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Hake, S. (2007). Saxon math: Courses 1 through 3. Austin, TX: Harcourt Achieve. Lappan, G., Fey, J. T., Fitzgerald, W. M., Friel, S. N., & Phillips, E. D. (2009). Connected mathematics 2: Grades 6 through 8. Boston, MA: Pearson Prentice Hall. Lortie, D. (1975). Schoolteacher: A sociological study. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Loveless, T (Presenter). (2010). Do students have too much homework? Retrieved from http://brookingsmtnwest.unlv.edu/events/videos/2010.11.18.html. National Research Council. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Expanded edition. J. D. Bransford, A. L. Brown, and R. R. Cocking (Eds.). Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning with additional material from M. S. Donovan, J. D. Bransford, and J. W. Pellegrino (Eds.). Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Olson, T. A. (2010). Articulated learning trajectories related to the development of algebraic thinking that follow from patterning concepts in middle grades mathematics. Doctoral dissertation. Retrieved from https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/handle/10355/8318. Papick, I. J. (2007). Algebra connections: Mathematics for middle school teachers. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Pattern. (1989). In Oxford English Dictionary (pp. 356-357, 2nd ed. vol. xi). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rubenstein, R. N., & Thompson, D. R. (2002). Understanding and supporting children’s mathematical vocabulary development. Teaching Children Mathematics, 9(2), 107-112. Thompson, D. R., & Rubenstein, R. N. (2000). Learning mathematics vocabulary: Potential pitfalls and instructional strategies. Mathematics Teacher, 93(7), 568-574. Schumpeter, J. (1962). Capitalism, socialism, and democracy. New York, NY: Harper Perennial.

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GREEN TEXTS? Earth Smarts as a Tool to Critically Examine Textbooks for Environmental Assumptions, Distortions and Missions

INTRODUCTION – DO YOUR TEXTBOOKS THREATEN OUR QUALITY OF LIFE?

Textbooks can help or hinder our ability to face the environmental challenges of a changing world. Do they contribute to environmental degradation and a declining quality of life, or do they help teachers and students acquire the skills and knowledge they need to improve their communities? Textbooks aren’t just reservoirs of knowledge; they contain values, assumptions, and worldviews that influence how we perceive our place in the natural world. Subtle or overt adherence to concepts such as endless-growth economics, determinism, static worldviews, and technological quick fixes can alter the attitudes of teachers as well as students. Textbooks may also include biases that diminish local, traditional or indigenous knowledge; or uncritically emphasize them, leaving readers unsure what to believe. To expose and overcome these issues, teachers and students can use earth smarts, a transdisciplinary educational framework, as a tool to critically examine textbooks from a range of subjects. Earth smarts (Nichols, 2011), a form of socioecological literacy, is based on justly maintaining or improving quality of life, so its components can be used to help uncover fundamental assumptions textbooks may have, and also reveal important omissions. Earth smarts is maintained with open source software and is freely available in the Creative Commons, so it can be a helpful tool for those interested in global social and ecological justice. This chapter will describe how the domains and components of earth smarts can be used to critically interrogate texts. Textbooks and modular curricula are common in classrooms throughout the world, but focused, critical examination gives educators and learners the power to make the most of them, reaping their benefits while recognizing and circumventing their shortcomings. Textbooks have been accused of bias or questionable assumptions from all sides of the political spectrum, and textbook analysis is a tricky undertaking. As Wright (1996) notes, “The danger of subjectivity is, of course, very great: is this research, or is it merely exchanging the textbook author’s prejudices for another set?” (p. 173). Even beyond the classroom, the stakes are considered high because textbooks may influence teachers and parents as well as students. Regardless of one’s H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 163–175. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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preferred side in the culture wars, in order to be effective educators and learners we must be able to recognize subtle or hidden bias and assumptions in all the media we use, including textbooks. Misinformation, problematic assumptions, and bias are important for environmental issues, as well as those of culture, gender, and class, and such issues must be considered well beyond the scope of environmental texts. For example, The Sightline Institute recently graded economic textbooks on how they handled climate change; five of the sixteen they considered received poor ratings for omissions, muddled facts, and misinformation (Bauman, 2010). THERE IS NO SOCIAL JUSTICE WITHOUT RESILIENT, SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES

Although some forms of sustainability may be possible without social justice, the reverse is not true. As Agyeman notes when considering both, “environmental sustainability is a precondition for anything and everything” (2003, p. 84). Anyone interested in social justice needs to be concerned with environmental issues, because achieving social justice without considering the environment is at best a localized, short-term victory, particularly in a rapidly changing world. Despite its former romantic appeal, the false dichotomy of human society and nature is dying a slow, unromantic death, chipped away by thinkers and researchers in fields such as historical ecology, ecojustice, anthropology, and environmental justice. Every member of every society in the world relies on interrelated local and global ecosystems (Jordan, Singer, Vaughan, & Berkowitz, 2009); social systems are socioecological. Yet due to technology and urbanization, many of us are losing both our knowledge of and connection to the natural world. This isn’t just about nature deficit disorder, a set of psychological problems found in children (Louv, 2008). Our ancestors had a much better sense of where their clean water and nutritious food came from than do the billions of modern youth now growing up in urban environments. Social justice is inextricably linked with quality of life, and quality of life relies on fair access to some key elements of our environments, including uncontaminated and adequate supplies of air, water and food. These are absolutely critical to our wellbeing; there is no sustainable social justice without sustainability. Bowers (e.g., 2001, 2006) has written extensively about the complex mix of social, ecological and cultural justice. His work offers a plunge into the deep end of the issues, including the problematic blend of constructivism, neoliberalism and consumerism that underlies Western education. The affiliated Center for Ecojustice Education (ecojusticeeducation.org) provides more pedagogically accessible materials based on revitalizing the cultural and ecological commons. As many wise people have observed, knowledge is power. We quibble about the purpose of modern education, but equipping youth with the capacity to successfully adapt to their changing world is probably the most important thing our education systems can do for them. In numerous ways, neoliberalism and globalization have made the world worse for young people (Porfilio & Carr, 2010). But rather than casting our children as helpless victims or lazy villains, we 164

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need to give them the qualities they need to succeed in a world that we created. We need to teach them to build more resilient, sustainable communities that can weather the coming storms. Public education and textbooks are supposed to provide equal access to valuable knowledge. Earth smarts was designed to help with this task. EARTH SMARTS FOR EVERYONE

Earth smarts is a flexible, pragmatic and non-partisan educational construct that describes the qualities individuals and communities need to maintain or improve their quality of life in a changing world. Educational constructs are concepts that do not have direct or physical referents, like happiness or literacy. Created with systems analysis tools, earth smarts was designed to be relevant and helpful in a wide range of educational, ecological, and cultural contexts, with a nearly universal human goal underlying it – to maintain or improve quality of life. It was also designed to be participatory but nonpartisan, by respecting diversity and providing the capacity to adapt in creative, culturally appropriate ways. Earth smarts does not prescribe specific behaviors, as there is no “right” way to achieve a sustainable society; what works in one time, place, culture or ecosystem may not work in another. Earth smarts emerged from an extensive construct analysis, a theoretical technique designed to clarify constructs that may be used in varied and potentially conflicting ways (Krathwohl, 1993). Although it is an educational construct, its roots are transdisciplinary; using the idea of educational connoisseurship (Eisner, 1998), concepts taken from a wide range of academic disciplines, government documents and professional organizations were analyzed. The construct was validated using input from a range of experts, but the results are not etched in stone; it is flexible, adaptive, and intended to undergo continual validation and localization. Earth smarts consists of four interrelated domains: concepts, competencies, sense of place, and values. While aspects of the first two make up the bulk of traditional education (and textbook chapters), the earth smarts analysis indicated that knowledge (concepts) and skills (competencies) are not enough for students or their communities to thrive; there are essential affective and ethical qualities needed as well. HOW EARTH SMARTS CAN HELP ANALYZE TEXTBOOKS

Earth smarts is freely available under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike licensing (Creative Commons, 2011) at www.earthsmarts.info. The detailed components are available to educators, researchers, and policy makers to use and adapt to their specific situations. To improve accessibility for those working with limited budgets, it was created and maintained using open source software and research tools, including the LibreOffice suite, Freeplane mind mapping software, and the R Statistical Environment. The domains and components of earth smarts can be used to improve critical consideration of textbooks, in whole or in part, and 165

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can be particularly helpful at exposing hidden assumptions or pointing to topics that are worthwhile but missing. Examples of some key topics worth consideration will follow this section. However, while providing individuals and communities with the qualities they need to improve their quality of life seems like a worthy and apolitical goal, care must be taken. Both environmentalism & social justice can look suspiciously like colonialism or paternalism in some contexts (Bowers, 2006), and righting perceived wrongs in different societies requires considerable thought and caution. This is especially true if such wrongs are locally sustainable traditions. Like most interesting topics, absolute answers are elusive, but much can be learned when educators and their students explicitly consider some of the key, values-based tensions that are incorporated in earth smarts. These are included in the following section, which summarizes the domains and major components. THE COMPONENTS OF EARTH SMARTS

This section briefly describes the domains and primary components of earth smarts. It was adapted from www.earthsmarts.info, where more detail, extensive references, the full breakdown of components, and the latest iterations may be found. The first two domains of earth smarts, concepts and competencies, are typically considered the responsibility of formal education systems, although many of the topics they include are rarely covered. The second two domains, sense of place and values, are affective and morally based, and therefore more challenging to teach and assess formally. To achieve them, other facets of a society must play a role, including family, culture, spirituality and the various levels of government. Although the components are arranged in a hierarchical mind map (Figure 1) to make them more practical for education, they are also interrelated in more complex ways. Concepts The concepts domain can also be thought of as knowledge or content, and is the domain on which traditional education has largely focused. What knowledge is essential to maintaining our quality of life? Basic ecological principles and a general understanding of thermodynamics are critical, but to learn from the past and adapt to the future, it is also important to have a sense of historical ecology (Crumley, 2007), particularly as it relates to the success or failure of societies to adapt to their environmental challenges. Also essential are evolutionary (biological) and earth systems principles, and a sense of their time scales.

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Figure 1. The domains, primary and secondary components of earth smarts. See www.earthsmarts.info for more.

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Competencies This domain consists of cognitive skills, rather than knowledge, and includes of a variety of abilities and manners of thinking, including scientific reasoning, systems thinking, practical ethics (Gert, 2004), and community skills. As these are skills, they all require practice, application, and mental development. Context is important, and community skills in particular will vary considerably across cultures. When nurtured, these cognitive skills contribute to the ability to make reasonable decisions regarding complex, ill-structured problems, which environmental issues often are. Incorporating modern research on cognition, the competencies domain also includes self-regulated learning, which encompasses metacognition, motivation and strategic action. From an ecological perspective, self-regulated learners might be considered as cognitively adaptable; they are able to respond to changes. In educational terms they are typically effective, lifelong learners. To maintain our quality of life, individuals and communities will need to quickly adapt to new information or changing conditions. Values This domain is moral; it is based on respect and justice as fairness, and recognizes the importance of biological and cultural diversity. Grounding in justice as fairness (Rawls & Kelly, 2001) and respect conveys the idea that the quality of life that earth smarts is based upon is not exclusive; it applies to other individuals, communities, cultures, species, and ecosystems. If earth smarts is to be just, we must respect their right to maintain or improve their own quality of life. Empathizing with their existence and intrinsic value, we must seek to better our own lives without diminishing theirs. This moral grounding also requires us to balance individual rights with community responsibilities, a tension at the heart of social and environmental justice. Successfully navigating these issues requires moral development beyond a simple right/wrong dualism (Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1983). The values domain benefits from skills included in the competencies domain, especially the ability to see multiple perspectives, and the practical ethics skills to find compromises as we share resources and space with other stakeholders. Our children’s children are at the heart of most definitions of sustainability, so earth smarts also includes some form of respect for the wellbeing of future generations, as we need to consider quality of life beyond the next economic boom or political cycle. Sense of Place This domain attempts to capture some of the elements that influence how we think and feel about our environments, both local and global, so it involves affective components, or attitudes and emotions. It includes a basic awareness of environmental connections and issues, something essential now on a global as well as local scale, as even the best local knowledge may not prepare a community for 168

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global changes. People also need to feel connected to their environment in a positive way, although the specifics of this connection appear to be quite flexible. Whether you call it biophilia, environmental sensitivity, love of the land or some other emotional or spiritual bond, we need to feel connected to our local and global environments. Although this was a given in the past, our mobile, urbanized and technological world now makes it considerably more challenging. We also need to feel we can affect our environment; this is the essence of self-efficacy. To avoid fatalism, a key aspect of earth smarts is the realization that we can have positive impacts, as well as negative ones. This kind of empowerment is critical at the individual and community level. Earth Smarts Applied: Topics Worth Considering Earth smarts can be used as a tool to help examine textbooks and other curricular material. This section examines a range of topics that are philosophically and critically rich but often oversimplified, marred by faulty assumptions or bias, or even deliberately avoided in textbooks. These topics may appear in a variety of subjects, including science, social science, business, economics and the humanities. Even the examples chosen in math or physics texts can involve the issues these topics raise, so there will likely be something of interest here, whatever your specialization. Sustaining What? Developing What? Sustainability has become a popular concept, but like many constructs it means different things to different people, particularly when it comes to formally teaching it. There are hundreds of definitions of sustainable development that include some key differences (Dobson, 1996), but one of the more contentious issues relates to potential conflicts between education for sustainable development (ESD) and education for sustainability (EfS). Jickling and Wals (2008) express concern about development and the globalization of environmental education; they and others have written about sustainable development as an oxymoron or convenient excuse for business-as-usual greenwashing by governments and companies. Nonetheless, ESD is a popular and influential movement that can be helpful if considered carefully. Development is a loaded term, but we must be careful about abandoning it altogether, as there are many good people working under the auspices of ESD. Development need not mean paving paradise to perpetuate parking; as the Earth Charter notes, “when basic needs have been met, human development is primarily about being more, not having more” (Earth Charter Initiative, 2000, para. 4). A fundamental question for critically inclined educators and students to consider when reading about sustainability is; sustaining what? Does the text imply sustaining wilderness, or an endlessly growing economy? Should we sustain habitat, diversity, cultures, lifestyles, jobs, languages, or ecosystems? Or perhaps the focus is on charismatic species, individual animals, unique habitats or genetic diversity in zoos and seed banks? Are present climate patterns worth sustaining; is 169

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that even possible? Textbooks and the media contain a lot of feel good sustainability talk that ignores the potentially conflicting implications of exactly what it is that we should sustain. Earth smarts addresses the issue in the core of its definition; it is designed to sustain quality of life, which in turn depends upon ecosystems that can provide sufficient and unpolluted water, food, air, and habitat. Digging a little deeper into the values domain, justice as fairness dictates that one person’s quality of life should not unduly diminish another’s. The values domain also includes respect for a variety of others: people, cultures, species, and ecosystems. These components acknowledge the importance of diversity, both intrinsically (justice as fairness) and extrinsically, as diversity is increasingly associated with system resilience in brains, business, and biology (e.g., Elmqvist et al., 2003), and sustaining it is therefore a worthwhile goal in a changing world. These core values are not compatible with every definition of sustainability or sustainable development, particularly those that are more anthropocentric. Are your textbooks contradicting themselves or uncritically telling students what should be sustained? Evolution and Static Worldviews There has been considerable consternation over the alarming ignorance and denial of biological evolution in the United States (Berkman, Pacheco, & Plutzer, 2008). Biology education without evolution is cause for concern (to put it charitably), and numerous organizations, both secular (e.g., AAAS, 2006) and religious (The Clergy Letter Project, 2011), have argued for the inclusion of evolution in public school teaching. One of the most egregious examples of bias in textbooks I have ever encountered occurred while helping with a colleague’s analysis of science texts. One particular text in the study was a modern, lavishly produced general biology textbook filled with excellent photos and professionally-produced diagrams. However, I noticed the inclusion of numerous, full color, full-page pictures of a developing human fetus, page after page of them. That emphasis led to a raised eyebrow and quick perusal of the table of contents; despite excellent coverage of certain topics, evolution did not appear anywhere. If nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution (Dobzhansky, 1973), is it any wonder that students who used this textbook would remain ignorant of its workings and importance? Would it be surprising if a teacher who relies on such a text would doubt or question evolution if the topic arose in class? The stakes are even higher than our dismal rates of biological and scientific literacy. Much of the effort to hide or distort the evidence for evolution is driven by religious fundamentalists who believe in literal readings of religious texts. Slickly produced textbooks and other educational materials produced by organizations like the Institute for Creation Research in America, or publisher Adnan Oktar in Turkey, subtly or blatantly deride evolution in particular and science overall, in the process preaching static world views. To some believers, the monotheistic religious writings describe a world that was created relatively recently and remains largely unchanged, biologically or otherwise. While scientists from numerous disciplines 170

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have amassed mountains of evidence for an ancient Earth and some remarkable variation of its climate, ecosystems, continental layout and organisms, fundamentalists produce textbooks that state or imply the world has remained largely the same since its recent creation. Even ecologists themselves have discovered that the idea of a “balance of nature” is largely false; ecological communities change constantly (Kricher, 2009). Denying all these changes makes it especially difficult to understand and adapt to the changes our communities are facing now, to say nothing of the future. While modern or symbolic interpretations of religious texts can certainly be compatible with environmental sensitivity and literacy, relying on literal interpretations is problematic. For instance, quoting Genesis to suggest we need not worry about global climate change should be alarming to all, particularly when it comes from a U.S. congressman who was a contender to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee (see Smith, 2011). An education that denies global change, past or present, and keeps students in the dark about evolution, will contribute to their failure to recognize the impact human societies are having on local and planetary ecosystems. This is turn may encourage fatalism, helplessness or willful ignorance. We can’t have our youth burying their heads in the sand as we carelessly burn fossil fuels and the planet warms, especially as it is their quality of life that will suffer more than ours. The qualities of earth smarts help us to understand our impacts, take responsibility for them, and creatively minimize or adapt to the changes that confront us. As part of the sense of place domain, earth smarts includes self-efficacy, an affective component that combines the psychological and ecological importance of understanding our effect on our surroundings, good or bad. Earth smarts also includes understandings of evolution, earth systems, time in a range of scales, and responsibility. Do your textbooks include these topics, or are your students trapped in a world they cannot change? The Tension between Me and Us One of the most significant tensions that lurks beneath many of the problems a society has to negotiate is the difference between doing what is good for the individual and what is good for the community. Despite the stubborn insistence of laissez-faire capitalists, the two are often at odds, and balancing them has challenged some of the greatest minds in human history. A related philosophical tension is the difference between utilitarianism (Mill, 1906), which is based on decision-making for the greater good, and a focus on individual rights (e.g., Kant, 1785). Societies often struggle to balance individual rights and social responsibilities, and do so in very different ways. The US is known for emphasizing individualism over community issues, both in imagination and policy. Religious institutions, charismatic leaders, and cultural taboos have also all played roles in balancing individual and community tensions, with varying degrees of success. Our own romantic views of nature reflect this tension; is it a savage, toothy struggle that only the strong survive, or a delicate web of interdependent connections? 171

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The world can be both of course, but textbooks rarely make this important tension explicit, and the messaging or implications of their lessons can be confusing or even conflicting from one chapter to the next. Is it more important that individuals are able to choose whatever vehicle they feel is appropriate to their particular situation, or that the government sets fuel consumption standards to reduce the harms that excessive emissions cause? Such questions are complicated enough when considering human societies in an increasingly connected world; they become even more complex when we consider environmental values (O’Neill, Holland, & Light, 2008) and expand our community boundaries to include consideration of other species and their ecosystems. Yet considering this complexity is essential, for history and an indifferent natural world have diminished and decimated numerous societies that failed to adequately understand their environment and adapt to changes (Diamond, 2005). Earth smarts includes a number of components to help navigate these issues. Knowledge certainly plays a role; as historians are fond of saying, those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it, and there are many lessons we can learn from historical ecology. Competencies are also important, especially community skills like multiple perspectives, practical ethics and conflict resolution. However, this tension is really about values. The earth smarts values domain does not specify whether individual rights are more important than community responsibilities, but it does include an explicit awareness of the ongoing tension between them, from local, global, individual and community perspectives. The values domain also includes moral development itself; students need practice moving beyond simple right/wrong, us/them dualisms in order to deal with the messy, complicated issues in store for them. Environmental issues involve many stakeholders beyond the obvious, and negotiating solutions between them requires knowledge, skill, and a delicate balancing of values. Does your textbook acknowledge these issues and tensions, or does it subtly or explicitly take sides? Does it provide students with a path to informed, creative solutions, or does it simply dictate the “right” answer? Science, Relativism, and Evaluating Evidence The recent disconnect between the public and the scientific community on climate change has provoked considerable soul searching about both science education and journalism. Why are industry-funded think tanks so effective at getting people to doubt the scientific consensus (Jacques, Dunlap, & Freeman, 2008)? There is something to be said for telling people what they want to hear. Reading that climate change isn’t really happening so there is no need to drastically alter one’s lifestyle is considerably more appealing than the alternatives, regardless of what the evidence suggests. This undoubtedly contributes to why conservative white men are especially prone to climate change denial (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Nonetheless, this disconnect relates to modern epistemological issues; in a media rich world, how do we know what to believe? People are not entitled to their own facts – unless they are on the internet, where support for just about any viewpoint is relatively easy to find. 172

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There are various ways of knowing the world, but they are not all equally effective (Carrier, 2005). While there has been plenty of work on epistemology in education (Hofer & Pintrich, 2002), the rise of constructivism has left more room for relativism, a moral and intellectual dead end, albeit a common one for students. The environmental movement has had its own problems with epistemology, although romantic notions of indigenous societies being at one with a perfectly balanced natural world are giving way to a considerably more complex mosaic of cultural and ecological realities. Some ecologists make the argument for rational skepticism when considering traditional or indigenous knowledge (Davis & Ruddle, 2010); it’s good advice for considering a variety of socioscientific issues, including health, nutrition and the environment. In addition to rational skepticism, earth smarts includes a number of competencies that address epistemology based on scientific reasoning, including a better understanding of scientific uncertainty and the nature of science (Lederman, 2007), along with critical thinking and investigation skills. Combining these cognitive skills with the set of community skills in earth smarts will help students investigate “messy” socioenvironmental problems, learn to recognize and filter misinformation and propaganda, and ultimately make better decisions with the incomplete evidence that most complex problems involve. Do your textbooks help students make sense of a complicated, ever-changing world, or do they dictate, oversimplify, or contradict themselves? SUMMARY

Education can help students develop the qualities they need to live better in the world, but in order to do so, educators and students will need to carefully and critically examine textbooks and other curricular materials. Sustainability is a goal of most societies, so textbooks need to examined for potential bias, omissions and misinformation that may contribute to unsustainable beliefs and attitudes. Earth smarts, a freely available educational framework based on justly maintaining or improving quality of life, can be used as a tool to examine textbooks and other curricula. Using its components as a guide, educators and students alike can critically examine texts. The concepts, competencies, sense of place, and values that earth smarts describes will help teachers and students get the most out of their curricular materials, drawing on the strengths while recognizing and circumventing the weaknesses. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

The earth smarts framework can help you answer questions like these when you are considering new or current textbooks for your classes. 1. Different definitions of sustainability and sustainable development may involve different and even conflicting assumptions regarding what should be sustained. In what ways are your textbooks contradicting themselves or uncritically telling students what is worth sustaining? 173

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2.

3.

4.

5.

Many worldviews describe an unchanging Earth beset by preordained or unknowable events, but evidence from the sciences tells us our world has changed dramatically and our actions play a significant role in both positive and negative changes. Do your textbooks show students that their actions can positively or negatively affect their communities, or do they trap students in a world they cannot change? Societies have tried to balance the tension between individual rights and community responsibilities for millennia; do your textbooks uncritically take sides, or do they provide your students with the context, knowledge and skills to find their own balance? Environmental issues involve many human and nonhuman stakeholders, and negotiating solutions requires empathy and a delicate balancing of values. Do your textbooks acknowledge these issues and provide students with a path to informed, creative solutions, or do they dictate the “right” answer? We are awash in a world of information. Do your textbooks help students make sense of it all, or do they leave your students confused, uncritical, or passive, unable to discern good evidence from bad? REFERENCES

AAAS. (2006). Statement on the teaching of evolution. Retrieved from http://archives.aaas.org/docs/resolutions.php?doc_id=443 Agyeman, J. (2003). Just sustainabilities: Development in an unequal world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bauman, Y. (2010). Grading economics textbooks on climate change (p. 18). Seattle, WA: Sightline Institute. Retrieved from http://www.sightline.org/research/energy/grading-economics-textbooks-onclimate-change. Berkman, M. B., Pacheco, J. S., & Plutzer, E. (2008). Evolution and creationism in America’s classrooms: A national portrait. PLoS Biology, 6(5), e124 EP. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124 Bowers, C. A. (2001). Educating for eco-justice and community. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Bowers, C. A. (2006). Transforming environmental education: Making the cultural and environmental commons the focus of educational reform. Eugene, OR: Ecojustice Press. Retrieved from http://cabowers. net Carrier, R. (2005). Sense and goodness without God: A defense of metaphysical naturalism. AuthorHouse. Creative Commons. (2011). Creative commons attribution-sharealike 3.0. Retrieved from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Crumley, C. L. (2007). Historical ecology: Integrated thinking at multiple temporal and spatial scales. In A. Hornborg & C. L. Crumley (Eds.), The world system and the earth system: global socioenvironmental change and sustainability since the Neolithic (pp. 15-28). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Davis, A., & Ruddle, K. (2010). Constructing confidence: Rational skepticism and systematic enquiry in local ecological knowledge research. Ecological Applications, 20(3), 880-894. Diamond, J. M. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York, NY: Viking Press. Dobson, A. (1996). Environment sustainabilities: An analysis and a typology. Environmental Politics, 5(3), 401. doi:10.1080/09644019608414280

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GREEN TEXTS? Dobzhansky, T. (1973). Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. The American Biology Teacher, 35(3), 125-129. Earth Charter Initiative. (2000). The earth charter. Retrieved from http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/ 2000/10/the_earth_charter.html. Eisner, E. W. (1998). The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill. Elmqvist, T., Folke, C., Nyström, M., Peterson, G., Bengtsson, J., Walker, B., & Norberg, J. (2003). Response diversity, ecosystem change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 1(9), 488-494. doi:10.1890/1540-9295(2003)001[0488:RDECAR]2.0.CO;2 Gert, B. (2004). Common morality: Deciding what to do. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Hofer, B. K., & Pintrich, P. R. (2002). Personal epistemology (new edition). Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jacques, P. J., Dunlap, R. E., & Freeman, M. (2008). The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism. Environmental Politics, 17(3), 349-385. doi: 10.1080/ 09644010802055576. Jickling, B., & Wals, A. E. J. (2008). Globalization and environmental education: Looking beyond sustainable development. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(1), 1-21. Jordan, R., Singer, F., Vaughan, J., & Berkowitz, A. (2009). What should every citizen know about ecology? Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(9), 495-500. doi: 10.1890/070113. Kant, I. (1785). The groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Kohlberg, L., Levine, C., & Hewer, A. (1983). Moral stages: A current formulation and a response to critics. New York, NY: Karger New York. Krathwohl, D. R. (1993). Methods of educational and social science research. New York, NY: Longman. Kricher, J. (2009). The balance of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lederman, N. G. (2007). Nature of science: Past, present, and future. In S. K. Abell & N. G. Lederman (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education (pp. 831-880). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Erlbaum Publishers. Louv, R. (2008). Last child in the woods: Saving our children from nature-deficit disorder (2nd ed.). Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books. McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011). Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States. Global Environmental Change, in press. doi: 16/j.gloenvcha.2011.06.003. Mill, J. S. (1906). Utilitarianism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nichols, B. H. (2011). Earth smarts: A pragmatic educational framework based on justly maintaining quality of life. Retrieved from www.earthsmarts.info. O’Neill, J., Holland, A., & Light, A. (2008). Environmental values. New York, NY: Routledge. Porfilio, B. J., & Carr, P. R. (2010). Youth culture, education and resistance: Subverting the commercial ordering of life. Boston, MA: Sense Publishers. Rawls, J., & Kelly, E. (2001). Justice as fairness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Smith, D. R. (2011). How Green is Christianity? Pacific Coast Theological Society. Retrieved from http://www.pcts.org/meetings/2011/DanSmith11_How_Green.pdf. The Clergy Letter Project. (2011). The clergy letter. Retrieved from http://blue.butler.edu/ ~mzimmerm/Christian_Clergy/ChrClergyLtr.htm. Wright, D. R. (1996). Textbook research in geographical and environmental education. In M. Williams (Ed.), Understanding geographical and environmental education: The role of research (pp. 172182). Continuum International Publishing Group.

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MUTED VOICES, SCRIPTED TEXTS The Silenced Writing Curriculum in a High-Stakes Era

For eighteen years at the beginning of my career as an educator, I taught high school English at the rural South Carolina high school from which I graduated in the late 1970s. During those years that were characterized by my learning to teach – and specifically learning through trial-and-error how to foster young writers – I wrestled with my teaching role as expert, mentor, and authority. These students who lived lives very similar to my own when I was their age taught me patience, humility, and a nuanced appreciation for the humanity and agency of each learner. When I moved to higher education, however, the most distinct lessons I have learned from my students – elite college students who come from challenging high school programs (Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate) and who scored at the top of tests we tend to cherish in the U.S. (Advanced Placement tests, SAT, and ACT) – are lessons I did not anticipate. First, the very best students have few experiences with choosing the topics of their writing, writing in genres they determine, and experiencing an authentic writing process that includes several drafts and feedback from peers and their teacher. Next, they have sent me a powerful message in their comments in class, conferences, and emails when discussing their assignments (especially their writing); the exchanges often go like this: STUDENT: Dr. Thomas, can you look at my paper and tell me if this is what you are looking for? ME: I am happy to give you feedback, but the real question is, Is this what you are looking for?

My response is not what the students want to hear – and not a response they truly understand or ultimately trust. Historically and currently, students in schools across the U.S. have experienced scripted teaching and learning experiences, especially when confronted with literacy expectations (Schmidt & Thomas, 2009). I want to place my next point in a specific context that is complicated and works against the cultural narratives we promote and accept uncritically in the U.S. Most students from relatively affluent homes are disserved by schools (as I will examine below), but the privilege of their full lives allows them to rise above, in most cases, those institutional and bureaucratic failures. Students who live under the burden of poverty, however, are cheated by the conditions of their lives and shortchanged by the narrow and silencing conditions of their schools – both through no fault of their H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 179–192. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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own. The failures of traditional and bureaucratic approaches to teaching and learning – the ones rarely expressed and essentially masked by the corporate criticisms of schools and calls for school reform building since the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – are tied directly to the scripting and silencing of all children as well as their teachers. (While I am examining elite students next, I am not suggesting that this failure is more pronounced or significant than the systemic failure children living in poverty face in both their lives and in their schooling.) How do schools cheat specifically the best students (or those students labeled best by the system)? Classrooms are too prescriptive, and thus reward students for compliance masked as achievement and learning. As Scheele (2004) explains about “the good student trap”: What we [good students] were really learning is System Dependency! If you did your work, you’d be taken care of. We experienced it over and over; it’s now written in our mind’s eye. But nothing like this happens outside of school. Still, we remain the same passive good students that we were at ten or fourteen or twenty or even at forty-four. The truth is, once learned, system dependency stays with most of us throughout our careers, hurting us badly. We keep reinforcing the same teacher-student dichotomy until it is ingrained. Then we transfer it to the employers and organizations for whom we’ll work.

Public education aimed at human agency should not be about compliance, about conditioning children to do as they are told and echo, but never confront, any cultural norms that fuel the U.S. consumer culture honoring the corporate over the individual (Vonnegut, 1952/1980). But corporate and political elites do value compliance – blind compliance and faith – because uncritical consumers and voters are easily coerced to maintain the current and arbitrary stratification of power and privilege that benefits the elite. For more than a century – reaching back into mid-nineteenth century when the Catholic church railed against universal public education in order to protect the church’s business interests as a provider of schools (Jacoby, 2004) – political and popular discourse has painted public schools as failures. The presidency of Barak Obama has continued this pattern of claiming education in crisis (Thomas, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2010d, 2010e, 2010f) by endorsing a corporate ideology about the purposes of schools (to keep the U.S. competitive internationally) and the acts of teaching and learning (easily quantified and controlled). The historical and current charges against schools, teachers, and students, however, prove to be distortions, masking the powerful influence of out-of-school factors on what schools can achieve (Berliner, 2009; Hirsch, 2007) as well as the corrosive and silencing power of scripted approaches to education perpetuated by accountability, standards, and testing (Schmidt & Thomas, 2009). The irony of political and popular claims that universal public education has failed is that they are factually false, but perpetuate the exact dynamics that do characterize how our schools have always and continue to fail students – and the free society we claim those schools support. At the heart of the education system a free people deserve is literacy instruction – reading and writing. Traditionally, 180

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educational accountability and assessment have focused on reading and math (consider that what is tested is what matters and that most high-stakes testing over the past century has focused narrowly on selected-response versions of reading and math), but writing as an integral human behavior, while artificial, is central to understanding the world. Expression (thus acting on that world) has failed to fulfill its promise, paralleling the unspoken failure of the highly scripted education system we experience today – and can anticipate for the future. Consider further this warning from Scheele (2004) in the context of how we teach (prescribe), assess (prompted writing tests and template writing formats), and score/grade (rubrics) student writing: The danger lies in thinking about life as a test that we’ll pass or fail, one or the other, tested and branded by an Authority. So, we slide into feeling afraid we’ll fail even before we do – if we do. Mostly we don’t even fail; we’re just mortally afraid that we’re going to. We get used to labeling ourselves failures even when we’re not failing. If we don’t do as well as we wish, we don’t get a second chance to improve ourselves, or raise our grades. If we do perform well, we think that we got away with something this time. But wait until next time, we think; then they’ll find out what frauds we are. We let this fear ruin our lives. And it does. When we’re afraid, we lose our curiosity and originality, our spirit and our talent-our life.

The scripted writing program (mandated by accountability legislation and supported by publisher-driven materials) does not give our students or teachers voice or agency; instead, teachers and students alike are being muted. ACCOUNTABILITY KILLED COMPOSITION, TEACHER AUTONOMY, AND STUDENT VOICE

As English department chair, I took some unpopular (with my colleagues in the English department, with my administration, and even with some students and their parents) stances about the textbooks we assigned in our English courses. When I began teaching in the early 1980s, my high school (and these were/are typical conditions throughout public schools across the U.S.) tracked students in four and then three levels per grade in English and assigned different textbooks (grammar, literature, and vocabulary) for each level within those grades. As a result, teaching five different preparations (each class had a different combination of grade and level within grade), I had fifteen different textbooks for my course load. Further, and more damning, the textbooks themselves served to publicly label students; in fact, the color-coded textbooks did not go unnoticed by the students who recognized what colors designated a student as smart or dumb (words the students used themselves). My unpopular stance, and an agenda I pursued successfully as the department chair several years into my career, was to remove the stigma of the textbooks by issuing all students in a grade level the same textbooks (while also reducing somewhat the number of tracks we had in each grade level – with this being much more difficult to achieve). Eventually, I also reduced English textbooks issued to students to one – the literature text – with teachers provided classroom sets only of grammar and vocabulary textbooks to 181

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support what the field of literacy showed about the historical failure of isolated grammar and vocabulary instruction. Looking back on these resisted but ultimately effective policies, I recognize that my arguments about authentic writing instruction (versus teaching grammar and asking students to write little and nearly never by choice or through process writing) paralleled the rise of the National Writing Project (NWP) from the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Because of the NWP, teachers and the public became more aware of process writing, the importance of student choice, conferencing, and holistic considerations of the components of powerful (and even conventional) writing. The influence of Lucy Calkins, Nancie Atwell, and Donald Graves (among others) placed the faces of classroom teachers as literacy experts on the best practice concepts that have been central to the field of writing instruction since the early 1900s (Thomas, 2000). I have no delusions about the state of writing instruction throughout the late twentieth century (see the debate between Hillocks, 2009, and Smagorinsky, 2009; the history of the field of composition, Smagorinsky, 2006; and the mixed evidence on approaches to writing instruction over the past couple decades, Applebee & Langer, 2009); it has remained traditional, and many teachers continue to ignore the research against isolated literacy skills instruction at the expense of holistic and authentic practices. But I did see a shift toward authentic writing instruction throughout the 1980s and 1990s. As well, the role and format of traditional grammar books changed – with many publishers superficially repackaging grammar textbooks as writing textbooks and other publishers offering flawed but genuine textbooks that addressed directly composition (with the unintended consequence of adding yet another textbook to the English classroom already burdened with literature, grammar, and vocabulary textbooks). Although the NWP and influential publishers (for example, Heinemann) working with the growing pool of teacher experts such as Atwell had some degree of power behind their influence on the teaching of writing (NWP has been funded by federal grants, for example), two dynamics that proved to be more powerful rang the death knell of authentic writing instruction – the accountability movement starting with A Nation at Risk in 1983 and building to NCLB in 2001, and the introduction of the writing section of the expanded SAT in 2005 along with most high-stakes tests at the state and national levels. Both the accountability movement and the addition of writing sections on highstakes testing corrupted writing instruction by shifting the entire focus on writing to that which can be tested and to how we can most efficiently score those tests (and efficiency here was tied to economics – the least expensive in time and money). Authentic writing instruction and assessment are extremely messy enterprises (chaotic and unpredictable – not linear), and they are tremendously time intensive, thus human and funding intensive. Early in the 1980s, writing was added to the traditional testing of reading and math as a part of the growing concern for accountability that included periodic testing of students (usually in third and eighth grades, and then high school as part 182

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of a graduation requirement – labeled as exit exams). The accountability era introduced a new dynamic to testing, high-stakes (test scores tied to grade promotion and graduation). For the entire history of public education, essentially, students had been tested on national and local standardized tests, but other than the SAT (and other college entrance exams such as the ACT) and Advanced Placement testing, few tests had direct consequences for students, teachers, and entire schools. Raising accountability stakes introduced increased state and federal money dedicated to raising test scores. Textbook publishers, then, were eager to provide textbooks and materials targeted specifically at supporting teachers pressured to address high-stakes tests. Thus, the testing format that a state chose to measure writing became the template for how teachers taught and students learned writing. Again, a brief snapshot from my own teaching career. As part of the accountability movement begun in 1984, South Carolina tested student writing as part of the high school graduation requirement, the exit exam. The high school where I taught quickly adopted a strategy – identifying the weakest students (based on eighth-grade standardized test scores) and placing them in two math and two English courses as sophomores. The extra math and English courses focused exclusively on test-prep. In those extra English courses, students were taught to write 3-5-3 essays – a three-sentence introduction, a five-sentence body paragraph, and a three-sentence conclusion. The strategy – that worked within the school’s goal to secure passing scores for students on the exit exam (and not authentic writing) – depended on students providing enough text to pass, but not enough to expose weaknesses since the scoring addressed patterns of so-called errors (primarily subject-verb agreement and fragments were patterns triggering failure). Once students were inculcated with this strategy, that is all they produced; the 35-3 became the default essay any teacher could expect, regardless of course. If a teacher asked for something else, students doubted that teacher – not the script linked to testing. Throughout the last thirty years, then, writing programs in most schools have been reduced to test-prep for whatever tests await any population of students. Textbooks have stepped up to support that shift – instead of challenging the failures of reducing student writing to test-prep. High-stakes tests in conjunction with federal and state mandates along with textbook publishers have created a dynamic that de-professionalizes teachers and scripts (mutes) student expression. High-stakes tests of writing honor the very worst of writing: prompts (removing most choices a writer makes in authentic settings), template writing forms (the five-paragraph essay and its cousins [Brannon et al., 2008]), rubric-driven writing and assessment of writing (Kohn, 2006; Wilson, 2006b, 2007), and a return of equating isolated surface feature knowledge (grammar, mechanics, and usage) with composing (in other words, testing surface feature knowledge in selected-response formats removed from students’ original compositions). The accountability era ushered in the subjugation of teacher autonomy and expertise along with student voice to state standards, state testing, and corporate textbooks co-opting the authority of state and federal mandates. The power of the corporate textbook industry should not be underestimated here, but that power 183

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remained relatively hidden by the direct authority of state legislation (standards and testing) – until the College Board made a relatively bold move by adding the writing section to the SAT. THE COLLEGE BOARD V. NCTE – CORPORATE SILENCING OF A PROFESSION

U.S. education has had a long and unhealthy relationship with the SAT, stretching back to the early decades of the twentieth century when we embraced measurement and objectivity as possible and important (I highly recommend Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, cited earlier, as a brilliant satire of our faith in IQ testing, which parallels our unwavering faith in the SAT). I want to discuss briefly here how the College Board manipulated our trust in the SAT to promote corporate agendas at the expense of students, teachers, and democracy – including in this dynamic that the power of the SAT to dictate how we teach and assess writing is directly tied to the authority abdicated to textbooks and their publishers and denied teachers. Let’s start with some historical context concerning what literacy experts have known for decades about teaching writing (as opposed to isolated grammar instruction): “We have some hundreds of studies now which demonstrate that there is little correlation (whatever that may cover) between exercises in punctuation and sentence structure and the tendency to use the principles illustrated in independent writing” (LaBrant, 1946, p. 127). The history, then, of recognizing the need to ask students to write instead of analyze and label other people’s writing stretches well back into the early half of the twentieth century, as personified by the career of former NCTE president Lou LaBrant (Thomas, 2000). Yet, in actual classrooms, best practice has had little historical traction (even with the influence I identified earlier of NWP in the late 1970s and the early 1980s). Smagorinsky (2009) (and the response from Hillocks, 2009) exposes the strong disconnect between research and practice, specifically as related to teaching writing: If a review of 20 years of experimental research demonstrated Hillocks’s (Research) environmental approach to be the most effective way of teaching writing, followed by the individualistic, general process approach advocated by Atwell and others, followed with a considerable lag by a presentational approach that relied on product models, why was their actual usage in classrooms likely practiced in the reverse order? (p. 17)

This disconnect is nothing new; LaBrant (1947) lamented the “considerable gap between the research currently available and the utilization of that research in school programs and methods” (p. 87). The teaching profession, then, has always left open a vacuum of expertise concerning the teaching of writing narrowly and literacy broadly. Simply put, based on my experience as a teacher of writing for almost thirty years, English teachers have little experience or training in the teaching of writing (thus little expertise), and they are too rarely practicing writers themselves. The result is that English teachers tend to teach writing as they were taught or are often willing to

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implement corporate writing programs, driven by legislation indirectly and textbook publishers directly. Now, as additional context, consider that for decades journalists, politicians, and the public have ranked and evaluated our public schools based exclusively on average SAT scores. Add to this phenomenon the College Board’s own stance that states should not be ranked or evaluated by those SAT scores (Guidelines, 2002). While the College Board is ignored when they make credible claims, ironically, the College Board wields a great deal of power and influence through their testing machines – Advanced Placement tests and the SAT – probably because both are associated with high expectations since they are connected with the best students (those aspiring to college). And here, at the nexus of the influence of the College Board and the impotence of literacy research to impact significantly writing instruction, the College Board successfully redirected the teaching of writing backwards toward the days when grammar books ruled. How did this happen? In 2003, the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges released with a fair amount of media attention and fanfare The Neglected “R”: The Need for a Writing Revolution. And who is behind the National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges? The College Board What was the College Board set to launch in 2005? The writing section of the SAT. So the College Board perpetuated (and possibly created) a public perception that writing matters and that writing is being ignored (Harvey, 2006), and then came to its own rescue by offering a writing section on the SAT to spur greater concern for the field of writing. Throughout the accountability era, as well, the SAT had seen both a boost to its stature – a rise in SAT prep as states scrambled to raise their SAT averages and thus the perception of the public about their schools – and struggles – re-centering the scoring and the continued charges that the test had serious credibility concerns based on racial and gender biases (Santelices & Wilson, 2010; Spelke, 2005). The expansion of the SAT on the heals of the writing crisis fueled by the College Board raises real questions about corporate ethics, but for my purposes here, the dynamic that is most damning is how the College Board succeeded in promoting the new writing section as a credible test itself. The writing section of the SAT represents, like the testing of writing that occurred throughout the last three decades of accountability within the states, the worst aspects of assigning, teaching, and assessing writing; and that did not go unnoticed by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the leading and largest professional organization of English teachers in the U.S. NCTE rejected firmly the SAT writing test and warned of the negative consequences of the test itself (Ball et al., 2005). Ultimately, the SAT writing test fails for the following reasons: 185

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– The writing section is a one-draft, prompted essay completed in 25 minutes – all of which are directly at odds with best practice in writing that encourages student choice, multiple drafts, and adequate time to consider and reconsider a composition. – The test is one-hour long, meaning the other 35 minutes is a multiple-choice section that tests isolated writing skills. – The test is scored against a rubric, and the College Board is experimenting with computer-scoring of the writing. (See Wilson, 2006a, for the corrosive effects of the SAT on writing quality.) – Most damning of all, possibly, is that the SAT writing sample has gained a reputation for encouraging students to include evidence, but those scoring the sample have been told not to consider if the evidence is true or accurate (Newkirk, 2005). The College Board, then, has won – dictating what counts as writing and sending a message to teachers about what and how to teach writing. As the debate between Smagorinsky (2009) and Hillocks (2009) about teaching writing has shown, the field of teaching English has remained traditional – many teachers clinging to writing practices shown to be the least effective for authentic writing – leading to the perfect storm for the return of isolated surface feature instruction and the power of the prescriptive grammar book. GRAMMAR TEXTS REBORN – CONTROLLING LANGUAGE

This is a true story. After several weeks at the beginning of the school year – maybe three or four years into my teaching career – a girl in one of my sophomore classes, clearly exasperated, blurted out during class one day, “When are we going to do English?” A bit stunned, I replied simply, “What do you mean?” She said, “All we do is read and write in here!” For this student, English was grammar exercises completed in the English book, the grammar textbook. And this is likely true of most people, the conflating of English with grammar – just as many people associate good writing with standard English. The cultural conflating of correctness and standard is central to the power of corporate and political interests using education broadly and literacy (notably writing) specifically to perpetuate cultural myths and norms of rugged individualism, pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, and a rising tide lifting all boats – myths that maintain the status quo of corporate and political power hierarchies. Language and power are inseparable – and we don’t have to focus on historical extremes such as the rise of Hitler and the results of language perpetuating hate and inciting the deaths of millions, innocent millions. But history certainly makes a good case for the need to reconsider who controls language and how we approach language in every classroom.

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The exasperated girl in my classroom had been misled (consider the good student trap, Scheele, 2004) throughout the first nine years of her education. She had become adept at ingesting rules in order to regurgitate them – grammar rules and grammar exercises. But when she was confronted with the open-ended worlds of reading and writing, she had to depend on herself – not some artificial and arbitrary authority outside of herself (the grammar text endorsed by the teacher). And herein lies the danger of the resurrection of the grammar text – a likely unintended consequence of the accountability era, a likely muted and muting unintended consequence. Ample direct evidence and anecdotal evidence have shown that English teachers are apt to practice in their classrooms literacy strategies that work against the research of the field (again, see Hillocks, 2009; Smagorinsky, 2009; Applebee & Langer, 2009). Many English teachers persist in teaching surface features directly and through a rules paradigm. With the rise of high-stakes tests tied to standards and the inclusion of selected-response assessment of surface features on the longer section of the writing portion of the SAT, justifications appear to exist for a return to isolated surface feature instruction and a return to the classic prescriptive grammar text. Standards (and let’s keep in mind that we appear destined to move from state standards to national standards with the common core movement), testing, and grammar texts shift the locus of authority away from teachers and students and toward political and corporate elites. Truth gains its power as truth once it is codified – as in standards, being tested, or printed in textbook form. But being educated as an avenue of empowerment should not be about acquiring those codified truths; education as an avenue of empowerment must be about confronting codified truths, both through our language and against the language of those truths. Grammar textbooks represent a dangerous fact of textbooks – one embedded in history textbooks as well – the veneer of objectivity and fact. Students are directly and indirectly being taught that grammar textbooks present objective rules of the language, rules that appear to be timeless (like the ubiquitous canon of literature promoted through literature textbooks). This is also a true story. In my introductory education course, I raised the debate over standard English because the issue over correcting language had been a point of contention in a department meeting. I asked the class how many of them had studied and been tested on the distinction between “shall” and “will.” Out of twenty students, one had, along with me. I then explained to them that “shall” had simply died (as many words and constructions have throughout the history of the language). They seemed unconcerned. But when I continued by discussing the fate of the serial comma (I was taught to include a comma before the “and” in a series of three or more items, but journalism style sheets have prompted the demise of the comma before “and”), a flurry of arguments erupted among the students, many of whom seemed passionately committed to the serial comma.

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I listened for several minutes, and then asked why the impassioned defense of that comma, but so little concern for “shall.” And here is a snapshot of the arbitrary – and corrupt – view of language that is driven by rules, correctness, and standardization. And such is the world of the prescriptive grammar textbook that reinforces the standards and testing movement dominating our schools. What, then, is the obligation of critical educators in confronting the situating of power within political and corporate dynamics and products such as standards, testing, curriculum guides, and textbooks (specifically grammar texts)? Challenge cultural norms that perpetuate notions of standard English. Schools and society reinforce an arbitrary standard of language that misrepresents language as fixed and misrepresents conventions as rules. Traditional views of language are reinforced and perpetuated by grammar textbooks that give both fixity and rules authority. Williams (1990) explains that language is, in fact, fluid, guided by conventions that shift with both time and situations; “[t]hese principles offer not prescriptions, but choices” (p. xv). Teachers and classrooms need to shift to a descriptive stance about language, not a prescriptive one. Authority about language must shift to students and teachers – not standards, tests, or textbooks. Freire (1993, 1998, 2005) emphasizes the centrality of language to human empowerment, but connected with the value of language is the necessity of choice. The professional and authoritative (not authoritarian) role of teachers must be honored; they support the empowerment of themselves and their students through their role as teacher/student. The student, then, must be provided rich opportunities to explore language, opportunities that honor their home languages within the realities of language conventions; their role as student/teacher allows them to confront their current understanding of language as well as the social forces valuing some language conventions over others. Language norms must be challenged for marginalizing variations from conventions and thus those people associated with those variations. The grammar textbook, standards for language teaching, and tests honoring those standards all send messages of right and wrong to students and the wider society. If anyone uses language outside these standards, that person is marginalized. The classroom must be an opportunity to challenge and change that dynamic – not a place to perpetuate it. Approaches to language use must avoid the “error hunt.” Weaver (1996) warns teachers of language (and all teachers) to shift from the “error hunt” (a deficit perspective) and toward a more supportive stance about language and learning – one that builds on what students know and can do as opposed to identifying mistakes in the context of some arbitrary standard. Moving away from the "error hunt" allows teachers and students to confront the norms and conventions of language instead of simply conforming to those norms and conventions. Confront the corporate/political norms of rigor imbedded in calls for accountability, standards (curriculum standards and standard English), testing, and claimed elite tracks/programs such as Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate. The calls for accountability and rigor mask the underlying 188

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consequence that they perpetuate the status quo of a stratified society (Thomas, 2010g). The corporate and political elites align themselves with calls for accountability and rigor to mask the need to protect their status. Critical educators must challenge the status quo and the social norms and dynamics that create the arbitrary pooling of affluence and poverty. Reject the historical and pervasive approaches to language that focus on skills and analysis – instead preferring holistic and contextual considerations of language. The textbook and workbook approaches to language that parallel selected-response formats of testing are corruptions of language acquisition that honor efficiency and authority over complexity and authenticity – as well as empowerment of both teachers and students. An analogy I often use is that being able to disassemble and name all the parts of a car engine does not prepare one to drive a car just as analyzing other people’s language does not make one a writer. To learn to drive, one must drive; to learn to write, one must write. Place editing and language conventions in their proper place within the writing process and within composing by choice – as a final step in making expression accessible in a social context. LaBrant (1946) stated emphatically: “I am not willing to teach the polishing and adornment of irresponsible, unimportant writing” (p. 123). At the center of the English classroom is literacy, viewing all language use as a holistic human behavior that is both natural (speaking and listening) and artificial (reading and writing). If we honor education as central to human agency and freedom, our basic human nature must be honored, thus choice is central to any students acquiring literacy. Yet, a student’s literacy must begin with expression – what that student wants and needs to express and experience (whether through traditional text, digital formats such as film or the Internet, or hybrid texts such as graphic novels) must be fostered and valued before any concern for conventionality of expression. Embrace authentic writing forms and genres (not templates) along with a cyclic (not linear) writing process. The accountability era and textbook publishers have co-opted and corrupted two of the most valuable and authentic elements of the writing revolution begun by the NWP – writing formats experienced by students and the writing process. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the NWP began to infuse the teaching of writing in schools with a better awareness of authentic writing forms (such as the essay) and the writing process. Yet, when the accountability era gained momentum, authentic practices and even terminology (such as “best practice,” “literature circles,” and “writing process”) were absorbed and corrupted by that movement, especially as they were used in the publishing industry to repackage traditional practices such as making worksheets to prescribe template writing and to inculcate students with a linear writing process. Students deserve invitations and opportunities to explore, discover, and challenge the many and varied forms that writing takes as well as the many varied processes that writers experience in order to create writing for a wider community. Honoring the integrity of the literacy and writing programs within the schools and not allowing either to be reduced to test-prep or corporate programs. More and more frequently, when teachers are asked how they teach writing, they respond 189

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with the name of a program: “I teach six-traits,” or some variation. Also, teachers facing grade-level high-stakes tests focus their entire writing program on the tests, the state-mandated scoring rubric, and the state provided anchor essays – just as A.P. teachers have students write exclusively for the A.P test and many junior and senior English teachers allow students to write primarily to prepare for the SAT writing section. Critical pedagogy does not mean we have no responsibility for mandates, such as high-stakes tests, as they impact the lives of students; we should work to eradicate such systems, of course, but we must also integrate preparing students for these bureaucratic realities in ways that confront them instead of abdicating authority to them. Test writing should be explored as an artificial and functional genre, and we must place it in a minor position (late in the year and near the tests on which students will be scored) within our larger authentic writing program. *** “The freedom that moves us, that makes us take risks, is being subjugated to a process of standardization of formulas, models against which we are evaluated,” Freire (1998) warns, years before NCLB and the more recent acceleration of the era of accountability, adding, “We are speaking of that invisible power of alienating domestication, which attains a degree of extraordinary efficiency in what I have been calling the bureaucratizing of the mind” (p. 111). At the center of the political “alienating domestication” embedded in the accountability era paralyzing universal public education is the locus of authority being denied teachers and students and sold to corporate entities such as textbook publishers – who support the accountability era not to help reform education but to line their pockets at the expense of education reform. Grammar textbooks have played a corrosive role in the teaching of writing narrowly and literacy broadly throughout the entire history of universal public education. With the increasing rise in accountability dynamics combined with corporate support for standards and testing, critical educators dedicated to education for individual and community empowerment must confront the abdication of power to static and oppressive views of language at the expense of human agency through authentic language acquisition and use. Scripted writing is prescribed expression and ultimately muted voices – the muted voice of teacher as authoritative expert, the muted voice of student as selfdetermined human being. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1.

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What does the role of grammar textbooks in the curriculum expose about our concepts of language, voice, and humanity – as those norms/standards perpetuate social stratification by marginalizing regional dialects, language use associated with racial minorities, and non-native speakers of English?

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2. 3. 4. 5.

How has the College Board, through the SAT and Advanced Placement, prescribed an inauthentic writing curriculum, and thus silenced student voice and teacher autonomy? How do inauthentic texts (textbooks) create a hidden writing curriculum that silences students and corrupts their view of text and written expression? What role should authentic texts play in revitalizing an authentic writing curriculum that supports student and teacher empowerment, and thus supports a thriving democracy? What are the hidden corporate agendas beneath the influence of state standards, high-stakes testing, textbook/testing companies, and high-end packaged curriculum (for example, AP and IB), specifically as it pertains to the expansion of high-stakes testing including writing (beyond traditional testing of reading and math)? REFERENCES

Applebee, A. N., & Langer, J. A. (2009). What is happening in the teaching of writing? English Journal, 98(5), 18-28. Ball, A., Christensen, L., Fleischer, C., Haswell, R., Ketter, J., Yageldski, R., & Yancey, K. (2005, April 16). The impact of the SAT and ACT timed writing tests. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Brannon, L., et al. (2008). The five-paragraph essay and the deficit model of education. English Journal, 98(2), 16-21. Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Trans. P. Clarke. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare to teach. Trans. D. Macedo, D., Koike, & A., Oliveira. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Guidelines on the uses of College Board test scores and related data. (2002). Princeton, NJ: The College Board. Retrieved from http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/guidelines-on-uses-ofcollege-board-test-scores-and-data.pdf. Harvey, J. (2006, May). Writing and school reform, including the neglected “R”: The need for a writing revolution. National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and Colleges. New York, NY: The College Board. Retrieved from http://www.collegeboard.org/prod_downloads/ writingcom/writing-school-reform-natl-comm-writing.pdf. Hillocks, Jr., G. (2009). Some practices and approaches are clearly better than others and we had better not ignore the differences. English Journal, 98(6), 23-29. Jacoby, S. (2004). Freethinkers: A history of American secularism. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. Kobrin, J. L., Patterson, B. F., Shaw, E. J., Mattern, K. D., & Barbuti, S. M. (2008). Valididty of the SAT for predicting first-year college grade point average. College Board Research Report No. 20085. New York, NY: The College Board. Retrieved from http://professionals.collegeboard.com/ profdownload/Validity_of_the_SAT_for_Predicting_First_Year_College_Grade_Point_Average.pdf Kohn, A. (2006, March). The trouble with rubrics. English Journal, 95(4), 12-15. LaBrant, L. (1946). Teaching high-school students to write. English Journal, 35(3) 123-128. LaBrant, L. (1947, January). Research in language. Elementary English, 24(1), 86-94. Newkirk, T. (2005, November). The new writing assessments: Where are they leading us? English Journal, 95(2), 21-22.

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P. L. THOMAS Santelices, M. V., & Wilson, M. (2010, Spring). Unfair treatment? The case of Freedle, the SAT, and the standardization approach to differential item functioning. Harvard Educational Review, 80(1), 106-133. Scheele, A. (2004, May 6) The good student trap. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50758-2003May13.html. Schmidt, R., & Thomas, P. L. (2009). 21st century literacy: If we are scripted, are we literate? Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. Smagorinsky, P. (Ed.). (2006). Research on composition. New York, NY: Teachers College. Smagorinsky, P. (2009). Is it time to abandon the idea of “best practices” in the teaching of English? English Journal, 98(6), 15-22. Spelke, E. S. (2005, December). Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science? American Psychologist, 60(9), 950-958. Thomas, P. L. (2000, January). Blueprints or houses? – Looking back at Lou LaBrant and the writing debate. English Journal, 89(3), pp. 85-89. Thomas, P. L. (2010a, November 16). The corporate takeover of American schools. Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/15/educationschools. Thomas, P. L. (2010b, December 2). The education celebrity tour: Legend of the fall, pt. II. The Daily Censored. Retrieved from http://dailycensored.com/2010/12/02/the-education-celebrity-tour-legendof-the-fall-pt-ii/. Thomas, P. L. (2010c, November 28). Our faith in a “culture of poverty” never left. The Daily Censored. Retrieved from http://dailycensored.com/2010/11/28/our-faith-in-a-culture-of-povertynever-left/. Thomas, P. L. (2010d, October 24). The politicians who cried “crisis.” truthout. Retrieved from http://www.truth-out.org/the-politicians-who-cried-crisis64359. Thomas, P. L. (2010e, November 14). The teaching profession as a service industry. The Daily Censored. Retrieved from http://dailycensored.com/2010/11/14/the-teaching-profession-as-aservice-industry/. Thomas, P. L. (2010f, December 6). The truth about failure in US schools. Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/05/schools-education. Thomas, P. L. (2010g, August 11). Why common standards won’t work. Education Week, 29(37), 3334. Retrieved from http://livinglearninginpoverty.blogspot.com/2010/08/9-august-2010-op-ed-atedweek.html. Vonnegut, K. (1952/1980). Player piano. New York, NY: Delta. Weaver, C. (1996). Teaching grammar in context. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Weaver, C. (Ed.) (1998). Lessons to share on teaching grammar in context. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice (second ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Williams, J. M. (1997). Style: Ten lessons in clarity and grace (5th ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Williams, J. M. (1990). Style: Toward clarity and grace. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Williams, J. M. (2006b). Rethinking rubrics in writing assessment. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Williams, J. M. (2007, March). Why I won’t be using rubrics to respond to students’ writing. English Journal, 96(4), 62-66. Wilson, M. (2006a, Spring). Apologies to Sandra Cisneros. Rethinking Schools, 20(3), 42-46. Wilson, M. (2006b). Rethinking rubrics in writing assessment. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

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FROM TEXTBOOKS TO “MANAGED INSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEMS” Corporate Control of the English Language Arts

Since the 1991 publication of Michael Apple and Linda Christian-Smith’s seminal The Politics of the Textbook, public school curriculum has, if anything, become even more corporate and its contents more controlled by large publishing houses and by state- and district-level purchasing bodies. Though rife with the same ideological, political, and economic issues that The Politics of the Textbook described twenty years ago, textbooks now have an even larger pedagogical and indoctrinating role while, simultaneously, classroom teachers have lost autonomy and decision-making power over the use of that curriculum. Under extraordinary financial and political pressure to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) as part of the No Child Left Behind legislation, states have increasingly looked to textbook publishers to produce generic curricula that reduce or eliminate the effects of an individual teacher’s style, creativity, or ability on student performance. Nowhere has this trend been more concentrated or had a more deleterious effect than in the English Language Arts, an area that – due to the far-reaching scope of literature itself and to an almost limitless variety of means of self-expression – previously allowed for significant teacher autonomy in content and pedagogy. ELA teachers could, because of the breadth and depth of their field’s content, choose areas on which to focus. As the following critical policy analysis shows, such freedoms have been supplanted by a narrowing of ELA content, a highly prescribed pedagogy, and an associated testing regimen. Unfortunately, the corporatist, assembly-line ideology underlying this new approach to the teaching of the English Language Arts limits teachers’ ability to teach to students’ needs, ignores the myriad possibilities inherent within a diverse body of knowledge that is the English cannon, and it leads not to greater student learning (though it may indeed improve student test scores) but instead to paradigmatic and hegemonic thinking. THE LANGUAGE ARTS: FROM TEXTBOOKS TO ALL-INCLUSIVE MANAGED CURRICULA

Today’s curriculum publishers, ever eager to sell their Language Arts content to states and districts, have moved beyond the types of textbooks critiqued in The Politics of the Textbook; publishers now produce all-inclusive “teacher proof” (Giroux, 1998; Porter & Brophy, 1988, p. 74) ELA curricula that, when used H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 193–212. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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effectively, standardizes and controls content and instruction across classes, across schools, and even across districts. In terms of this increasingly dominant ELA curriculum, the term textbook is itself misleading. Textbooks are no longer a part of or a supplement to a greater classroom or district curriculum; they are the curriculum. Euphemistically called managed instructional systems (Maxwell, 2009; Research for Action, 2009), a term that borrows heavily from the corporate and computing worlds (Koschman, 1996), this new all-inclusive curricula – complete with classroom texts, directions for instruction, pacing guides, student activities, suggested supplemental sources, etc. – teach content that is general enough to sell to the widest audience but that, at the same time, contains some market-specific content relative to state content standards and thus state tests. Such circularity has proven to be a boon for curriculum publishers; managed instructional systems have gained all-new popularity with districts eager to raise reading and writing test scores (Sewall, 2005). With a national push for “value-added assessments” (in which all K-12 teachers across all content areas will be assessed in part upon student performance on standardized tests), it is likely that the market for these curricular systems will grow exponentially (see, for example, testing requirements in Florida’s Student Success Act, 2011). Increasingly, English Language Arts teachers are no longer required (or even encouraged) to take responsibility for combining a knowledge of their students, their state standards, effective pedagogy, and ELA content to produce tailored lesson plans; instead, highly-directed (scripted) curricula with pacing guides, “embedded assessments,” and flashy publishers’ web pages provide teachers with all of the content, pedagogy, assessments, and even classroom management tools they should need. Where once a large variety of novels, anthologies, and nonfiction texts graced classroom shelves, all-inclusive ELA products such as SpringBoard, the Holt Literature and Language Arts Series, and a wealth of products from major publishing houses such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Harcourt now sit. Literature (or at least truncated selections from literary texts) and writing (though highly proscribed) still serve as the centers of instruction in the ELA classroom, but the choices of what literature teachers may use and what writing prompts they can assign have been severely curtailed by mandated, “managed” curricula. Curricular autonomy – and the pedagogical freedom inherent in choosing what one teaches – that ELA teachers once relished has been supplanted by the “single orientation” (Gutierrez, 2001, p. 565) or “enterprise model” (Lowenthal & White, 2008, p. 932) approach to curriculum and pedagogy that the aforementioned programs require. Harkening back to the educational reforms popular during the industrial revolution (Tyack, 1974; Tyack & Cuban, 1995), today’s managed ELA curriculum standardizes both the content and the pedagogy of teaching literature, reading, and writing. Large-scale ELA curricula are centrally produced and standardized as much as possible in order to reduce production costs and maximize efficiency (Sewall, 2005). Such standardization means that students across schools, districts, and even states receive what is, in essence, the same content taught in a prescribed manner and at a specific pace. Secondary ELA curricula have never 194

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been more standardized than they are today. There is a seldom-examined irony in the corresponding rise of dominant publishers and the emergence of managed curricula: Through high levels of content standardization and reduced competition between curriculum publishers, corporations have collectively succeeded in creating at least a close approximation of a standardized national curriculum, something conservative legislators and boards of education have long and vehemently fought against (Ravitch, 2010). Trust in the private market seems to have superseded a widespread distrust of national standards, with the end result being largely the same. The successful implementation of large-scale ELA curricula – individual components of which can cost in the tens of millions of dollars for a medium to large district – comes with an inevitable call for “fidelity” to the curriculum. To ensure fidelity to their curriculum, curriculum programs come equipped with pacing guides (calendars that tell teachers when to teach specific things and how long they can devote to any given topic or activity) to keep teachers on task and on pace. Administrators at the school or district-level now have the added responsibility of monitoring teachers’ adherence to pacing guides; fidelity is further enforced by the fact that adherence to the pacing guide has in some districts become a criterion included in a teacher’s annual evaluation. This form of curriculum also contains frequent embedded assessments that all students are required to take. Assessments of student comprehension and, less directly, teacher fidelity to the curriculum (assessments which are randomly collected and analyzed at the school or district levels) are embedded within the curriculum itself; specific activities within a unit are used both for assessment purposes and to gauge teachers’ compliance. Further forcing fidelity to the curriculum is the fact that students’ test scores – and increasingly teachers’ annual evaluations – rely upon adherence to the script. With many states’ recent moves to adopt value-added assessments, in which students’ year-end test scores are used as a primary measure of teacher effectiveness, adherence to the scripted curriculum becomes all the more important. Teachers’ job security is increasingly being tied to test scores, which are thus tied to managed curriculum. Completing the curriculum-testing circle is the fact that the majority of large-scale educational tests, especially those created in response to NCLB mandates, are themselves created by and then assessed by branches of the same companies that create the curricula. In what would appear to many to be a conflict of interest, the four major publishing houses supplying the nation’s schools with curricula “have traditionally dominated the market for developing tests” (Sewell, 2005, p. 499). As far back as 2003, one researcher (Kahl, 2003) noted that “by some accounts, these four companies control 95% of the K-12 educational testing market” (p. 2). Large-scale ELA corporate curricula are, increasingly, based upon the notion of teaching to the test (one that they created). Fidelity to their curricula thus takes on tantamount importance. To promote teacher buy-in, a crucial requirement for the success of any large-scale curriculum reform movement (Fullan, 2001), teachers are encouraged to trust in the validity of the curriculum. Even if they may disagree with the 195

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curriculum’s content or its method of delivering the content, they are told that such curriculum is “research-based” and will thus produce positive results. For example, one of the most popular ELA programs, Springboard, not only claims legitimacy by being “the foundation of the College Board’s College Readiness System” (the College Board is the corporation that owns Springboard), it claims to use “strategic learning methodology … throughout the program” (springboardprogram.collegeboard.org/case-study). Springboard’s website conveniently provides potential consumers with selected studies vouching for the program’s potential to improve student learning. Coyly suggesting that the teachercreated curricula of earlier generations and that its own competitors’ products limit student achievement, Springboard claims that its approach “expands access and opportunity for ALL students” and prepares “ALL students for college-level work” (springboardprogram.collegeboard.org/, para 1, original emphases). Such success is guaranteed, Springboard claims, via a cornucopia of popular educational catchphrases: data analysis, high standards, attainable goals, monitoring progress, problem solving, academic discourse, critical analysis, etc. Springboard even claims that its activities – which are written for all audiences of students regardless of context – are “culturally and personally relevant” (College Board, para. 1). In short, the creators of today’s ELA curricula claim that their products can do what other curricula have long failed to do: create greater equality in educational opportunities and outcomes via standardized, one-size-fits-all, research-based content and pedagogy. With the implementation of all-encompassing curricula, teachers, it would appear, become tertiary to student growth and learning. SCRIPTED ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS CURRICULUM: GOOD INTENTIONS?

Though there is much for pedagogues and university-based curriculum experts to critique in large-scale corporate curricula, there can be no denying that much of the material produced by large publishing houses contains good content, pedagogically sound ideas for teaching that material, and materials that appeal to significant numbers of teachers, administrators, policymakers, and students. To be marketable and thus profitable, they have to (see Sewall, 2005). Although it would be naïve to attempt to separate corporations’ desire to earn profits from the products they ultimately create (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Carlson & Apple, 1999), we also cannot judge the content of these products solely upon neo-Marxist critiques. Large-scale curricula publishers employ curriculum writers – both internal and from K-12 schools and colleges of education – who have a vested interest and a personal stake in seeing public school students succeed (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991). Unlike 20 years ago, publishers today have increasingly moved away from “in house” writers and “toward a writing-for-hire production system” (Sewall, 2005, p. 500), a process that broadens the field of contributors of textbooks to include actual educators. Most textbook content-writers want their products to make a positive educational impact. Unfortunately, the same system that has broadened the field of contributors to textbooks has also brought with it editors, marketing experts, and

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the use of focus groups to selectively pick and choose from contributors’ work what the publishers believe will appeal to the widest audience (Sewall, 2005). Ironically, the for-profit curriculum publishers argue that the profit motive inherent to publicly traded companies can itself serve to strengthen the curriculum: Publishers’ long-term sales are reliant upon student learning as demonstrated on state tests. As Fullan (2001) points out, states, districts, and even parents are seldom patient when it comes to seeing payoff from their educational investments. Thus, it behooves curriculum publishers to produce materials that would appear to engage students in the content and thereby lead to improved test scores. The desire to create an attractive product is reinforced by the fact that the creation of a popular textbook is an expensive and sometimes risky endeavor for publishers (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Sewall, 2005). Publishers must create a product that states and districts believe will engage students in the material and lead to higher test scores. This too, however, is a double-edged sword. Though students’ test scores may improve with the use of a specific curriculum, the circularity and exclusive nature of teaching and then testing a specific curriculum may limit rather than promote true critical thinking. USE OF RESEARCH-BASED (THOUGH SELECTIVELY CHOSEN) BEST PRACTICES

A cursory examination of the ELA products created by the major publishing houses demonstrates the use of a number of research-based best practices in the English Language Arts. The Springboard curriculum, for example, includes readings from different genres, historical periods, and points of view. It includes complete texts rather than samples of such texts, annotated versions of novels and nonfiction texts, and a reliance upon short stories (an approach more common to some of the other large-scale curricula such as the Holt series). Springboard, like its competitors, reinforces textual reading with movies and music. Using modern media in English Language Arts classes is a proven technique for both engaging students in lessons and for demonstrating the connection of older literature to contemporary contexts; the themes common to classic literature permeate newer texts and media as well, highlighting the ever-present themes undergirding the human experience across generations and cultures. The mixed-genre approach also promotes an appreciation of different, non-textual, forms of literacy and expands what counts as legitimate classroom content. This approach helps students see that their own lives and worlds are full of legitimate literacy experiences and that literacy and art are ever present. In this respect, the curriculum attempts to reach the status of culturally relevant curricula. (How well it achieves this goal is, of course, highly dependent upon the teacher and upon the culture of the student.) A closer examination of the Springboard curriculum reveals that the program asks teachers to make use of their students’ prior knowledge as a foundation on which to scaffold new material. Warm-up activities and probing questions designed to elicit students’ ideas and experiences accompany the beginning of new units and to some degree daily lessons (depending upon a teacher’s place within the pacing guide). As a whole, managed instructional ELA curricula also include in each 197

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lesson or unit (depending upon which source one uses) a variety of ways to engage students in critical thinking through the use of higher order questions and writing prompts. Teachers using Springboard and its competitors are not responsible for having to use Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) to create different levels of questions to correspond to different topics. The curriculum does this for them and, often, does it well. Teachers using today’s managed ELA curricula may also incorporate into their primary curricula various sources to connect the themes of the lesson to students’ lives and cultures. Many of the major curriculum publishers also create space within the curriculum for student choice. Students can, using the text, and even more, using the related website, choose between different texts and assignments. Giving students reading choices is, research has shown, a powerful means of engaging students in reading (Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2010). Many of the readings in Springboard and other ELA managed curricular systems are available online; students can, with access to a computer and the Internet, get all of the materials they need for an assignment without the trouble of carrying home a textbook (an attribute that may, in the long run, cost districts less in lost or damaged texts). IT’S ALL THERE FOR YOU: TEACHING MADE EASY

By providing appropriate choices in readings and assignments, these publishers have ostensibly made the job of teaching easier. No longer does a classroom English Language Arts teacher need to perform readability measures or look up Lexile scores to find texts at an appropriate reading level for students. No longer must they delve through unfamiliar literature to find age- and grade-appropriate readings and weed out inappropriate content. No longer must they take the time to differentiate lessons based upon students’ individual needs or language proficiency. The curriculum does this all for them. Though highly scripted, the creators of managed curricula do make attempts to give teachers some choice within the curriculum. Teachers may supplement existing lessons with materials that they think might work best in their individual classroom contexts. Springboard, for example, mixes “Essential” (required) texts, movies, and music with “Suggested” (alternative) and “Recommended” sources of information. In addition, each of the major curriculum developers also provides significant resources for teachers via their websites. The purchase of a company’s curriculum brings with it a wealth of supplemental material that teachers can examine, download, print, or show via a computer-projector with the click of a button. Such information includes printable study guides, suggestions for working with English Language Learners on specific content, graphic organizers, vocabulary building exercises, resources for parents, and numerous other options. With what appears on the surface to be an almost inexhaustible amount of resources, it should come as no surprise that managed curricula appeals to many preservice and novice teachers. My own research (forthcoming) chronicles seniorlevel preservice English teachers’ preference for highly detailed standards and highly directive curricula over autonomy and creativity. Such curriculum gives 198

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them the freedom to spend less time on lesson planning, on finding and adapting creative activities to their needs, and on creating assessments; conversely, it gives them more time to focus on classroom management, relationship building, and basic survival skills. For many of the same reasons, large-scale curricula may also provide a safety net for students in classrooms where teachers – new or veteran – are struggling. Because the curriculum is so scripted, it helps ensure that students assigned to poor-performing teachers receive the same content in largely the same manner and at roughly the same pace as students with more experienced or effective teachers. Tightly controlled curricula mitigates to some extent the deleterious effects of bad teaching (a fact that begs the question of the actual purpose of such curricula). Based upon all of the above, it should not come as a surprise that this kind of curriculum has a significant fan base among teachers as well as among administrators and textbook adoption agencies. Not only does each of the main curriculum publishers have web pages devoted to inspiring teacher testimonials about how much their students love the curriculum and how well they have performed because of it, there are plenty of less biased accounts as well. Teacher discussion boards are full of examples of teachers giving laudatory reviews of the respective curricula put out by the major textbook publishing houses. Numerous teachers, overwhelmed with larger class sizes, with increased paperwork, and with less time to create their own individual lessons, look with hope to managed curricula. Many are willing to trade autonomy and creativity for structured curricula proven to bring positive results. The biggest test of the eventual success of any or all of the major four textbook publishing houses will, of course, be numerical: The success of managed instruction systems ultimately depends upon their ability to raise students’ reading and writing scores on state-mandated tests. As psychometricians begin to examine longitudinal NCLB test data and correlate it with the implementation of managed ELA curricula in districts and states, we will begin to have quantifiable proof about the efficacy of this form of teaching and learning. Likely absent from such analyses, however, will be the more important question of whether or not such curriculum actually teaches knowledge worth knowing. Student test scores, though important, may reflect fidelity to the curriculum and a firm grasp of very specific but narrow content rather than the ability to think critically and an understanding of the greater importance of literature, writing, and self-expression. THE UGLY REALITY OF MANAGED ELA CURRICULA: HOMOGENEITY AND CONTROL

As suggested previously, the one-size-fits-all approach to curriculum inherent in managed instructional systems brings with it a wealth of concerns (concerns that are seldom taken seriously by publishers intent to sell their products or by districts’ intent to control what and how their teachers teach and thus what their students learn). Many of the supposed strengths of and requirements for the successful implementation of managed curricula also prove to be their greatest weaknesses. 199

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Districts’ frequent curriculum changes – and the fact that teachers are left out of the change process itself – reduces teacher buy-in to new curricula regardless of its potential educational benefits, its ease of use, or even its mandated status. Though managed curricula incorporates some ELA best practices, these practices are selectively chosen while others are ignored. Many of the benefits of the best practices that are included in managed curricula are largely negated by the highly directed nature of the curriculum itself. The content of managed curricula – chosen by a system that is itself highly political and controversy avoidant (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Sewall, 2005) – is tightly controlled and thus limited in the perspectives it presents. Further reducing teacher autonomy is the fact that the curriculum itself controls the time teachers can spend on any given topic (despite students’ understanding of that topic, their desire to pursue the topic in greater depth, or teachers’ desire to push the students to deeper levels of understanding). Just as problematically, the exclusivity and pace of the curriculum largely disallows a wide variety of non-dominant texts, supplemental materials, and thus views; cultural relevance, though acknowledged and even used as a curriculum selling tool, is in fact sacrificed for curricular control and standardization. Student critical thinking is reduced to the specific kinds of thinking encouraged by the paradigmatic curriculum itself. Hegemony wins because true critical thinking is discouraged or even disallowed. The directed curriculum, though a valuable tool for the new teacher whose first goal is to survive her or his first years in the classroom, stifles teacher creativity and professionalism. Teachers – once at the heart of ELA curriculum decisions (at least on a local scale) – now distribute ready-made curricular materials to their students, follow a universal script, and assess students via embedded assessments within that curricula (in addition to the high-stakes state-mandated tests that, again, test students on the curricula). No longer does a teacher need to think; the curriculum does it for them. Ironically, and as noted above, the directed nature of the curriculum may have the added effect of protecting inadequate or lazy teachers. By following the script to a tee, teachers who would previously stand out as being less productive or ineffective because they had to create and teach an effective ELA curricula may now blend in to the ever more controlled and homogenized teaching force. Though the curriculum is flashy and contains good content, though it includes plenty of valuable resources that can indeed be beneficial to student learning, and though it makes the job of teaching significantly easier for many, it also serves, of course, to de-professionalize teaching. MODELING BAD BEHAVIOR: DISTRICT CURRICULAR INFIDELITY

As noted above, a district’s success with any large-scale ELA curriculum depends upon its teachers maintaining strict fidelity to the content, pace, and script of that curriculum. However, districts themselves are notoriously prone to altering or changing their curricula. Educational reformers, policymakers, and parents want to see immediate improvement with the introduction of new curricula, a feat that is virtually impossible (Fullan, 2001). Though major educational reforms often take 200

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10 years or more to prove truly effective, districts commonly replace curricula long before the effects of that curricula can be measured (Fullan, 2001). Of course, districts also replace curricula for other reasons, including competitors’ prices for similar curricula, the success or lack thereof of the prior curricula, the promises new curricula makes for improving test scores, the content contained within differing curricula, and changes to school district administration (Fullan, 2001; Sewall, 2005; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Regardless of the reason for such changes, constant large-scale (state or district) changes to curricula have a significant and deleterious effect: Teacher resistance and distrust (Fullan, 2001). Just as teachers become familiar with district- or statemandated curricula (after repeated inservice training and through experience teaching the curricula to their students), that curriculum changes. Unfortunately, relatively sudden changes to curricula are even more common to Math and the English Language Arts because the content of these courses are always tested on states’ NCLB assessments (Sewall, 2005). In the course of a decade, today’s ELA teacher may see the arrival and departure of as many as three or four different packaged curricula, each “proven” to bring results. Each new curriculum, however, is brought to schools primarily because the existing or last curriculum failed to bring immediate and/or significant positive results. This revolving door of curricular changes leads to what Fullan (2001) calls reform overload. Teachers are forced both to learn about the practices and content of the new curriculum and to leave behind the numerous practices that previously worked for their students, something that most teachers are very reluctant to do. Experienced teachers begin to see new curricula as short-term trends (trends that sometimes run contrary to their existing classroom practices) for which they have little reason to give their allegiance. Teachers, wary of yet more educational fixes, learn to distrust both new curricula and the decision-makers who insist upon its use (Fullan, 1991; McNeil, 2000; Sarason, 1990; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). The more large-scale changes teachers experience, the more they feel that they: Live in a world where one should never trust a change agent or never assume that others, especially leaders, know what they are doing – not because change agents and leaders are duplicitous or incompetent – but because the change process is so complex and fraught with unknowns. (Fullan, 1993, p. viii)

Top-down and frequent reforms, especially new and mandated curricula, bring with them teacher distrust of and resistance to implementing said reforms (Craig, 2009; Fullan, 1991). Ironically, a district’s lack of fidelity to any one curriculum for more than a few years often directly results in teachers’ distrust of and resistance to new curriculum no matter how good it might be. UNIVERSAL AND SELECTIVE BEST PRACTICES: AN OXYMORON

Though publishers of ELA curricula use as a major selling point the claim that their contents are based upon educational research and “current trends,” the purported egalitarian purpose for managed curricula – to ensure that “all children receive the same instruction” (Gutierrez, 2000, p. 565) – often results in teaching 201

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and learning that is too often anything but equal, fair, or pedagogically sound. All of the students forced to learn from this form of inherently hegemonic instruction do indeed receive the same content, in the same manner, at the same time, and at the same pace. Such regimentation, however, far from guarantees true learning, equal educational opportunities, or outcomes for students. Quite to the contrary, a wealth of research in educational psychology and meta-analyses of research-based effective instructional practices highlight the fact that treating all children “the same” is, if anything, an anathema to quality instruction and student learning. Educational and developmental psychology are grounded in the belief that children, adolescents, and adults all learn in stages. These stages, though somewhat predictable (especially in the early years), occur at different times for different people; learning seldom occurs as a predictable constant and is never immune to variables (Erikson, 1950, 1959; Piaget, 1954, 1977; Vygotsky, 1978). A graph of realistic student learning, for example, would not be represented by a straight line but rather by spurts of varying intensities, plateaus, and even the occasional dip or valley (see for example data on the regression of student content knowledge between academic school years). Learning, a failure to learn, and even regression of learning can result from any number of variables that occur both inside and outside of the classroom. All-inclusive curricular packages, however, ignore myriad variables that affect learning in order to standardize learning opportunities and control instructional pace. As outlined earlier, the managed instruction systems of the major ELA curriculum producers strictly control for pace and time on task. Their promise to raise student test scores is predicated upon districts’ willingness to police teachers’ pace throughout the curriculum and throughout the school year. Teachers who deviate from their pacing guides – even for legitimate causes such as the need to ensure student comprehension of a lesson or topic – face scrutiny from department heads, principals, or district administration. Even if a teacher devotes just a few extra days to a few specific lessons or topics, he or she can easily be weeks off of the pacing guide by mid-year. Students who cannot pass the curriculum’s embedded assessments and thereby demonstrate mastery of the content are either forced to move forward in the curriculum (which is supposed to be constructivist and spiraled) or are remediated outside of the classroom (a pedagogically unsound and costly endeavor largely discouraged by cash-strapped school districts). The insistence upon fidelity to the relatively arbitrary pace in large-scale ELA curricula both disregards the realities of how students actually learn and limits a teacher’s ability to teach (and when necessary to re-teach) curricula in a way that would benefit struggling students. Similarly, one-size-fits-all ELA curricula flies in the face of contemporary and research-based conceptions of students, their cultures, and how the two intersect to affect learning. Educational researchers, cognitive scientists, and teachers have long known that viewing students in the aggregate leads to simplistic curriculum and pedagogy that is largely devoid of the many important contextual considerations required for effective teaching in today’s increasingly diverse classrooms. Students are individuals who come from different cultural backgrounds with different norms for behavior, for communication, and for 202

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thinking (Delpit, 1995; Heath, 1983; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Snow, 1991; Willis, 1973). They have different learning styles and intelligences (Gardner, 1983, 1991). Even though the curricula described in this chapter makes attempts to engage students in multiple ways – by mixing texts with sound, visuals, and different forms of written and group activities – it does so in a decontextualized manner. Managed curricula provide teachers with different activities to use with students who learn differently, but the choices themselves are limited and directed (a hodgepodge of activities for different parts of a lesson rather than differentiated instruction on a particular text or topic). When divorced from students’ particular needs and contexts – and when created to connect with specific generalizations of students across broad spectrums – this form of “differentiation” may serve to limit learning rather than enhance student learning. Furthermore, as McGinley, Conley, and White (2000) showed in their examination of supposedly helpful publisherproduced reading guides for novels, the directed nature of the questions they contain largely prescribe how students read texts and limit their possible interpretations of texts. Similarly, students’ prior experiences, their foundation of knowledge upon which teachers are supposed to build, differ markedly from individual to individual. Effective instruction requires that teachers provide for students’ individualized (differentiated) curriculum and instruction based upon students’ specific needs and interests. It requires that teachers use multiple means of assessing student learning and growth. Managed curricula attempt to do this, but their all-encompassing scope and their requirement to curricular fidelity limit their ability to be effective in this regard. THE NEW ELA CONTENT: CRITICAL OR HEGEMONIC?

Tthe producers of large-scale ELA curricula provide students with a relatively diverse and cross-genre selection of readings and activities for each unit. In this sense they make use of contemporary literacy research, including the belief that literacy educators need to move beyond a strict adherence to the classics when teaching literature and writing. The curricula represented by these publishers is a far cry from the essentialist/ perennialist instructional models advocated and made popular by such well-known educators as E. D. Hirsch (1998), William Bennett (1999), and Mortimer Adler (1961). By including different kinds of texts and by engaging different kinds of literacies, the curriculum also adheres to the tenets of the New Literacy Studies, which posits that meaning is not inherent in a text but is, rather, made by readers’ interactions with texts; prior knowledge is essential to the meaning of a text (Gee, 2000; Street, 1984). Of obvious primacy in selecting texts for large-scale ELA curricula is the need to engage students in reading, to connect different kinds of literacies, and to use popular culture to help students make connections between their lives and what they read in English class. These moves are certainly a step toward the pedagogically progressive and “culturally relevant” instruction that publishers claim is part-and-parcel of their educational packages. Despite these advances, the overall tone and content included in ELA textbooks has changed very little since the publication of The Politics of the Textbook (1991). 203

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No textbook publisher has, for example, begun to include powerful but controversial texts (see the American Library Association’s list of commonly banned books) in its respective ELA curriculum. If anything, publishers have become even more conservative in what they are willing to include in textbooks. In his examination of the 4-billion-dollar textbook industry, Sewall (2005) notes that with today’s reduced competition has come even less willingness for publishers to take chances on curricular content. Just as in 1991, publishers faced with high development costs and the potential that their products will not sell increasingly tailor their products to the “big three” states that have large-scale textbook adoption agencies (Texas, California, and Florida). Similarly, publishers – ever eager to entice buyers and thus always careful not to offend anyone across the vastly different educational spectrums from California to Florida – try to generalize and depoliticize their curricula so that it appeals to the widest possible audience: Mass-market educational publishers cannot afford to have deep convictions about what their books contain …. The complex phenomenon known as ‘dumbing down’ is a rational activity on the part of value-free sellers who seek to capture a larger share of a nationwide market. (Sewall, 2005, p. 502)

Dumbing down, according to Sewall, is an increasingly common publishing practice that entails determining content acceptable to all of the different stakeholders while also finessing difficult issues and disagreements between stakeholders so as to not offend any of them. Gone from the equation is any ethical stance about maximizing student learning and creating critical thinkers: Each of these four publishing giants is intent on maximizing its revenues and is essentially indifferent to the means of doing so. Field representatives, sales forces, market researchers, product managers, and editorial directors help determine the content of a textbook. So do state frameworks, advocates for diverse groups and causes, and numerous focus groups that round off any sharpness or edge that may be perceived in a text. (Sewall, 2005, p. 502)

Such pandering to special interests begs the question of whether publishers’ inclusion of multiple supplemental texts within a given curriculum is ultimately for the benefit of consumers of these texts (students) or rather a convenient way to appeal to the differing interests of powerful stakeholders. The ultimate danger in this highly politicized process is, of course, that the texts that students are required to read do not contain the kinds of content required to engage them in critically analyzing the many controversial issues that affect them now and that will continue to affect them well into the future. Publishers of ELA curricula have multiple financial reasons to exclude any texts that might address such controversial issues as sex, violence, misogyny, gender roles, sexual identity, the continued oppression of women and minorities, the failures of meritocracy, and so on. These are not just the issues that make great literature great, they are issues that permeate and affect students’ lives and thus influence their identities and behaviors (Connell, 1989; Epstein & Johnson, 1998; Trudell, 1992). Avoiding such topics within literature is, essentially, censorship. Worse, it pushes essential parts of the human experience – things that our high school students are already 204

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grappling with – into the realm of the taboo and, via silence, perpetuates misconceptions and ignorance (Connell, 1996; Epstein, 1997; Francis, 2000). There is no doubt that publishers have many financial reasons not to include controversial literature in their curricula, especially in an increasingly conservative political climate (Apple, 1993; Apple & Oliver, 1996; Apple & Pedroni, 2005; Ramsey, 2009). Nonetheless, the fact that publishers consistently succumb to the desire to please a huge and heterogeneous group of consumers (i.e., to make profits) over students’ well-being, however, should make educators seriously question the ethics of the textbook market itself. Even though these publishers include in their curricula (or on their websites) a plethora of supplemental activities, they fall far short of true cultural-relevance. Springboard for example, provides a list of music and movies that support the required readings. The required readings demonstrate a fair amount of cultural diversity (e.g., authors Amy Tan, Chinua Achebe, Zora Neal Hurston), but the supplemental materials do not. Rather, the music and movies included in the curriculum overwhelmingly represent the culture and views of the dominant white majority. When used well, these resources can help connect many students to the texts included in the Springboard curriculum. Popular cultural references have the power to help students make connections to larger themes. There is, however, almost no representation in the supplemental curriculum of the views, voices, or cultures of minorities. The curriculum fails to include movies or music featuring or focusing on African-Americans, Hispanics or Native Americans, gays and lesbians, or any number of other traditionally oppressed groups. There are few places where teachers are supposed to supplement the text with current events from the local community or have students bring in ideas for further research and examination. Of course no curricula, no matter how strong it might be, can account for the almost infinite number of cultures represented in today’s classrooms. However, by severely limiting teachers’ ability to alter, delete, and add to the official curriculum or the time they would need to do so, managed curriculum denies even the possibility of true multicultural representation in the curriculum. Teachers forced to use managed curricula are openly discouraged if not prohibited from changing the curriculum to meet their students’ cultural needs, their interests, and the kinds of prior knowledge they bring with them to the classroom. By making specific texts, music, and movies a part of the official curricula, publishers and the districts that buy their products reify and normalize white, mainstream culture while subjecting all non-white students to the category of the “other” (see Carlson & Apple’s Power/Knowledge/Pedagogy, 1998). Students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds – as well as gay, lesbian or transgendered students – are given the message that their cultures do not count and that literature is relevant only to the dominant class. There is also a seldom-examined added danger: Because publishers claim that their products are research-based and culturally relevant (and because districts have purchased said products) less discerning teachers – especially mainstream, middle-class, white teachers – may inadvertently believe that by using the curriculum as directed they are actually being culturally relevant pedagogues when, in fact, they are merely perpetuating dominant ideologies. 205

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TO TEACH OR TO REBEL?

Possibly most problematic with districts’ buy-in of large-scale corporate curricula is the fact that, in doing so, districts assume the stance that they need to protect students from teachers. As outlined above, managed curricula takes teachers – the very people who best know our students’ backgrounds, prior knowledge, needs and interests – out of the curriculum creation process. This is not new. Teachers’ voices and experiences have long been ignored by policymakers responsible for making curricular decisions. What is new, however, is that managed curricula also take much (and in some cases all) of the responsibility for teaching ELA content out of the teacher’s hands. The use of managed curricula helps to ensure that teachers’ individual voices, teaching styles, and philosophies of education stay out of the classroom. Creative teachers’ ideas for teaching are supplanted by required texts and activities. ELA teachers using managed curricular programs are now largely prohibited from exhibiting pedagogical creativity or from taking initiative for creating curricula for their students. If students do not understand the material in the managed curricula, teachers are discouraged from creating new and culturally relevant metaphors (i.e., relevant to specific students in specific circumstances) to help students make cognitive connections. They are often expressly prohibited from bringing in different sources to teach the same material, especially if those sources could be construed (by anyone) as being radical or offensive. Instead, teachers working with struggling students are directed to use specific forms of remediation extant in the curricula or to refer the student elsewhere. Ironically, ELA students who are farmed out for remediation increasingly encounter yet more large scale corporate curriculum (such as the reading remediation program Read 180) that have the same limitations as the curricula described above. Similarly, and just as problematic, is the fact that non-dominant scripts or counterscripts (texts and materials that question or critique dominant points of view) have no place in the managed ELA classroom. Teachers are told, both overtly and tacitly, that the addition of counterscripts to the official ELA curricula is both dangerous and a punishable offense. The rationale for such warnings rests upon the belief that the teaching of counterscripts takes time away from the official curricula, could serve to confuse students, and, most importantly, that such counterscripts are inherently political (Gutierrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995). Introducing shades of grey into the dichotomous world of literature represented in managed ELA curricula is, publishers and districts suggests, fraught with issues of politics, power, and ideology (Sewall, 2005). An ELA teacher’s role is, supposedly, to be apolitical; he or she is to teach literature, reading, writing, and thinking in an unbiased manner. If a teacher introduces conflicting and contentious content into their ELA classrooms, they are, this approach suggests, indoctrinating their students (a captured audience easily swayed) into a particular ideology. Anything and everything a teacher might use to supplement her or his curricula could, districts warn, be viewed as politically motivated and/or could be misinterpreted by students. Ignored in the rationale for this ultimately censorious approach to teaching is, of course, the fact that all curricula – managed or 206

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otherwise – is inherently political (Apple, 1993; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Freire, 1970). No curricula can escape politics nor should any curricula attempt to do so. Such curricula would say nothing. In the conservative political climate dominating schools and corresponding to the use of managed curricula, teachers who wish to break free from the strict confines of managed curricula have three choices: They can quit, they can teach in a charter or private school, or they can teach alternative content surreptitiously. Recent research suggests that our nation’s best teachers are doing the latter. In contrast to the teachers whom students and colleagues judge as being less effective – teachers who unquestioningly stick to the script – more creative teachers and teachers who wish to challenge students to think in non-paradigmatic ways find ways to teach different curricula in alternative ways (Craig, 2009). These teachers have, however, largely been forced to “go underground” in their attempts to teach in ways that they think work best for students. Though some ELA teachers are fortunate enough to have principals who support curricular deviation, others have to hide the ways that they teach (which is, thanks to the controls attached to managed curricula, increasingly hard to do). In light of the control of managed curricula over all aspects of the ELA classroom, many of our nation’s best English teachers must assume the role of guerilla warriors. To ensure that their students truly learn, they use their own time to find and then secretly bring into their classrooms unapproved texts. They ask students to examine their roles within the existing power structure; they get students to engage in discussions about sex, violence, politics, drugs, and power dynamics (all of the things central to almost all good literature and all things that are relevant to students’ lives). The guerilla warrior teacher uses the existing curriculum as a learning tool; he or she takes from the curriculum what is useful for teaching the “official knowledge” (Apple, 1993) required by the district or state. At the same time, however, the guerilla warrior teacher supplements this curriculum with materials that are culturally relevant to her or his specific students and contexts. He or she introduces into the official curriculum controversial issues that are both analogous to the ELA content and that are likely to stimulate critical thought. He or she also engages students in critical examinations of the content and activities included in corporately produced curricula (a practice that must include an examination of what is left out of that content) as a lesson in power, ideology, and hegemony. The guerilla warrior teacher teaches not just what he or she is told to teach, but teaches to her or his students’ needs. The guerilla warrior teacher does all of this surreptitiously; in the high stakes world of standardized tests and costly corporate curricula, he or she must stay under the proverbial radar of her or his supervisors. Sadly, in the current era of ubiquitous “managed curricular systems,” truly transformative and culturally relevant teaching requires such an approach. Even more sadly, with increasing pressure for fidelity to the official curriculum, fewer and fewer teachers are willing to assume the risks inherent in this ‘radical’ approach.

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A CURRICULUM FOR SOME: THE REST BUT NOT THE BEST

Though managed curricula have taken control of much of the secondary ELA landscape, it is important (and telling) to note where it is not used or required. Just as Jean Anyon (1980) and Michael Apple (1979) posited years ago, students often receive a differentiated curriculum based largely upon where in the socioeconomic spectrum they fall. In the language arts, corporate scripted curriculum dominates in classes tailored to the lower and middle levels of student learners (Sewall, 2005). More advanced learners – a group that is highly correlated with higher socioeconomic status and higher parental education attainment – receive a much more individualized, personally tailored curriculum. Students in gifted programs, International Baccalaureate (IB) Programs, or those who elect to take Advanced Placement (AP) courses are taught through a very different set of curricula than their school peers. The College Board’s AP curriculum, for example, sits in stark contrast to its own Springboard curriculum in that the former calls for depth of understanding over breadth of understanding; it asks students to think critically and in non-paradigmatic ways about literary works: In their AP course, students read works from several genres and periods – from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century – but, more importantly, they should get to know a few works well. They should read deliberately and thoroughly, taking time to understand a work’s complexity, to absorb its richness of meaning, and to analyze how that meaning is embodied in literary form. In addition to considering a work’s literary artistry, students should consider the social and historical values it reflects and embodies. Careful attention to both textual detail and historical context should provide a foundation for interpretation, whatever critical perspectives are brought to bear [emphasis added] on the literary works studied. (Collegeboard.com/student/testing/ ap/sub_englit.html, para. 3)

The corresponding AP Composition course similarly breaks from the more formulaic and scripted nature of its more common counterparts. Where the Houghton Mifflin English series prides itself upon lessons that “concentrate on grammar, usage, and mechanics skills, as well as 6-traits writing” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006, para. 1), the AP curricula derides such “programmatic responses as the five-paragraph essay” (The College Board, 2011, para. 3), (a mainstay of Springboard). The College Board encourages Advanced Placement ELA teachers to instead encourage their more advanced students to “place their emphasis on content, purpose, and audience and to allow this focus to guide the organization of their writing” (College Board, 2011, para. 3). AP teachers teach to a test (the AP Exam) and to standards (AP standards), but unlike the scripted and paced nature of the general ELA curriculum, the AP teacher is granted significant curricular and pedagogical autonomy; they are encouraged to pick and choose from the curriculum and to teach in ways most appropriate for student learning: “It [AP standards] is intended to provide sufficient guidance for curriculum supervisors and teachers to design instruction and assessments [emphasis added] in middle and high school that lead toward AP and college readiness” (The College Board Standards for College Success,, 2006, p. vi). Teacher designed curricula, instruction, and even assessments are the hallmarks of 208

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the AP curriculum but are an anathema to general education classes. As Sewall (2005) notes, the biggest concern for managed instructional systems is “that they [textbooks] be accessible to all students, including those who don’t read well and those who are least academically capable” (p. 502). It should come as no surprise that, in the curriculum wars and in the high stakes publishing industry, a generalized, one-size-fits-all curriculum is good for the masses, but bad for the elite. One curriculum teaches students how to think. The other – the curriculum tailored for children of the elite who themselves will assume such roles in the future – encourages divergent and creative thinking. CONCLUSION

Teaching the English Language Arts is now, more than ever, independent of the English teacher. Managed curriculum, in its attempts to standardize instruction across vast swaths of territory, makes the teacher largely irrelevant. Virtually anyone can step into a class using Springboard, Holt, Houghton Mifflin et al., and teach the language arts. All of this serves, I believe, to de-professionalize teaching and, ultimately, to open even more of the K-12 teaching world up to private enterprise. We have, obviously, handed over control for our curricula. We are, it seems, willingly handing over control of pedagogy. The next logical step is to hand over schools to corporate entities altogether. As it did twenty years ago, textbook production today begs many questions (questions that this book, as a whole, seeks to answer). No doubt, we will still be trying to answer many of the same questions twenty years from now. Some of the answers are, or soon will become, obvious. Some of the answers, however, are so deeply intertwined in issues of power, cultural reproduction, and hegemony that they are almost impossible to extract without a broader examination of the power structures currently controlling our sociopolitical system. Schools are, after all, microcosms of the societies in which they exist. As such they tend to reproduce the dominant values of that society and shun competing paradigms (Willis, 1973). Schools need not, however, be destined to reproduce existing societies, with both their good and bad characteristics. We have a choice. Our schools can serve to reproduce the status quo, or they can help us reinvent ourselves, taking from today’s society those things we cherish while also working toward improving on those things that hold us back. As this chapter and this book point out, it seems to us that our schools are obviously, quickly, and determinedly heading down one path. We must passionately and intelligently question this path and those who are leading us down it. We must provide positive alternatives. We must continue to fight the curricular – and the educational – wars. Otherwise, teaching (whether is be English, math, science, social studies, or any other content) will become nothing more than a tool for indoctrinating unquestioning students into the current status quo.

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2.

3. 4. 5.

What might be some of the reasons that experienced teachers and novice teachers often disagree on the use of scripted curriculum? Describe the kind of curriculum you would prefer to use in your own classroom of that of your child. What resources would you like and what freedoms would you want? What do you think would be best not just for you but also for your secondary students? Is equity served by standardization and scripted curricula, especially in the Language Arts? Why or why not? What are some of the challenges to teaching students to think critically through a scripted curriculum? What do you think is the driving impetus behind the standardization of curriculum and teaching in the English Language Arts and, similarly, in other content areas? In other words, what is the ultimate goal of tightly controlled curricula? REFERENCES

Adler, M. (1961). Great ideas from the great books. New York, NY: Washington Square Press. Anyon, J. (1980). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Education, 162(1), 67-92. Apple, M., & Christian-Smith, L. (Eds.). (1991). The politics of the textbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. (1993). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M., & Pedroni, T. (2005). Conservative alliance building and African American support of vouchers: The end of Brown’s promise or a new beginning? Teachers College Record, 107(9), 2068-2105. Apple, M., & Oliver, A. (1996). Becoming right: Education and the formation of conservative movements. Teachers College Record, 97(3), 419-445. Bennett, W. (1999). The educated child: A parent’s guide from preschool through eighth grade. New York, NY: Touchstone. Bloom, B. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. New York, NY: Basic Books. Carlson, D., & Apple, M. (Eds.). (1999). Power/knowledge/pedagogy: The meaning of democratic education in unsettling times. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. College Board. (2006). The College Board standards for college success. Retrieved from www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/.../english-language-arts_cbscs.pdf. College Board. (2011). SpringBoard. Retrieved from http://springboardprogram.collegeboard.org/. Craig, C. (2009). Research in the midst of organized school reform: Versions of teacher community in tension. American Educational Research Journal, 46(2), 598-620. Delpit, L. (1995). Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: The New Press. Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company. Erikson, E. (1959). Identity and the life cycle. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, Inc. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Fullan, M. (1993). Changing forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. London, England: The Falmer Press.

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FROM TEXTBOOKS TO “MANAGED INSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEMS” Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gardner, H. (1983). Frames of mind. New York, NY: Basic Book Inc. Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind: How children think and how schools should teach. New York, NY: Basic Books Inc. Gee, J. (2000). The new literacy studies and the “social turn.” In D. Barton, M. Hamilton, R. Ivanic (Eds.), Situated literacies: Reading and writing in context (pp. 180-196). New York, NY: Routledge. Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as transformative intellectuals. Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Westport, CT: Bergen & Garvey. Gutierrez, K. (2001). What’s new in the English language arts: Challenging policies and practices, ¿y qué? Language Arts, 78(6), 564-569. Gutierrez, K., Rymes, B., & Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 445-472. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company. Houghton Mifflin (2006). Houghton Mifflin English 2006. Retrieved from http://www. hmhschool.com/store/ProductCatalogController?cmd=Browse&subcmd=LoadDetail&ID=10054000 00041373&level1Code=2&frontOrBack=F&sortEntriesBy=SEQ&division=S01. Kahl, S. (2003). NCLB testing: Is the assessment industry up to the challenge? Issue paper: Measured progress. Retrieved from http://www.measuredprogress.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier =id&ItemID=452&libID=472. Koschmann, T. (Ed.). (1996). CSCL: Theory and practice of an emerging paradigm. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lowenthal, P. R., & White, J. W. (2009). Enterprise model. In P. Rogers, G. Berg, J. Boettcher, C. Howard, L. Justice, & K. Schenk (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distance and online learning (2nd ed., pp. 932-936). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Maxwell, L. (2009). Tight focus on instruction wins Texas district prize. Education Week, 29(6), 1. McGinley, W., Conley, K., & White, J. (2000). Pedagogy for the few: Book club discussion guides and the modern book industry as literacy teacher. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 44(3), 204214. McNeil, L. (2000). The contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. New York, NY: Routledge. Miner, B. (2004/2005, Winter). Testing companies mine for gold. Rethinking Schools, 19(2). Piaget, J. (1954). La construction du réel chez l’enfant / The construction of reality in the child. New York, NY: Basic Books. Piaget, J. (1977). The essential Piaget (Howard E. Gruber, & J. Jacques Vonèche, Eds.). New York, NY: Basic Books. Porter, A., & Brophy, J. (1988). Synthesis of research on good teaching: Insights from the work of the Institute for Research on Teaching. Educational Leadership, 45(8), 74-85. Ramsey, P. (2009). Plato and the modern American “right”: Agendas, assumptions, and the culture of fear. Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 45(6), 572-588. Research for Action (2009). Complicated choices: Struggling to meet NCLB requirements AND remain faithful to a school’s educational vision and practice. An occasional paper. Philadelphia, PA: Eva Travers. Ravitch, D. (2010). The death and life of the great American school system: How testing and choice are undermining education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Sarason, S. (1990). The predictable failure of educational reform: Can we change course before it’s too late? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sewall, G. (2005). Textbook publishing. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(7), 498-502.

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JOHN WESLEY WHITE Snow, C. (1991). The theoretical basis for relationships between language and literacy in development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6, 5-10. Street, B. (1984). Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Tyack, D. (1974). The one best system: A history of American urban education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia: A century of public school reform. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Vacca, R., Vacca, J., & Mraz, M. (2010). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum. New York, NY: Pearson. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to labour: How working class kids get working class jobs. Farnborough, England: Saxon House.

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HOW SCRIPTED PROGRAMS DE-PROFESSIONALIZED THE TEACHING OF READING A California Story

“California represents backward progress.” (Darling-Hammond, 2010, p. 146)

California’s image as a high-technology, culturally diverse, future-looking state may be in danger (Darling-Hammond, 2010) if the state continues along the path of top-down micro-management, disparate wealth-based funding and educational policies that encourage inequality and inefficiency at the same time. With funding per pupil in California equivalent to Mississippi and Guam, California will soon be hard pressed to maintain the high-tech industries, and fun-in-the-sun image as fewer and fewer of California’s public school graduates have the skills and dispositions for the level of work needed to maintain and innovate for the future. Importing talent has become the norm in the Golden State, while funding for a growing underclass of under-educated Californians is weighing heavy on the state’s deficit budget. California maintains the largest population of all the United States with over 37 million citizens. In addition, the Golden State also has the highest number of school children with over 6.2 million in the 2005–2006 school year (CDE, 2005). About 25% of those students are English language learners compared to the national average of 9%. These population demands are complicated more by diminished funding sources resulting from the passage of Proposition 13. This state constitutional amendment was voted in through the California initiative process in 1978. Known officially as the “the people’s initiative to limit property taxation,” it amended the state constitution to maintain a limit of property tax to be collected at 1% of 1975 property values. Increases in property taxes due to higher value were banned except for cases of change of ownership or construction completion. Many attribute this “tax payer’s revolt” amendment to the downslide of public education funding and quality in California from one of the best systems in the country in the 1960s to the current dismal 48th out of 51 states when adjusted for cost of living. The limits in state funding for education has also resulted in one of the highest teacher to student ratios with California ranking 49th out of 51 (including the District of Columbia) with only Arizona and Utah were lower. This leads to a tension within the state between the image of maintaining California as H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 213–230. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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the fifth largest economy in the world and their inability to maintain a public education system with a focus on quality and innovation. In addition, funding fluctuation between the highest-spending districts and the lowest-spending districts was more than 3 to 1 (Darling-Hammond, 2010) leaving urban, minority districts extremely underfunded in spite of the raised cost-of-living in these areas. All of this has led to a state that scored at the bottom of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in the year 2000 and is still there. Acknowledging the dismal academic achievement of the state’s students, the state embraced the standards movement in the 1990s. California created, at huge public cost, the largest item-based set of enabling standards in the country. It went on to create it’s own standardized, high stakes assessment to measure the low level skills the standards defined and delineated across the K-12 system. Teaching devolved into test prep during the majority 182 days of instruction each year. Only those items that were tested were taught. Low-income students who had few resources for outside support, English language learners who couldn’t access such decontextualized language instruction as well as recess, art, and music, became the victims of this movement. California continued this trend toward basic skills and test prep when it took the top-down approach through its statewide textbook adoptions of textbooks during the 2000s. In Reading/Language Arts one of the two products approved to be used in all K-6 classes in the state was written by the same publisher that wrote the statewide standardized test. School districts throughout the state adopted this material simply because they were told the product directly taught the test. Both of the two adopted Language Arts programs for K-6 were heavily scripted and, at one point, it was said that the State Superintendent of Schools should be able to walk into any classroom in California and find it on the same page in the Teacher’s Edition regardless of location, prior knowledge, need or teacher experience. How did the state known for innovation and forward thinking evolve a corporate reform agenda that expected from-the-book teaching instead of valuing and developing the teaching corps? MICROMANAGEMENT ON A GLOBAL SCALE – A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK?

McKinsey and Company (2010) recently published a comprehensive study on school reform from an international perspective. They studied 20 schools throughout the “globe that have achieved significant, sustained, and widespread gains, as measured by national and international standards of assessment with student outcomes” (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010, p. 7) and achievement. From these successfully reforming schools, patterns of implementation appeared that defined different approaches based on different needs. The 20 schools studied were categorized as making progress from “poor to fair, fair to good or good to great” (p. 7). Within these categories, consistent practices and behaviors were developed. When considering the approach of scripted, mandated curriculum like that mandated in California this report found that systems struggling with basic literacy 214

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and numeracy as well as absenteeism confronted these challenges through a topdown approach. These systems, in the “poor to fair journey,” had five characteristics in common: First, their teachers and principals were less experienced and less motivated than in systems further along the journey. Second, the governing education bodies had little capacity for supporting and managing schools; this problem was all the more acute due to the large size of many of these systems. Third, performance varied widely between schools in a particular system. Fourth, only limited resources were available for the improvement program (both human and financial). Fifth, the levels of student literacy and numeracy were low, and the level of absenteeism significant. (Mourshed et al., 2010, p. 30)

The model for intervention with systems sharing these characteristics included scripted lessons, technical skill building, external coaches, incentives for high performance, school visits by top-down management, and focus on instructional time on task. It is said that the approach of scripted lessons provides teachers with the role of instruction execution instead of creation. The systems that reflected this model were based in the developing world and included systems in Ghana; the South African province of Western Cape; Chile; Madhya Pradesh, a province in India; and Minas Gerais, a Brazilian state. Imposing this model on the California public school system appears to push the system into one of three of the possible futures for public education as described by Nancy Flanagan (2011). “The teacher as technician model where the person in front of the room, (or, more likely, cost-effective virtual room) is following pre-set ‘protocols’ to dump content into kids’ heads, then testing for memorization” (Thompson, 2011, p. 1). Instead of legislating for the Teacher as Skilled Professional model that would lead to an “international path” for education the resembles the most successful countries in the world’s approach to public schooling, the path California has chosen is “unfit for the international path” (Thompson, 2011, p. 2). And yet the state appears to be going head first into the land of de-professionalization of educators and “controlled engagement.” PREPACKAGED SCRIPTED PROGRAMS AND THE DE-PROFESSIONALIZATION OF THE TEACHING CORPS Teaching at its best, is an enterprise that helps human beings reach the full measure of their humanity. (Ayers, 2004)

State school boards don’t live in a vacuum. Their decisions are based on a plethora of ideas, events, crisis and successes. California is no exception. But the unintended consequences of statewide reform through a corporate agenda for public schools has left many in the state scratching their heads and wondering, “Why did this happen?” To get to the bottom of this in California, we must first look at the external pressures the California State School Board was facing. In 1996, the school board, 215

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along with the legislators in that statehouse, followed a popular trend and offered financial incentives to reduce class sizes in K-3 elementary classrooms. At this point, California had the second highest ratio of students per teacher in the nation, with Mississippi bringing up the rear (Sac, 2005). Reducing class size was seen as a solution to the achievement woes across the country, even in states with much lower class sizes than California. By August, a set of incentives and punishments was in place at the state level leaving school districts to struggle to meet the new class-size reduction requirements by the September school year start. In California, where the average primary classroom hovered around 35 students, reducing that number to the legislated 20 per classroom was going to require a lot more space and a lot more teachers. The portable classroom industry was more than happy to assist with the first problem, but California had been struggling under a teacher shortage for a decade, and finding qualified teachers to almost double the number of K-3 classrooms throughout the state was going to be a challenge. In California there had always been a law on the books that allowed for untrained teachers to get “emergency” credentialed for a year at a time. This loophole was often used to fill bilingual classrooms with Spanish-speaking college graduates. Districts throughout California petitioned the state to access this credentialing loophole to temporarily fill these new classrooms created by the class-size reduction mandate prior to the post Labor Day school year start. The petitions were granted. Initially, upper elementary and even appropriately credentialed secondary teachers jumped at the chance to teach 20 students in a self-contained primary classroom. This left huge gaps in the 4–6 grades as well as the secondary classrooms these teachers left behind. Many of the emergency credentialed teachers ended up in these classes while the experienced upper elementary and secondary teachers landed in primary classrooms. Remember, beginning reading instruction happens in those primary classrooms. Supporting a fourth grader’s reading development is very different from teaching a first grader how to read. As a result, support for beginning reading instruction became a paramount concern in California schools. As the McKinsey and Company Report found, when teachers and administrators are “low skilled, interventions include prescriptive teaching materials, and technical skill building” (Mourshed et al., 2010, p. 20). The powers that be in California figured out pretty quickly that those upper grade teachers who had chosen to fill the additional primary classrooms along with their emergency credentialed colleagues were low on instructional skills needed to teach reading and high on needed support and interventions. Scripted programs, external coaching, top-down site visits and demands for time on task accountability held hands with the new smaller primary classrooms across the state. Unfortunately, in this heavy-handed way, the powers that be deigned that not just the new or relocated teachers would succumb to this model of support, all teachers would be required to use these materials regardless of their level of expertise or years of experience. Scripted programs, or “mastery classrooms” (Shelton, 2010), were the

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norm in California elementary schools and “program fidelity” was the mantra of the day. In the field of education, we know that teacher quality is a “more critical factor in successful reading instruction than commercial program design” (Owens, 2010, p. 113). However, instead of providing effective professional development for this burgeoning group of new reading teachers, the state of California mandated inservice sessions that explained how to use these prepackaged, scripted materials. Teachers across the state sat through days and days of state funded trainings that walked teachers through boxes of materials taught using direct instruction with a whole group around scope and sequence charts (Kronemeyer, 2009). When teachers questioned aspects of the commercial programs they were given, they often “found themselves labeled as insubordinate by their supervisor and subject to administrative sanctions” (Owens, 2010, p. 113). Blind obedience took the place of professional inquiry and discussion and many teachers fell in line, others left the field. Enter the “reading police.” As program fidelity became the staff room buzzword, administrators had to find ways to make sure teachers were following the script as designed and mandated from Sacramento. Commercial publishers in California guaranteed that the promised achievement results would be positive if and only if teachers followed the prepackaged curriculum (Borman et al., 2006; Borman, Dowling, & Schneck, 2008). As stated, “Teacher fidelity to tightly designed and well engineered programs is what yields positive results” (Owens, 2010, p. 112). With the influx of funds from the newly passed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation of 2002, districts could use ESEA monies to fund “reading coaches” who would fit the role of teacher support through program fidelity monitoring. Kathy Kronemeyer (2010) describes a visit by the reading coach to her second grade classroom in southern California: The Reading Police would walk into the classroom with a clipboard. She would look at the page in the Teacher’s Edition I had open, she would check the ‘focus wall’ and then she would walk out of the room. She didn’t once look at the students, listen to the lesson, or ask what we were learning. Later that day I would get a list of items that I need to be sure to include in my focus wall and a reminder to keep to the Scope and Sequence chart she had developed. Shortly after this visit, a group of district administrators would come to the school for a ‘walk through.’ They followed the same routine as the reading police and would march through classrooms with clipboards, following the reading coach’s focus on the walls, the TE and the scope and sequence guides. (p. 4)

Reading First legislation that followed on the heels of class size legislation added to this dilemma by heavily favoring state grants that used consultant endorsed commercial reading programs. The programs consisted of “mandated direct instruction, increased assessments and rigid accountability standards” (Owens, 2010, p. 114). Because Reading First was reacting to past decades of federal initiatives with high ideals and little accountability, this round of federal incentives was restrictive, prescriptive and heartily embraced by California’s State School Board (Kennedy-Manzo, 2005). Rather than creating more tools for teachers to use 217

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in literacy instruction, Reading First promoted the use of prepackaged commercial “teacher-proof” materials (Owens, 2010). Even though federal education law forbids federal employees from “mandating, directing or controlling a state, local educational agency, or schools’ instructional content, academic achievement standards and assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction” (p. 2), by the time the Government Office of Accountability got wind of the shenanigans of the Reading First consultants, the damage had been done. A new generation of teachers could only teach reading with a script and a new generation of students was being diagnosed as struggling. Prepackaged, commercial, teacher-proof materials alienate teachers from reading instruction (Owens, 2010). They require teachers to accept the implied definition of reading instruction as nothing more than an “application of materials” (Owens, 2010, p. 113). Nancy Sheldon’s (2010) research looked at two of these “mastery classrooms” where commercial programs were used exclusively with a “mandate to follow ‘program fidelity’” (p. 331). Her study shows that instruction in these classrooms was “extremely limited” (p. 331). Teaching was not personalized, lessons were not personalized, leaving teaching as nothing more than a presentation of information. Classroom structures maintained whole group management throughout the lessons meaning students did not work in small groups, in partners, or even one-on-one with teachers. Teachers did not engage or ask questions of individual students unless they were prompted to in the teachers edition of the materials. Teachers were technicians, working from a text, delivering information. Student understanding, engagement, and learning were not considered except as summative assessment at the end of a unit. As Frank Smith (2006) reminds us, “blind faith in prepackaged methods or materials won’t help more children become literate, no matter how much the methods and materials are officially sponsored, mandated and monitored through tests” (p. 127). California teachers initially said the same things until they were labeled as troublemakers and threatened with bad annual reviews. Because commercial program developers either implicitly or explicitly define the teacher’s role as instructional technician following a sequenced set of instructions, the assumption is that the material will work equally well with any teachers, regardless of their skill, experience or training. The era of “teacher proof implementation” was born in California (Owens, 2010) to address the needs of untrained teachers. William Ayers (2004) reminds us that “at the center of the whole humanistic adventure are students and teachers in their endless variety: energetic and turbulent, struggling, stretching, reading, coming together in classrooms” (p. 1). In California the teaching/learning dyad between student and teacher was reduced to a formulaic curriculum delivery production. But if teachers don’t know the specifics of what to teach or how to present it, shouldn’t a script act as a scaffold for their instruction? Many question why this approach was unsuccessful. The answer lies in the approach and relationship with students that were ignored, discouraged and just plain negative.

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Learning is a “social activity” (Smith, 1988, p. 122) that includes connection to students’ lives, high expectations for all students, commitment to students when the going gets tough, safe havens for learning, resiliency in the face of diversity, active learning, experimentation, respect, caring and love (Nieto, 2005). It can be said that teachers allowed themselves to be reduced to automatons that recited lists, that they allowed their field to be de professionalized by not objecting to the top-down mandates for reading instruction. But in a world where the “market” is regularly applied to all things education, where students and families are “consumers,” teachers are “producers” and accountability is the “arbiter of excellence” (p. 4), is it no wonder that the idea that relationships and learning go hand in hand is not even considered. Schools provide a knowledge base that maintains a democratic society. But it is not the brick and mortar of the building that matters, and it is not the stuff that it is filled with that matters in schools. The people, the relationships, the caring, the respect and the love that emanates within the walls of the classroom and spread beyond it are what public education is in the business of. For many in our democracy, public education is “the only hope for fulfilling our society’s stated ideals” (Nieto, 2006, p. 5). But this cannot be realized until “all children have access to teachers who are competent and caring and in schools characterized by fairness, enthusiasm and high expectations” (p. 5). Supporting policies that denigrate and reduce the effectiveness of the teaching corps will not raise achievement levels, it will not narrow the achievement gap, and it will not maintain the institution of public education. One has to wonder, and perhaps join, those conspiracy theorists that suggest this was the goal. DEPROFESSIONALIZATION AND TEST SCORES

How do teachers as technicians effect standardized test scores? In the era of accountability this should be an easy question to answer. There are enough data roaming around in cyber space and institutional databases that it should be just a matter of downloading the numbers and crunching away. But the fact is the accountability system set up by NCLB did nothing to allow for system wide comparisons across states. The only reliable measure we have in education that is valid across the country is the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), the same tool available prior to NCLB. According to the NAEP results for California, prior to the implementation of NCLB, California ranked 48th in the nation when scores were averaged for fourth and eighth graders (Sac, 2005), trailed only by Mississippi and Louisiana. In addition, scores on the NAEP for white middle-class and their high SES peers were lower in California than in other states. The most recent NAEP scores show that at the national level fourth graders have only gained four points overall since 1992 on the NAEP reading tests. Eighth graders show the same result (Gewertz, 2010). For the first year, twelfth grade scores were available in 2010. Their average scores were four points below those taken in 1992. Considering that those twelfth graders of 2010 were not even in school in 1992, how many generations of students has this approach affected? 219

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After all the legislation, money and materials that have been poured into states like California from federal, state and private coffers, there is little to no improvement in reading achievement as measured by the NAEP. When teachers are subjected to mandated scripted programs they lose the autonomy to make curricular decisions for the children in their classrooms. Owen (2010) noted during his study that looked at the effects of scripted materials on teachers over an entire school year, “at the beginning of the school year the teachers discussed reading instruction in terms of the individual needs of their students. By February, however, all the teachers had begun discussing their students in terms of the scripted program units” (p. 117). Treated as if all children learn the same in a “one-size-fits-all” model, teachers become disempowered in their practice. Because scripted programs do not meet the needs of all children (Allington, 2005; Owen, 2010; Shannon, 2005), modifications must be made by well-trained teachers. But when the only professional development available to teachers is material based on inservice or data drilling, classroom instruction has little chance to improve and students suffer. In California during this period, the State School Board went so far as to limit any professional development in the state funded with state and federal monies to that which trains teachers to use explicit, systematic phonics as a basis for all reading instruction (Kennedy-Manzo, 1997). Known as the ABC Laws, consultants and trainers were required to sign an “assurance clause” in order to be posted on an “approved trainers” list. Topics such as differentiated instruction, guided reading, and writing instruction, to name a few, were banned from professional development trainings in California. As a result, the rich body of research that was being discussed in other parts of the country was banned for California teachers. A dumbing down of teacher skill provided fodder for the teacher-as-the-problem bandwagon. California teachers didn’t even know what they were missing in effective reading instruction. The limitations of teaching in a tightly controlled program do not improve student achievement on national assessments. Although the primary goal of NCLB and the Reading First Initiative was to close achievement gaps and improve academic achievement for disadvantaged children, because social and cultural contexts were ignored, these students fared worse than those prior to these federally legislated mandates. Richard Allington (2005) asserts, “NCLB and Reading First would be improved if there was less focus on programs and packages and more emphasis on the individual child who struggles with learning to read” (p. 18). This reminds us of the cliché: A good teacher can use bad material and be effective, but a bad teacher cannot make good materials effective. The movement to one standardized measure of achievement in California led to a single-minded obsession with ranking students at younger and younger ages (Allington, 2005; Ayres, 2008; Owen, 2010; Shannon, 2005). The massive resources sucked into the business of testing left little money for quality teacher training, lower class size, access to community resources, or building of new buildings. In California, “pink slipping” of teachers has become an annual event with layoffs striking deep into the tenured ranks of experienced faculty. It can be 220

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said that the teacher shortage in California is finally over. But can the state afford the fall out? The testing business “cheats students, families, and teachers materially, deceives them educationally, and is a step backward for education” (Ayres, 2008, p. 25). Its costs, while high in monetary concerns, are exorbitant in their effects of generations of public school children in California. Frank Smith (1988) sums it up when he states the greatest danger to education today is evaluation. Evaluation causes students to behave differently, teachers to behave differently, and parents and principals to behave differently. The tension in classrooms and schools during testing time “is palpable and sometimes lasts for weeks” (p. 132). De-professionalizing the teacher corps does not raise test scores, teaching to the test does not raise test scores, and systematic, explicit phonics instruction does not raise test scores. High stakes testing does not necessarily measure achievement. If this is the case, what does it measure? DO TEST SCORES DEFINE ACHIEVEMENT OR JUST DEMOGRAPHICS? I am sorry but we didn’t really have time to get together and plan on our writing because they are just packing us up with tests. (Katelynn, a fourth grader in a high-needs Southern California school, 2011).

Schools reflect the society they serve. In a school system that has been breaking under the budget strain of California’s deficit for years, the amount of public money given to commercial publishing companies to pay for standardized testing is outrageous. The current high-stakes model of testing in California and the rest of the country “indicates little about the students [it tests] but more about the society” it measures (Shannon, 2001, p. 47). High-stakes testing compares, ranks and categorizes communities, schools, families and students. It does not efficiently guide instruction. The only value in this kind of information to an educational system is in its ability to define where need is greater. Unfortunately the highstakes nature of standardized assessment does not take advantage of this information. Instead, punitive measures and derogative labels are assigned to the schools and students in the most need, with the fewest resources. Under this federal mandate, schools now “goose-step to the beat of mandated exams” (Nieto, 2005, p. 180) in an attempt to stay off the “crummy schools list” published in every newspaper across the country. If a school settles onto this list for too long, it runs the risk of school restructuring or in some places hostile take over. Real estate is bought and sold around this list. Educational quality and potential future earning of its graduates is through this one-time qualitative measure. Why does one test maintain so much power? What is the value to the society of defining winners and losers in the nation’s educational endeavor? Who stands to benefit from this sticks and carrots approach? There are some that say the reason for the poor performance of U.S. students on international measures of achievement is because the United States has a very high percentage of children in poverty, in comparison with the rest of the industrialized world taking the same tests (Goodman, 2006; Krashen, in press; White, 1982). The 221

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United States poverty rate for children hovers above 20% and goes up every year – compare that to the poverty rates of Denmark (3%), Finland (5.4%), and South Korea (15%) (Nationmaster, 2011), all top scorers in the same international measures. Is there a correlation between the poverty rate of a country and its ranking on international measures? Within this same data, it appears that middle to high-income American students in well-funded schools outscore these same countries on nearly every measure (Bracey, 2009; Martin, 2004; Payne & Biddle, 1999). Does poverty matter? It would appear so. If this is the case, what does standardized testing measure? The United States Department of Education acknowledged in 2007 that “growing up in poverty can negatively impact children’s mental and behavioral development” (p. 23), making it difficult to learn. Pat Cunningham (2007) concluded from her research “poverty is the largest correlate of reading achievement” (p. 382). It has always been a joke amongst educators that you could swap the teachers from one high performing school and drop them into a low performing school and the scores would stay the same (Arias, 2010; Kronemeyer, 2009). Standardized tests are used to rank and compare children but it is unclear whether that ranking is based on achievement, the neighborhood in which the children live or the parents to which the children were born. This suggests that the “achievement gap” is an economic phenomenon and not an educational crisis. Until the United States can get a handle on the non-school factors that impact urban, rural and suburban areas our ranking on international tests will not improve, the economic future of nearly 20% of our citizens will not improve, and the cost of entitlements to care for this disenfranchised club will get larger. There is limited empirical data that supports the claims being made by the accountability crowd waving their standardized test banners. Some would say this model does more harm than good (Kohn, 1999). Increased testing does not improve achievement, it simply changes teachers’ approach to instruction (Krashen, in press), narrowing curriculum to those surface level skills that are measured on the tests. Children in poverty have little resource to supplement this low level, unengaged teaching. Standardized test scores do not predict later academic success any better than grades do. The top-down mandates of prepackaged programs and standardized testing strike some as the hallmark of “authoritarian communication known as propaganda” (Ayers, 2004, p. 6). But if you consider the nature and purpose of propaganda from a political and social perspective you will see some similarities with current state and federal level education policy. The powers that be are “always policing, never answerable” (Ayers, 2004, p.6). Their motives and actions are designed to manipulate and control, to induce “a dull notion of acquiescence, if not approval, rather than a critical or considered response”(Ayers, 2004, p.6). The information produced is meant to be consumed, not engaged. The goal is domination instead of the free-thinking, active citizenry. When you consider what segment of the population is benefitting from this educational policy, it is clear why a system has been created to define winners and losers. When the 222

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disenfranchised gain a voice, they no longer remain disenfranchised. In a society of limited resources, the fewer with a voice stand to hold onto to the “stuff” and the wealth longer. The disenfranchised student is not expected to think much or discuss much or contradict or contest. The world is “predigested” and static leaving them “obedient and compliant, isolated and lonely … a tourist in her own life … reduced to a thing” (Ayers, 2004, p. 7). They are passive listeners filling in the blanks of their worksheets, barking at print as quickly as they can without understanding or realizing that there is meaning behind those words. As California teacher Ted (2010), a pseudonym, clearly reminds us: A standards based model of education does not necessarily coincide with each child’s developmental trajectory. High stakes testing only rewards those who develop early enough to be classified as successful. For the students whose timeline may vary from scripted programs and state standard grade level expectations, their school years are fraught with frustration and failure. However, an experienced teacher is the one variable that may tip the scale for some students utilizing their ZPD [zone of proximal development] and keeping them motivated and engaged in learning. (p. 3)

The one thing standardized testing does not measure is achievement, and yet important decisions about the educational program of many children, teachers and schools are often based solely on this measure. WHAT TRAINING SHOULD BE PROVIDED TO PRESERVICE TEACHERS FOR READING INSTRUCTION?

Teacher Ted (2010) a newer member of the teaching corps in California, believes that all teachers of reading should “obtain their masters degree and reading specialist credential. It should be mandatory” (p. 3). Because there are “many paths to literacy,” no one prepackaged program or strategy will work with every child. Ted has spent his professional career working in schools with extreme poverty and low English language abilities. While he had good training in his preservice work in Northern California, nothing prepared him for the scope and difficulty of the work he encountered in the Coachella Valley of Southern California. It wasn’t until he completed his M.Ed. in Literacy that he began to see how the pieces fit. In the area of preservice literacy instruction, for most states, and the state of California is no exception, preservice literacy courses are nothing more than survey courses that touch on the topics of reading, writing, listening and speaking in a shallow, but wide approach. The state standards for both teachers and literacy content take a higher precedence over preparation for the variety of learners, materials, mandates and assessments the new teacher will encounter. As Ted (2010) implies, it wasn’t until he could sit with literacy theory and instruction over time that he began to understand how the complexity of written language acquisition could be utilized to the academic benefit of his students. But requiring all teachers who impact literacy in the K-12 system to complete a graduate degree prior to licensure is not cost effective and therefore impossible. So how can we guarantee that our classroom teachers have the best experience and knowledge base

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to develop written language acquisition for all the types of children and schools they might encounter? Before we go into the specifics of preservice/inservice support for teachers, we have to come to some understanding about what literacy instruction is and why it is important. It is one thing to define the skills, strategies and materials currently in vogue in K-12 classrooms. Training with these items once again turns teachers into nothing but technicians with limited abilities to modify their instruction as needed. But, if our goal is more than simply training and “classroom literacy practice involves students in conducting student-choice research projects and taking social action” (Behrmann, 2006, p. 497), then we will affirm the role of reading and writing as “ways of being in the world” (Gee, 1992). This belief takes simple reading and writing out of the skill-based model of communicative actions and plants it firmly into the souls of those who use language for thought, voice and action. With that in mind, it makes sense to look at Darling-Hammond’s (2008) definition of the “role of readers in interacting with text [as]: code breaker; meaning maker; text user; text critic” (p. 73). Because good readers are more than just code breakers they “are also much more intentional, strategic and mindful about their reading when a situation calls for it” (p. 73). Reading instruction must support this sense of literacy instruction and not insist on exclusive focus of “on the page” application of skills and strategies. There is a strong discrepancy in the way in which children naturally acquire language and the “plodding and unproductive manner” (Smith, 1988, p. 109) that language is taught in school. It is a common reading teacher joke that if oral language were taught in schools the way written language is taught, 20% of the population would be labeled as unable to speak. While silencing the voices of some may be a goal of many American institutions, it is not the goal of the American public education system to create illiteracy in the population served. Smith (2006) reminds us of some of the myths and fallacies of reading instruction in the United States: 1. Aim for early mastery of the rules of reading 2. Ensure that phonic rules are learned and used 3. Teach letters or words one at a time, making sure each one is learned before moving on 4. Make word perfect reading a prime objective 5. Discourage “guessing”; insist that children read carefully 6. Insist upon accuracy all the time 7. Correct errors immediately

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8. Identify and treat problem readers as a early as possible 9. Use every opportunity during reading instruction to improve spelling and written expression, and also insist on the best possible spoken English (pp. 128-133)

Yet, most prepackaged reading programs treat these fallacies as truth. It is obvious that these fallacies deal almost exclusively with the correction and perfection of interaction with the print on the page. Meaning, reflection or the metacognitive aspects of language on one’s thinking are conspicuously absent from these fallacies. In addition, all the arts of language (reading, writing, listening and speaking) are not represented equally. Reading takes center stage as if the only written language worth addressing is the input of written print. The relationship between oral language proficiency and the output of writing are ignored. Finally, the absence of the social aspects of language (Smith, 2006) turn instruction based on this list into a individual memorization/mastery endeavor independent of social interaction and transactional communication. No wonder learning to read in America’s classroom has become drudgery leaving a high percentage of students capable of reading but choosing not to. Effective teaching has been defined around Darling-Hammond’s (2008) three “Principals of Learning.” The first principal includes the realities that “students come to the classroom with prior knowledge that must be addressed if teaching is to be effective” (p. 4). Students are not blank slates waiting to be filled with knowledge. Children live rich lives prior to coming to school as well as outside of the daily classroom. When these lives and experiences are brought into the classroom by acknowledging and acting upon what is already known, both motivation and access to new learning is more effective. There is nothing worse than being taught something one already knows. Principal two reminds us “students need to organize and use knowledge conceptually if they are to apply it beyond the classroom” (Darling-Hammond, 2008, p. 4). Simply providing learners with a routine of skills to use does not guarantee use beyond the specifics of the classroom-based example. Just as teachers cannot modify prepackaged literacy programs structures without knowledge of other approaches to instruction, students cannot apply school knowledge to their lives unless learning is more than just basic skills. Having the knowledge to modify skills and strategies as needed is critical to the application of learning to many settings. Since our goal is to educate for success outside the classroom, instruction must provide understandings of how school learning can be applied in other settings. The third principal states “students learn more effectively if they understand how they learn and how to manage their own learning” (Darling-Hammond, 2008, p. 4). Rote memorization and basic skill building will not encourage the thinkers needed to maintain a strong democracy. Without the ability to use metacognition throughout the learning, students become nothing more than short-term memory masters instead of thoughtful, considerate and articulate citizens. Reading for meaning must be the goal of literacy instruction, while word-by-word acquisition is simply the means with which to accomplish the goal. Educators should 225

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acknowledgement that readers learn to read by reading, writers learn to write by writing and the role of the teacher is to make these acts as simple, yet engaging as possible. Teachers should practice getting out of the way of learning as much as they focus on the explicit instruction of the “bits of language.” Literacy instruction should be more about effective strategy development of all the arts of language instead of the use of systematic, explicit teaching of isolated skills. With this in mind, Darling-Hammond (2008) defines the steps necessary for explicit literacy strategy teaching. These include: – – – – –

Naming and describing the strategy – why, when, and how it should be used Modeling the strategy in action – either by teacher or student, or both Using the strategy collaboratively in a sort of group think-aloud Guiding practice using the strategy with gradual release of responsibility Using the strategy independently – with no teacher guidance, either individually or in small student-led groups (p. 90)

This approach allows for explicit teaching, student based practice and metacognitive application, and scaffolding to support the variety of learners’ needs. Good readers do not just “do reading,” they are thoughtful about their understandings about the meaning and purpose of a text, and they have plans or strategies to fix their comprehension if the process goes awry. But they only know it has gone awry when meaning is not forthcoming. Good readers read only for meaning. Speed, accuracy, structure and articulation are only valued as they apply to understanding and comprehension. Preservice and inservice literacy instruction should address the issues and teaching of written language acquisition from a rich, deep understanding of all the aspects of language and its value to both the individual and the society as a whole. It should not simple deal with the explicit teaching of discrete bits of language through labeling, memorization or isolation. The bits matter when comprehension breaks down but they are not the be-all of literacy instruction. When literacy instruction is seated in the knowledge base of the teachers and not seated exclusively in the activities and pages of prepackage programs, literacy instruction will resemble and create the literacy population necessary to maintain a strong democracy. But this will require more than survey level preservice requirements and dog and pony show inservice offerings. When teachers take on the mantle of knowledgeable facilitators of language acquisition, students will become strategic users of language in all necessary settings. WHEN ARE SCRIPTED PROGRAMS APPROPRIATE FOR READING INSTRUCTION?

Prepackaged scripted programs provide scaffolding for novice teachers or teachers making grade-level changes in schools. They fill in the blanks of literacy acquisition content when teachers do not have this knowledge or access to quality training from any other source. Not all experienced teachers are interested in a 226

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graduate degree, as Teacher Ted suggests. It is unfortunate that a state like California decided to put its money behind material-based instruction instead of professional development for teachers. For the group of upper grade teachers that moved into the 20-to-1 classrooms in California, prepackaged scripts assisted them in understanding the skills needed for beginning readers. For the emergency credentialed teachers with little or no training, the scripts also provided support for their teaching of reading content as they struggled with management and school culture: Two areas the experienced teachers would not need to have addressed. It was clear that the Department of Education in Sacramento did not see developing quality teachers as an appropriate intervention for California schools at this time. Instead, achieving the basics of literacy and numeracy took precedence through mandated commercial programs and high-stakes assessments. Although this intervention approach showed success in developing systems, California schools did not fit this profile. But there must be a caution to those dependent upon prepackaged commercial programs. These scripted programs run the risk of perpetuating the “banking concept” (Friere, 1970) of education where the teacher is seen as the one able to bestow the gift of knowledge to those who bring only absolute ignorance (Ayers, 2008), the presentation of curriculum instead of learning. In this way, justification for the teacher’s existence is maintained while the classroom is seen as “slave galley with the teacher merely beating the drum” (p. 8). Authoritarian implementation of commercial programs runs the risk of undermining the participatory spirit of the teachers, students, and system. This will ultimately undermine the democratic spirit of participation endemic in a strong democracy. “Democracy demands action, thinking human beings” (p. 10). Absolute fidelity with commercial programs does not. CONCLUSION

It should be clear that in a first world economy, mandated implementation of prepackaged scripted programs is not appropriate. As the McKinley (2010) report states: “Mandating an intervention appears to be chosen as the dominant approach when these three conditions occur in the system: 1. 2. 3.

The desired change is considered “non-negotiable” There are few or no losers as a result of the particular change The pace of change needs to be rapid. (p. 62)

Mandating allows for fast action and “fidelity of practice across the system;” persuasion allows for gradual acceptance of a particular change with stakeholders feeling real ownership (Mourshed et al., 2010). In California, the powers that be set up a crisis in literacy instruction that they felt must be addressed quickly, consistently and with little concern for the stakeholders involved. The influx of untrained teachers into classrooms as a result of class-size reduction legislation led to this crisis. In addition, the federal focus on 227

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test-based accountability enhanced this crisis, especially as the influx of immigrant and low-income populations flooded many California schools. But why mandate a specific model to every teacher in a California elementary classroom? Why not provide support, training and scaffolding to the teachers in need, and leave the experienced teaching corps to their devices? The model California adopted, instead of building on the strengths of the system, succumbs to “bring(ing) all schools in the system up to a minimum quality threshold” (Mourshed et al., 2010, p. 20) as if California were a third world developing system rather than a first world economic power. In California, the ideological demonization of literacy approaches that did not match certain high-powered factions’ beliefs about literacy led to the current situation in California classrooms: de-professionalized teachers, static achievement scores, and apathetic students. There is value in the scaffolding power of commercial programs for reading when those programs are not seen as the Holy Grail of reading instruction but are simply supportive materials to be used in conjunction with good teachers. But in addition, effective staff development for teachers, an opening of the conversations surrounding literacy acquisition from many perspectives and the acknowledgement that the best resource for effective literacy instruction resides in the people, not the stuff, will provide the rich literacy experiences our students need. We must remember that it is teachers who teach, not programs. The lessons learned from watching the California model serve as a cautionary tale to other systems considering change through reform. When you consider the model of reform to be a journey from poor to fair, you are setting up the educational system to be a top-down mandated environment where basic skills are the only goal. In the educational world of the largest superpower, reform should be focused on movement from good to great and great to excellent (Mourshed et Al., 2010). These models focus on “shaping the professional” as well as “improving through peers and innovation” (p. 28). Anything less is demeaning, destructive, and questions the intentions of those mandating such reforms. “Education is not and never can be neutral” (Ayres, 2008, p. 10). QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3. 4.

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What steps would you have recommended to address the achievement woes if the State Board of Education in California had asked? In a system the size of California with over 7,000 schools, how do you encourage quality in a systematic way? What sort of schools will produce the citizens that can realize the economic environment California requires to be sustainable? How should California approach the adoption of Common Core State Standards with its accountability measure?

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EDWARD A. JANAK

REMEMBERING THE PRESENT IS THE PAST WRIT LARGE An Examination of the Politics of the Dominant Texts in the United States, 1700s-1900s

In the second decade of the new millennium, the Texas Board of Education adopts new textbook standards in history that exclude commonly held beliefs about the United States and the vox populi shouts its discord. The California Board of Education adopts new history standards acknowledging the role of gay/lesbian figures in the United States and different voices are equally cacophonous in their discord. Not enough voices are asking questions such as “what is the origin of this discord?” and “Where did the passion over what America’s youth are reading come from?” Social reconstructionist educator Theodore Brameld began his 1945 work Design for America admonishingly saying, “The schools by and large seem to have forgotten that time consists of three dimensions rather than merely two” (p. 2). While he intended to remind educators that they needed to look to the future as well as the present and the past, in today’s world the opposite is true; we need to be reminded to examine the past before the future. Speaking metaphorically, every windshield comes with a rear view mirror; educationally speaking, those engaged in the study of education and its practitioners need to be reminded to glance into it. This is particularly true in a work that examines (and deconstructs) the politics of textbooks; it is useful to remember the politics that shaped texts of the past as they have marched towards our current state. In essence, before the reader puts on the various lenses through which they are examining the present, they also must cast an eye backward and wonder how it is we got to this point, for each era asking Michael Apple’s curricular question, “whose knowledge is of most worth?” not “what knowledge is of most worth?” (1991, p. 1). Indeed, it must be remembered that textbooks are not produced in a vacuum. As further explained by Apple, “Textbooks are surely important in and of themselves” (1991, p. 4). They reflect “particular constructions of reality, particular ways of selecting and organizing the vast universe of possible knowledge,” and embody “what Raymond Williams called the selective tradition – someone’s selection, someone’s vision of legitimate knowledge and culture” (Apple, 1991, pp. 4-5). Because of this selective tradition, they can serve both as barometers and mirrors of the larger society in which they are produced. While openly acknowledging Apple’s further assertion that this selective tradition by definition leads to “enfranchising one group’s cultural capital” (1991, p. 5) at the expense of H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 231–255. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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another’s, this chapter does not examine such cultural disenfranchisement. Doing such is worthy of a work in and of itself. What this chapter does focus on is, as Michel Foucault reminds us, the notion that doing history is a process. Effective histories consider how social, political, cultural, educational, and institutional discourses form the human subject (Agnello, 2001, p. 4). While we are reminded that there exist multiple meanings to a text, the primary and ultimate meaning springs up through the manifest formulations, it hides beneath what appears, and secretly duplicates it, because each discourse contains the power to say something other than what it actually says, and thus to embrace a plurality of meanings: a plethora of the ‘signified’ in relation to a single ‘signifier’ (Foucault, 1972, p. 118). This chapter is concerned with looking at the manifest formulations used within varying texts that embrace this plurality of meanings. For example, while the primary purpose of the examined texts was teaching basic literacy, the selected readings ranged in content from history to science. The ultimate purpose of these lessons was to spread a common belief system, linguistically and morally, throughout the people of the United States. This chapter critically examines three of the most dominant texts (series) used in our nation’s past, contextualizing the sociocultural politics of the periods that both shaped and were shaped by the readers. Early American textbooks were expressly political in nature; they were intended to nurture and form both the mind of the young scholar and the nation as a whole. In doing so, the chapter examines the texts both as explicit and implicit curricula, not only examining explicitly political passages, but those that discuss attitudes towards citizenship and living well, implicitly creating a better society. The theoretical basis of this examination is what Michel Foucault referred to as a history of ideas, an approach with admittedly “badly drawn frontiers” and “methods borrowed from here,” but also an approach that allows for an author to “cross the boundaries of existing disciplines, to deal with them from the outside, and to reinterpret them” (Foucault, 1972, pp. 136-137). The history of ideas presented in this chapter revolve around critical examination of three sets of primary data – the textbooks most widely used in the nation’s public schools through 1950 with all that definition entails, i.e., a predominantly White, middle class, male, etc., student body. Analytic voices of the last halfcentury are included in the history of ideas that shape a political analysis of the texts’ contents. The chapter begins analyzing texts of the United States in the theocratic colonies; the first text examined is The New England Primer and its emphasis on Christian citizenry. With the Revolution came a new political purpose in our texts: to produce citizens that would build and preserve our emerging republic. Noah Webster’s Blue Back Speller (and the entire triptych of which it is part) was essential to this new, explicitly political purpose. With the rise of common schools in this country came the popularity of the McGuffey’s Readers, the most popular series in U.S. schools through the 1950s. While certainly not comprehensive, these three snapshots will hone the lenses through which readers read other chapters in the book and develop their individual means of resistance. 232

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All of the works considered in this chapter were intended for younger children. It is interesting to note that the three fictions of contemporary early literacy texts set forth by Alan Luke (1991) in his essay “Basal Reading Textbooks and the Teaching of Literacy” are not true of the texts throughout history. The first is that “literacy is a neutral, ahistorical set of psychological skills divorced from larger societal contexts and issues” (p. 202). Indeed, prior to the 20th century authors such as Noah Webster and William Holmes McGuffey understood that textbooks, particularly early literacy texts, are expressly political and historical and wrote theirs with those purposes in mind. The second is that “educational science can ascertain the optimal way of transmitting that competence” (p. 202). Up to the 1950s, textbooks took a distinctly essentialist tone; the readings imparted were selected as being necessary information both for students to learn to develop their character and for the development of the new nation. This tone was broken by the combination of educational forces, embodied in the adoption of more progressive approaches to curricula building, and political forces, embodied in the various civil rights movements of the latter half of the 20th century. The third is that textbooks “will ensure the teaching of literacy in an equitable and effective manner” (p. 202). Again, this is a marked departure from the early readers, one purpose of which was to separate the strong students from the weak, using schools as a sorting machine. While theoretically lying in Foucault’s history of ideas, there exist practical implications for the contemporary reader. An examination of these texts sheds light on the formation of an American sensibility; to understand the political message of the primary readers is to understand the sociopolitical gestalt of their ages. These implications also move to issues of contemporary practice ranging from the harmful, such as the notion of censorship as a means of producing alliterate students, to the potentially beneficial, such as using this knowledge to tap into digital-age media and expand the canon in ways previously unheard of. LIVING IN A THEOCRACY – THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER

Before considering the Puritan influence in texts in the New World, there must be made mention of one additional fact. Many authors writing in the history of education tend to commit a significant error of omission when discussing schooling in the new world. Often the narratives follow the same pattern of tracing Enlightenment roots in Europe across the Atlantic with the English and then discussing the emergence of schooling in the New England colonies, eliminating the presence of peoples living in the New World prior to the English arrival. While there was not necessarily formal schooling among the hundreds of different Native cultures that lived in what is today the geographic 48 contiguous states of the United States, to say they didn’t have formal education systems is flawed at best, evidence of Eurocentric bias, and example of privileged, racist thinking at worst. While there was no “one” system of educating amongst all peoples, it must be noted that there existed, via the oral tradition, several systems of formal education prior to European arrival. What separates these Native antecedents from the European traditions is the superficial, but actually quite complex, lack of a written 233

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language. This is not to disparage the long, valid, and valued system of education used by the First Nations; however, it is almost impossible for educational historians to fully and accurately recreate such education. It is far easier instead to look at the written words and begin where history can be grounded in written evidence. That said, while the Puritan settlers in the New England colonies weren’t the first here, they were unique in their evangelical passion for formal schooling. Since the 1700s the trend in schooling has been apparent: first goes New England, then the rest of the nation. The first education law, public school law, university, and public high school all came from this region. The Common School movement of the mid-1800s was born there, and the region still leads the nation in school performance and Ivy League university presence. All of this educational trend setting can be traced back immediately to the Puritanical belief system that came over in with the Mayflower in 1620. The Puritans have earned a place in popular consciousness but that place is more akin to H. L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism as “the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere, may be happy” (1949, p. 624) and his attack on the form in his 1924 A Book of Prefaces. However, the group was eminently more complex than that. Emerging concomitantly with Comenius and other early Enlightenment thinkers, the Puritans generally held out that the reforms of the church did not go far enough. In 1646 they came to great, if short lived, power in their native England after the English Civil War. After meeting much resistance in England and seeking more religious freedom, the group first fled to the Netherlands, which they found to be overly secularized, and then made their way to the New World. Their legacy is felt in many aspects of U.S. culture, social and political policy. Those who subscribe to the Presbyterian faith owe their religious observance to the Puritans. In addition, the notion of a “protestant work ethic” directly emerges from Puritanism. They believed all things belonged to God, including time. Since all time was God’s time, it had to be spent in industry or reverence: at work or in worship. Any missed time was a misuse of God’s property; it wasn’t just sloth that was a sin, but any time not spent in activity. This belief system was carried over to their schools; this was a formalized, fundamental religious purpose to education, the effects of which are still felt in the 21st century school debates surrounding issues such as evolution/intelligent design/creationism, character education, and abstinence only/comprehensive sex education. To the Puritans and other English separatists that moved to the new world, reading was essential for salvation: Every person had a duty to read their Bible and Psalter to develop a personal relationship with God. The fact that this was schooling literally to save souls caused two major effects: First, schoolmasters (almost always male) used whatever means necessary to educate children, literally scaring the hell out of them; and second, schooling in the New England colonies grew at a faster rate than the general population. The Massachusetts colony passed both the first education law, 1642’s Massachusetts Compulsory Attendance Law, and the first school law, 1647’s Old Deluder Satan Act. The first compelled every head of household to ensure that all children in their household were educated in 234

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literacy, religion, and the laws. The second compelled every town of 50 or more households to staff a petty (elementary) school and towns of 100 or more households to staff both petty and Latin grammar (secondary) schools. This feeling of the necessity of schooling caused the New Englanders to not only open more schools at a faster rate than anyone else, but also caused them to craft their own textbook. The text produced was an interesting mix of European Enlightenment thinking with New World sensibilities; indeed, to fully appreciate the development of the textbook in the United States, the reader actually must go back to the Enlightenment thinkers of Europe. The Age of Reason must be considered for both its intellectual and sociocultural impacts. Intellectually, the period gave rise to such movements as the study of natural history, the popularization of academic journals, intellectual public organizations, the emergence of book publishers and the ensuing rampant spread of literacy, and, most related to this discourse, the spread of the academy as a means of formal education. It was the sociocultural traditions of the period that gave rise to the idea of public schooling as we know it in the United States. It was against both the intellectual and sociocultural Enlightenment backdrops that emerged the father of schooling. Often lost in the fog of institutional educational memory (in favor of thinkers such as John Dewey and Horace Mann) is the Czech theologian and educator Jan Amos Komenský, otherwise known as John Amos Comenius, who became famous both as a theologian and scholar particularly focusing on the processes and purposes of education. As an educator influenced by Bacon, Komenský wanted to develop an organization of knowledge which led his 1657 publication of the first children’s picture book, Orbis Sensualium Pictum: Hoc Est Omnium Principalium in Mundo Rerum & In Vita Actionum, otherwise known as Comenius’ Visible World or A Nomenclature and Pictures of All the Chief Things that Are in the World and Men’s Employments Therein. The book, considered groundbreaking in the fields of audiovisual learning and children’s literature, followed a set of core values in which Comenius believed, which unfortunately all too often get overlooked in today’s textbook market and prescripted curricula: – Children should be multilingual, and they learn foreign languages best through use of their vernacular – Children best learn through objects rather than words; by starting with objects most familiar to the child, a teacher can then introduce the child to both abstract or unfamiliar objects – Children should be comprehensively and simultaneously taught lessons pertaining to their physical and social environment as well as topics in religious/moral, and traditional/academic subjects – Learning should be perceived by the children as a pleasure rather than a task (though, in an authorial note, not necessarily “fun”) – Instruction should be for all children. While Comenius’ The Visible World was tremendously influential in the educational backgrounds of the Puritans, many wanted to build on Comenius’ 235

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belief that learning had to have a local context and thus develop a more pertinent text to life in the New World. As such, in 1690 English bookbinder Benjamin Harris, living in Boston, began publishing what first was titled The Protestant Tutor, later changing name to that by which it would become famous, the New England Primer. Later editions would extend the title to include the subtitle Improved for the More Easy Attaining the True Reading of English. Under this name its popularity spread beyond New England; it became the most popular textbook of the 18th century, until it was replaced by Noah Webster’s revolutionary Blue Back Spellers after 1790. The first textbook published in what would become the United States, the Primer remained actively in print for use in schools of all types until 1900. Initially, the explicit purpose of the Primer was to teach the Puritanic definition of religion. As described by textbook historian Clifton Johnson (1963), there was a “need of guiding public sentiment on this subject … for those who studied the Bible did not understand its teachings alike, and printing no sooner gave the Scriptures a wide distribution than divergent opinions multiplied” (p. 70). On the surface, the Primer is fruit picked directly from the Visible World’s tree. It incorporates pictures and text to hook student interest. It builds from concrete to abstract, moving through quickly. It both includes direct explanations and parables to spread its message. There is one marked difference: It is easy to examine the Primer through modern eyes and see it merely as a work of theology, not necessarily a political text. However, that interpretation neglects the fact that, particularly in the New England Colonies, religion and politics were one and the same; the early colonies were theocracies in all but name. Just as Comenius described kingdoms and the various occupations held therein, the Primer described the duties of being a good Christian – the implication being that was a good citizen. Early editions reflected many Puritanical core beliefs; for example, on the wise use of time, one of the passages read by children was “The idle fool/is whip’t at school” (1727, “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All”). For another example, reflecting the notion of predestination children were reminded that “Time cuts down all/both great and small” and, next to a picture of an hourglass, “As runs the glass/man’s life doth pass” (1727, “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All”). As time went on and the Primer began to gain popularity (or possibly the reverse of that), the new editors began softening the messages for a more mainstream audience. Instead of the heavily predestination messages, for example, the 1777 edition shows a group of drunken, rowdy young men with the Grim Reaper peeking in at them from around a corner. The admonition, “While youth do chear/death may be near” (1777, “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All”) is more a reminder to live a life of frugality than a reminder that the afterlife is just around the corner. However, this is not to say there weren’t explicit political notions expressed in the work. By the 1777 edition, the inside cover proudly depicted a portrait of John Hancock, “President of the American Congress.” One of the most interesting political changes took part in the first section for children, a pictorial alphabet, specifically in the letter “K.” Early editions depicted King James with the explanation still influenced by the notion of divine right of kings “Our King the good/No man of blood” (1727, “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All”); by the time of 236

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the American Revolution, this was changed to “Proud Korah’s troop/was swallowed up” (1777, “In Adam’s Fall We Sinned All”). This Biblical allusion is temporally and politically interesting. Referring to an event that took place while Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt recounted in the book of Numbers, Korah was one of the leaders of the Israelites during their time being lost in the wilderness. Eventually, Korah stood up and questioned Moses’ leadership, so Moses told the entire population that the following day God would let them see whom they should follow. The next morning, Moses and his followers stood on one place, Korah and his followers on the other; God had the earth open up below Korah and all of his people, swallow them up, and then close above them. It is not too far a leap to see the time of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness as akin to the colonists floundering through the early days of the American Revolution, Moses and his leaders akin to the founding fathers, the implication being for newly minted Americans to have faith and remain loyal to the new nation, and it would become a land of milk and honey – a new Canaan on earth for those who stayed the course. The work ends with what could pass as a bit of theater, a conversation meant to be acted out between a Youth, the Devil, and Christ. Predictably, the Devil tempts Youth away from what he should be doing, much to Christ’s chagrin. By play’s end 10 pages later, Death arrives to take Youth off to hell; beg and plead as he tries, Death is there for a purpose: “Thy body in the grave I’ll hide,/And thy dear soul in hell must lie,/ With Devils to eternity” (1777, “A Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil”). The conclusion (in the not so subtly named epilogue, “The Conclusion”) warns children how not to live: Thus end the days of woeful youth Who won’t obey nor mind the truth; Nor hearken to what preachers say, But do their parents disobey. They in their youth go down to hell, Under eternal wrath to dwell. Many don’t live out half their days, For cleaving unto sinful ways. (1777, “A Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil”)

The values necessary to live are clearly implied within that text: obedience to authority, responsibility to a greater moral cause; failure to abide by these results in shortened life and an ugly afterlife. These lessons guided the minds of generations of Americans. While it is over simplistic to say that the United States was founded on one set of Christian values – there were literally dozens of different sects and faiths present in the United States with radically different agendas and purposes by the time of the Revolution – the roots of public schools and the textbooks they would use grow from such Puritanical roots. However, a revolutionary figure altered the face of texts, using schoolbooks for near treasonous purpose.

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BUILDING A DEMOCRACY – WEBSTER’S BLUE BACK SPELLER

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, the leaders of the emerging United States joined and discussed the future of the emerging nation. There wasn’t much agreed upon for almost a decade; however, all agreed that the new nation needed as many supports as possible. This was particularly true as almost as soon as the United States had a ratified constitution in 1787, it was already entering entanglements domestic and abroad. There wasn’t much time to settle into the new system of government before putting it to the test. The United States signed the Jay Treaty, forming an enduring, if a bit “on again, off again,” partnership with England, in 1794 – the same year as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. The Louisiana Purchase came in 1803, and the United States fought another war with Britain in 1812 – just 35 years after ratifying the constitution. It was against this backdrop that emerged what some consider the father of American educational thought, Noah Webster. Born in Connecticut in 1722, Webster was a student at Yale University when the American Revolution began. He served in the Connecticut militia while a college student, and he became an outspoken advocate of the new nation. As was common at the time, Webster served as a schoolmaster for three years while studying to become a lawyer. However, soon after beginning his practice of law, Webster realized it was not his calling and returned to teaching, opening up a series of unsuccessful schools before moving to New York City to edit a series of Federalist papers. Webster became the most prolific writer of his generation, producing political treatises, pamphlets, and textbooks. Where others amongst the founding fathers debated a nationalized system of education along federalist/anti-federalist lines, Webster was the most outspoken in recognizing that the emerging public schools of the nation could be integral in the nation’s development. To this end, Webster wrote a series of textbooks – a speller, grammar, and reader – that followed in the pattern of Comenius and the Primer. These texts served not only to educate children in the rudiments of language but, due to its selection of readings and passages, formulate and perpetuate an American culture. Webster argued that American culture could be superior to that of European cultures and wanted to spread the word throughout the youth of the new nation. It was this distinction that caused Webster to gradually introduce new spellings and pronunciations of words, to craft a language that, while rooted in European English, was distinctly American in dialect. It was this same impetus that caused him to write, in 1807, An American Dictionary of the English Language. Webster had a twofold purpose: to streamline the language and to create an American culture. Prior to Webster’s speller, as reminded by Clifton Johnson (1963), spelling “in different text-books had been far from uniform; and in letters, records, and other manuscripts of the time there was a curious variety in word construction” (p. 170). When reading correspondence of the period even the most highly educated citizens “often spelled the same word in several different ways.” Webster created “the American standard and brought order out of chaos” (p. 170). While admittedly he “did not accomplish all that he at first planned in the way of reform, but some of his innovations … Textbooks in American society: Politics, 238

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policy, and pedagogy found permanent acceptance, and he did very effective work in counteracting vulgarisms in pronunciation” (p. 170). To craft his uniquely American idiom, Webster used the Speller of his language series. Teaching spelling and pronunciation, Webster included a variety of phrases additionally intended to teach a variety of civic virtues. For example, one verse included the civic admonition, “By the blessing of the upright, the city is exalted, but it is overthrown by the mouth of the wicked. Where no counsel is, the people fall; but in the midst of counselors, there is safety” (2004, p. 65). However, he included more practical lessons as well, such as a lesson in the currency of the new nation after it had rejected the British system, which explained somewhat contemptuously: William, tell me how many mills make up a cent? Ten. – How many cents in a dime? Ten. – Tell me the other coins of the United States. Ten dimes make a dollar, ten dollars an eagle, which is a gold coin, and the largest which is coined in the United States. Dimes and dollars are silver coins. Cents are copper coins. These are the new species of coin. – What is the ancient manner of reckoning money? By pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. Four farthings make a penny, twelve pence a shilling, and twenty shillings a pound. (2004, pp. 69-70)

Unfortunately, that scale set forth did not account for conversion, English sterling to American coin. Fortunately, Webster presented a currency converter in his speller which was complete, if somewhat convoluted; the explanation is both demonstrative of the need for a constitutional government that wasn’t in existence at the time of his writing but still reflective of the anti-federalism of the time: The dollar is one hundred cents; but the value of a pound, shilling, and penny is different, in different States, and in England. English money is called Sterling – One dollar is four shillings and six pence sterling – in New England and Virginia, it is six shillings – in New York and North Carolina, it is eight shillings – in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, it is seven shillings and six pence – in South Carolina and Georgia, it is four shillings and eight pence. But these differences give great trouble, and will soon be laid aside as useless – all money will be reckoned in dollars and cents. (2004, p. 113)

Interestingly, lawyers had already developed a somewhat negative reputation in Webster’s day. One fable, “The Partial Judge,” was intended to demonstrate how justice should be applied equally to everyone in the new nation. In the story, a farmer approached his neighbor, a lawyer, to talk about an accident that had just occurred explaining that one of the farmer’s bulls had gored one of the lawyer’s oxen. The lawyer complimented the farmer on his honesty but explained that the farmer would have to give one of his oxen in return for the one that had been gored. Agreeing with the judgment, the farmer quickly explained that it was, in fact, the lawyer’s bull that had gored the farmer’s ox. The lawyer was quick to begin to back down, saying, “Indeed! … that alters the case; I must inquire into the affair, and if ….” However, the farmer would have none of it: “And if! Said the farmer – the business I find would have been concluded without an if, had you been as ready to do justice to others, as to exact it from them” (2004, p. 98).

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Included in the Blueback Speller was a section on geography. Students of the time would have memorized the spelling and pronunciation of a series of lists. Table XLIX introduced “Names of the principal Countries on the Eastern Continent,” including columns for adjectives, people, and chief City. For example: “Holland – Dutch – Dutch, or Hollanders – Amsterdam, Hague” (2004, p. 119). Reflecting an “us against them” attitude he was trying to instill in all fledgling Americans, to Webster the Eastern Continent was pretty much the rest of the world: This list included countries from Africa (Arabia, Egypt), Asia (China, Japan) and Europe (Austria, France). Also, the same table was continued under a new subheading, “In America,” which included columns for states, chief towns, and people. Subsequent tables included lists of oceans and seas, and rivers and lakes throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. The following table was interesting from a cultural studies point of view. The longest table of the book, a full 18 pages, was the “Names of Cities, Towns, Counties, Rivers, Mountains, Lakes, Islands, Bays, &c. in America.” Subdivided by which syllable was accented phonetically, the list was remarkable for its variety. Included in the list, alongside traditional English names, were those in Spanish and French. However, the biggest group of non-English names included were those of Native American/Indigenous heritage. Alongside Albemarl and Alvarado are Cattehunk and Chickahominy. Clearly, according to Webster, one of the marks of separation between England and the United States is the influence of the Native Americans linguistically. However, this influence did not extend culturally; while later generations of schooling would work to deculturalize the indigenous peoples of the United States, Webster embraced their language in his efforts to further separate from the motherland. It wasn’t just his Blueback Speller with which Webster wished to create and perpetuate a narrative of American culture – this theme was even more explicit in his 1789 reader, fully titled An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking Calculated to Improve the Minds and Refine the Taste of the Youth And also to Instruct Them in the Geography, History, and Politics of the United States. Clearly, Webster wanted American school children to be more than passingly familiar with every aspect of their new nation. To this end, one chapter presented the history of the United States, from Columbus through the formation of all the states to date (ending with the founding of Georgia in 1732). The chapter coming immediately after is on geography; after a section defining geographic terms, Webster presented definitions of the continent, including subsections on mountains, rivers, islands, capes, bays, straits, the gulf stream, lakes, and caves; interesting, though, the Falling Spring in Augusta, then classified in Virginia, merits its own section, while Niagara Falls is a note of separation between Lakes Erie and Ontario. Continuing their instruction in all things Americana, the following chapter focuses in on the geography of the United States, taken state by state. Furthering the notion that Webster believed the United States superior to all others, the final two paragraphs of this chapter are the geography of the English Provinces and the Spanish provinces. While each state warrants at least a full page 240

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detailing its geography, all of Canada – at the time extending from the maritime province of Nova Scotia through the western tip of Lake Superior – gets one paragraph, and the entire region from present day Florida to Louisiana warrants one more. Of course, the American Revolution – as Webster titled it, “the late War in America” (1789, p. 114) – was worthy a chapter in its own right. Describing the English Parliamentary acts immediately impacting the Colonies as “rash and cruel measures” that “gave great and universal alarm to Americans,” Webster explained that troops were sent to Boston “to enforce the wicked and unjust acts of the British parliament” (p. 114). The opening shots in Lexington were, to Webster, the “first scene of the great drama, wherein its progress, exhibited the momentous characters and events, and closed with a revolution, equally glorious for the actors, and important in its consequences to the human race” (1789, p. 115). The actions of Benedict Arnold were not those of a Loyalist trying to preserve his way of life, but the petty sniping of a man who took offense to the censure he took for his bad behavior in Philadelphia; the consequence of this behavior is that he be “stamped with infamy” and “despised by all mankind” (1789, p. 122). In sum, during the Revolution “America endured every cruelty and distress from her enemies – lost many lives and much treasure – but delivered herself from a foreign dominion, and gained a rank among the nations of the earth” (p. 124). The vagueness of the losses taken by the United States is notable as, in the sentence immediately preceding, Webster used specifics to describe the British losses: “near a hundred millions of money, with an hundred thousand lives” after which they “won nothing” (p. 124). While contemporary readers look at such descriptions as somewhat hyperbolic, Webster meant every word. Webster wanted every child in the new nation to be able to recite the battles and leaders of the revolution with near hagiographic accuracy and devotion. In fact, the bottom of the title page included a quote from the French author Mirabeau: “Begin with the Infant in his Cradle. Let the first word he lisps be Washington” (1789, title page). This admonition does not go unnoticed today; it is cited as one of the fundamental precepts of The Claremont Institute, a California-based conservative think-tank whose mission is “to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life” (“Education, Properly Understood”). Explaining that we have lost our sense of civic education, the group posits that, “What we lack today, what we desperately need, is something like the understanding of education that Noah Webster possessed” (“Education, Properly Understood”). Webster’s tripartite series (speller, grammar, and reader) is notable for two factors: impact and longevity. Its impact cannot be understated: The concepts and theories set forth have become part of the fabric of American culture. Indeed, it is not an overstatement to argue the Webster, via his schoolbooks and dictionary, created and perpetuated both an American narrative and the American dialect as we are familiar with it today. Its longevity is equally notable: Through its various reprints legitimate and bootleg, it became the most popular school book series throughout the Early National period. Its displacement would come almost 50 years later from a then relatively obscure academic from the relatively small city of 241

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Cincinnati, Ohio, who would create the most well-known series of school readers in U.S. history. HEATING THE MELTING POT – THE MCGUFFEY READERS

It wasn’t long after the nation had been created that it began to perceive it was experiencing its first social crisis. On one level, this was a logical extension of the work undergone by Webster, as a significant part of the American narrative was professions of the superiority of the United States. The dark side of this belief can be interpreted as the nativist movement that emerged in response to the rise in immigration. Beginning in the 1840s and 50s, when poor harvests across Great Britain and northern Europe caused a rise in immigration to the New World’s East Coast, while the promise of freedom and wage-paying jobs caused a rise in immigration from China on the West Coast. By the 1870s, when the foreign-born comprised almost one-sixth of the total population, many Americans were resistant. In response to their concerns, between 1870 and the 1920s, the government passed a series of laws restricting the numbers – and the ethnicity – of the immigrants. The resistance came not only from the numbers of the new Americans, but also from their ethnicity. Prior to the 1840s, most immigrants coming in to the United States had at least one characteristic in common with the existing citizens: They spoke English as their primary language, they were Caucasian, and/or they were Protestant. However, the émigré flood brought substantive numbers of Catholics, non-English speakers, and non-Caucasians, particularly on the West Coast. One example of resistance came in the 1849 formation of a group called the “The Order of the Star Spangled Banner.” Organized by Protestant workers in New York City, they took an oath to respond to any queries about the organization by saying “I know nothing” and thus came to be known as the Know Nothings. Their peak came in 1854 when their party won control of the local governments of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and San Francisco and dominated state legislatures in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maine, Indiana, and California. That same year they claimed control of more than 90 congressmen regardless of party affiliation. With their success, they formed the American Party, the biggest rival to the Democratic Party of the time. Their party platform was fairly direct: – – – –

A 21-year waiting period before immigrants are eligible for citizenship A ban on immigrant office-holders A ban on Catholic public school teachers The prohibition of alcohol, considered by Know Nothings to be a uniquely Catholic vice.

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Table 1. Rising Immigration in the United States, 1850–1930 Compared to the Present

1850

23,191,876

35.9

2,244,602

9.7

1860

31,443,321

35.6

4,138,697

13.2

1870

38,558,371

22.6

5,567,229

14.4

1880

50,189,209

30.2

6,679,943

13.3

1890

62,979,766

25.5

9,249,547

14.7

1900

76,212,168

21.0

10,341,276

13.6

1910

92,228,496

21.0

13,515,886

14.7

1920

106,021,537

15.0

13,920,692

13.1

1990

248,709,873

9.8

19,767,316

7.9

2000

281,421,906

13.2

28,379,000

10.1

Note: All data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau online

It must be remembered that the non-white group was much more expansive using definitions of the period than today. As David Roediger reminds us in Working Toward Whiteness (2005), throughout U.S. history there was never one white dominant culture; as different European groups emigrated, “courts, reformers, employers, and unions consistently slotted new immigrants in inbetween racial spaces” (pp. 58-59). Indeed, the test of whiteness in the early twentieth century was “common speech” and “popular understanding” – which at the time excluded from whiteness groups such as Serbo-Croatians, CzechoSlovaks, Russian Jewish, Bulgarians, Russians, Portuguese, Greeks, Poles, and Romanians. In fact, at the time, there were several efforts aimed at immigration reform that “mixed the medical, biological, and moral” to form a racial classification of nonwhite, classifying “southern and eastern European immigrants … ‘beaten men of beaten races’” that were “deficient as individuals, as a class, and as a race” (Roediger, 2005, p. 66), most heavily targeting Italians. Fortunately, the Know Nothing movement faded fairly quickly with the unfortunate ensuing controversy over slavery. If common speech and popular understanding were the ultimate tests of whiteness, any institution that could provide them became valued; advocating for expanded public schools to fill this need with an evangelical zeal came Horace Mann. Recognized as the father of the Common School movement in the United 243

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States, Mann began his career as a lawyer. However, he had a great desire to improve his society, and he genuinely believed education was the key to such improvement. Under those auspices, Mann served as secretary of Massachusetts Board of Education 1837-1848. The annual reports and Common School Journal he edited while in office served as the blueprint for the nation’s evolving public school system. Mann grabbed the nation’s attention by blasting clarion calls for increased public support of the schools. For example, in the “Conclusion of Introduction” in the January 1841 Common School Journal, he explained: … the common school is the greatest discovery ever made by man. In two grand, characteristic attributes, it is supereminent over all others: – first, in its universality; – for it is capacious enough to receive and cherish in its parental bosom every child that comes into the world; and second, in the timeliness of the aid it proffers; – its early, seasonable supplies of counsel and guidance making security antedate danger. Other social organizations are curative and remedial; this is a preventive and an antidote; they come to heal diseases and wounds; this, to make the physical and moral frame invulnerable to them. Let the Common School be expanded to its capabilities, let it be worked with the efficiency of which it is susceptible, and nine-tenths of the crime in the penal code would become obsolete; the long catalog of human ills would be abridged; men would walk more safely by day; every pillow would be more inviolable by night; property, life, and character held by a stronger tenure; all rational hopes respecting the future brightened. (p. 15)

To this rather messianic end, Mann wanted the nation to develop a system of common schools. This widespread system, relying on taxpayer support, would use a common pedagogy, taught to teachers in the emerging normal schools; common textbooks to standardize learning; and would focus on common political creed for all students, which would lead to less political violence and revolutionary tendencies amongst the ever more diverse population. Some states even developed common buildings – standardizing building blueprints and codes for the oversight of new school construction. While Mann called for standardization of schooling, it was someone completely different and several states away that would create the common texts adopted in the period. William Homes McGuffey was born approximately 45 miles outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1800; however, when he was two years old, his parents moved to the frontier of Ohio. He received his schooling both in Ohio and Pennsylvania; he received his degree from Washington College (later known as Washington and Jefferson College) near his birthplace. After working as an instructor there, in 1826 he became a professor at Miami (Ohio) University. In 1829 he was ordained a minister in his Presbyterian church. He left Miami to become president of Cincinnati College, and he served as president of a handful of colleges until 1845, when he moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, to become a professor of philosophy at the University of Virginia, a position he would hold until retirement. He passed away in 1876, having lived to see his readers take the country by storm. It was during his tenure at Miami University that McGuffey created what would be his legacy and immortality: the series of schoolbooks known as the McGuffey Readers (1909). The tremendous impact of the McGuffey Readers can be measured 244

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both numerically and socially. As D. Thomas Hanks cites from Stanley Lindberg, there were 122,000,000 copies sold of the three major revisions between 1836 and 1920 alone; the readers remained in print well past 1980, and even today exist online for virtual students to use (1981, p. 200). It was the most widely used set of schoolbooks until the 1950s, when it was supplanted by the Fun with Dick and Jane series. The readers defined the mentalities of multiple generations of Americans, particularly in the South and Midwest. There are multiple monuments to McGuffey’s legacy: His family home in Oxford, Ohio, is a national historic landmark; the College of Education at Miami University is located in McGuffey Hall; he is buried on the U.Va campus; and the school district encompassing Washington County, Pennsylvania, is the McGuffey School District. Henry Ford was so influenced by the readers that, upon construction of his Greenfield Village museum of Americana, he had the log cabin in which McGuffey was born moved to the site in Dearborn, Michigan. So what was it about the McGuffey Readers that so captured the nation’s attention? In part it was the framework of the series: a primer and six readers, each building upon the other, repeating many of the same lessons in increasingly complex ways that in today’s parlance would be described as a spiral curriculum. In part it was the acceptance of feedback; McGuffey widely accepted “suggestions and criticisms” from “eminent teachers and scholars” who provided feedback based on “their daily work in the schoolroom” (McGuffey, First Eclectic Reader, p. iii). In part it was the timing; the emergence of the readers coincided with Horace Mann’s common school rhetoric. The nation was looking for a way to make good on Mann’s promise of the common schools becoming the great social equalizer of the nation, providing the common speech and common understanding sought after, and the Readers offered a way to achieve this. The lessons shared encapsulated and espoused the pan-Protestant values that at the time many thought defined the culture of the United States. Most significantly, it was the Readers’ encapsulation of what Carl Kaestle (1983) refers to as the civil religion that made them so endearingly popular. Americans wanted to be able to “Americanize” the immigrants coming in, including teaching a shared faith. However, they also wanted to respect the constitutional mandate to avoid any state-sanctioned faith. In essence, Horace Mann and his ilk co-opted the faith and reverence many citizens felt for their denominational religion and displaced it into what became faith in their government and society. The civil religion was an organic structure of ideas, values, beliefs, and attitudes believed to be common to Americans. Throughout, it makes assumptions about man, authority, truth, society, and the universe. In essence, schools took over the basic responsibilities that traditionally were assumed by an established church and taught a common faith. This civil religion demanded a means of transmission – thus, the common schools became absolutely necessary. By extension, a set of books was required – and the McGuffey Readers were the perfect extension of this. The concept of a civil religion was demonstrated in the 1909 edition of the Eclectic Primer. Lesson 37 (pictured in Figure 1) shows a building that could double as a church or a school. The text reads: 245

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What kind of house is this? Do you think it is a schoolhouse, or a church? It looks like a church, but I think it is a schoolhouse. I see the boys and girls with their books and slates. When the bell rings, they will go in. A good child likes to go to school. (pp. 4344)

Figure 1. The Civil Religion Depicted in the McGuffey’s Readers, 1909 Eclectic Primer

More explicitly, as summarized by Allan Luke (1991), the McGuffey Readers viewed: textbooks and teaching not as a way of teaching basic skills, but rather as a means of indoctrination and domestication. The content … stressed allegiance to government and a learned resignation to the social and economical status quo … there was a close match between the ideational content of such texts and the kinds of literate behaviors taught. (p. 204).

The virtuous life is presented throughout the stories, in morality lessons overt and covert. Hard work, sobriety, dedication, loyalty, faith, obedience and honesty, amongst others, are all presented repeatedly to the children. Throughout the series, young readers are exposed to brief stories of good children who experience great rewards and bad children who meet harsh punishments and learn the error of their 246

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ways. As the series progresses, the lessons become a bit more oblique, but nonetheless indicative of the pan-protestant values that embodied Americana of the time. Themes of religious faith, morality, and character are interwoven with patriotic missives, the hope clearly being to produce good citizens. One example is the perpetuation of what has come to be referred to as the “Protestant work ethic” which is, in fact, a reflection of the Puritan work ethic. The Fifth Eclectic Reader includes a poem by Eliza Cook entitled “Work,” reminding readers that, “with health, the stagnant torpor kills.” The opening two stanzas of the poem read: Work, work, my boy, be not afraid; Look labor boldly in the face; Take up the hammer or the spade, And blush not for your humble place. There’s glory in the shuttle’s song; There’s triumph in the anvil’s stroke; There’s merit in the brave and strong Who dig the mine or fell the oak. (p. 59)

Another example of such virtue, somewhat more oblique but no less subtle, comes a few pages later. “The Venemous Worm,” an essay written by John Russell, seeks to warn readers against a particularly deadly serpent, more dangerous than either the rattlesnake or copperhead. Russell warns that “[s]everal of these reptiles have long infested our settlements, to the misery and destruction of many of our fellowcitizens” (McGuffey, Fifth Reader, p. 77). Symptoms of the bitten include the eyes becoming “red and fiery, his tongue swells to an immoderate size, and obstructs his utterance; and delirium of the most horrid character quickly follows” (p. 77). Getting over the bite is not easy, for as soon as a victim has “recovered from the paroxysm of insanity occasioned by the bite, than he seeks out the destroyer for the sole purpose of being bitten again” (p. 78). What is this most dangerous viper? “Youths of America, would you know the name of this reptile? It is called the WORM OF THE STILL” (p. 78). Beyond personal virtues, civic virtues are taught throughout the series. One means of teaching such is the attention paid to the symbols of the nation. In the First Eclectic Reader, Lesson 34 is a conversation between a group of boys and one’s father. The boys want to carry the flag, but the father is afraid of them besmirching it. Eventually he caves, allowing his son James to express his youthful patriotic fervor: ‘Papa, may we have the big flag?’ said James. ‘What can my little boy do with such a big flag?’ ‘Hoist it on our tent, papa. We are playing Fourth of July.’ ‘Is that what all this noise is about? Why not hoist your own flags?’ ‘Oh! They are too little.’ ‘You might spoil my flag.’ ‘Then we will all join to pay for it. But we will not spoil it, papa.’ ‘Take it, then, and take the coil of rope with it.’ ‘Oh! Thank you. Hurrah for the flag, boys!’ (pp. 44-45)

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A nature/science lesson in the Fourth Eclectic Reader slips in a patriotic missive as well. Lesson 29, “The Eagle,” presents an overview of the types of eagles living in the United States. In broad terms, the lesson explains that eagles “enjoy a kind of supremacy over the rest of the inhabitants of the air” just as the United States enjoys a kind of supremacy over the rest of the nations. Eagles show “a lofty independence” – again, an American trait – that makes it superior to the others. Of the different types of eagles mentioned, the “most interesting species” is, of course, the bald eagle, “as this is an American bird, and the adopted emblem of our country” (pp. 84-85). The eagle gets much greater praise by the Sixth Eclectic Reader, which includes James Gates Percival’s poem “The Eagle.” The first two stanzas use proud, complimentary language to describe an eagle, “Lord of the boundless realm of air” (p. 252) both in flight and in nest. The third stanza reminds the readers that the eagle was the symbol of both Roman and Egyptian armies. This transition is apt, as the fourth stanza begins a militaristic description of the wrath of the armies. However, the reader cannot forget that the eagle also represents the United States when reading the final stanza: And then, a deluge of wrath, it came And the nations shook with dread; And it swept the earth, till its fields were flame, And piled with the mingled dead. Kings were rolled in the wasteful flood, With the low and crouching slave; And together lay, in a shroud of blood, The coward and the brave. (p. 252)

At the time of the first publication of the Readers, one item missing from the new nation was a standing army; World War I was decades away, so the military was still essentially a call-up militia more akin to today’s National Guard. Of course, the outbreak of WWI would change this, but it was years in the future; the anti-war writers it would unleash such as Wilfred Owen were decades after that; poems such as “Dulce et Decorum Est”1 were included in schoolbooks decades beyond that. Whenever the military was referenced in the Readers, it was on a positive note. Throughout all the readers, famous military battles from across the world are presented in glowing terms, even when describing the somewhat gory aftermath. Soldiers themselves are depicted in heroic terms, and a soldier’s life one that should be emulated. For example, the Third Eclectic Reader includes J. G. Adams’ poem “The Soldier,” the opening and closing stanzas of which read: A soldier! A soldier! I’m longing to be: The name and the life of a soldier for me! –––––––––––––– 1 Owen, a soldier in World War I and survivor of the horrific trench warfare that went on, returned to England and wrote a series of missives against the nationalistic push to get young men to enlist in the military. “Dulce et Decorum Est” excoriates a common belief of the English people, the Latin phrase “dulce et decorum est pro patria morii” (it is right and proper to die for one’s fatherland) and calls it “the big lie.”

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I would not be living at ease and at play; True honor and glory I’d win in my day… A soldier! A soldier! Oh, then, let me be! My friends, I invite you, enlist now with me. Truth’s bands shall be mustered, love’s foes shall give way! Let’s up, and be clad in our battle array! (p. 82)

This positive view of a soldier’s life echoes throughout the rest of the series. In the Fourth Eclectic Reader’s story of “Hugh Idle and Mr. Toil,” a student shirking school for the day encounters a “company of soldiers, gaily dressed, with feathers in their caps, and glittering muskets on their shoulders. In front marched the drummers and fifers, making such merry music that Hugh would gladly have followed them to the end of the world” (p. 224). However, unfortunately for the truant young Hugh, his schoolmaster’s brother was at the front of the company and, after seeing other relatives and reminders of the necessity of school, young Hugh returns to school to learn his lessons well. Throughout the Fifth Eclectic Reader, soldiering is deemed most impressive. The chapter entitled “Rebellion in Massachusetts State Prison” recounts the (somewhat questionable) tale of a prison uprising that was quelled without violence; the greatly outnumbered marines entered the prison and stared down the prisoners, literally intimidating them back into their cells. McGuffey states that “the steely firmness of moral force and the strong effect of determination, acting deliberately, awed the most savage men, and suppressed a scene of carnage, which would have instantly followed the least precipitancy or exertion of physical force” (p. 142). A few pages prior, the second stanza of a poem entitled “What I Live For” encapsulates the idea that dying for one’s country – the very belief later questioned by the poet Wilfred Owen – is a great thing indeed: I live to learn their story, Who suffered for my sake; To emulate their glory, And follow in their wake; Bards, patriots, martyrs, and sages, The noblest of all ages, Whose deeds crown History’s pages, And Time’s great volume make. (p. 91)

In perpetuating the American narrative, McGuffey wasn’t above including some selections that might be interpreted as questioning government policy, if not questioning the dominant discourse of the time. While earlier volumes included selections of the English poet Thomas Hood’s humorous verse, the Sixth Eclectic Reader included Hood’s poem “Song of the Shirt,” a scathing indictment of the economic system that caused a woman “In poverty, hunger, and dirt” to lament over her work “with a voice of dolorous pitch,/she sang the ‘Song of the Shirt’” (p. 266). However, in the context of the Readers’ pro-America stance, Hood’s verses are relatively safe, as they critique British society. One American example is in the Fifth Eclectic Reader during a conversation that supposedly took place between King Charles II and William Penn, the topic of which was the treatment of 249

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American Indians. King Charles states the dominant narrative of the time, saying Indians lack any kind of notion of justice or moral sense because, “if they had possessed any, they would not treated my subjects so barbarously as they had done.” Penn is quick to correct the King, admittedly in condescendingly paternalistic tones: Thy subjects were the aggressors. When thy subjects first went to North America, they found these poor people the fondest and kindest creatures in the world. Every day they would watch for them to come ashore, and hasten to meet them, and fest them on the best fish, and venison, and corn, which were all they had. In return for this hospitality of the savages, as we call them, thy subjects, termed Christians, seized on their country and rich hunting grounds for farms and for themselves. Now is it to be wondered at, that these much-injured people should have been driven to desperation by such injustice; and that, burning with revenge, they should have committed some excesses? (p. 89)

Indeed, this is one of the first, and only, passages that might be considered questioning of the government – or by proxy the dominant discourse – in any of the texts. However, it wasn’t long after the popularity of the Readers waned that the citizens of the United States were questioning more than ever before. STEPS TOO FAR? – THE PROGRESSIVE PERIOD THROUGH THE MODERN ERA

One of the major thrusts of the progressive reformers at the turn of the 20th century was to take the politics out of schools. While this was expressly set forth by such actions as elimination of ward boards in favor of district boards and the emergence of the superintendent, the efforts carried through the texts as well. As explained by Allan Luke (1991), “the matter of ideological content was rendered moot, theoretically at least, by the advent of instructional psychology, corporate commoditization of learning materials, and educational progressivism” (p. 204). Beginning with the Fun with Dick and Jane series of the 1950s, the pan-Protestant civil religion was somewhat negated in favor of a phonics-based, more basal approach. It was widely believed that books should be about teaching their content, not expressing a value system, even though in practice the Dick and Jane series still expressed the pan-Protestant values of its progenitors. At the same time, progressive education leaders such as John Dewey recognized that it was the diversity of the United States that led to its strength and that schools should foster this diversity. Progressive educators planted seeds about culturally responsive education that took root, but didn’t necessarily flourish at the time. With the advent of the civil rights movements across the United States, concepts such as formulating a common speech and popular understanding were subsumed by this desire to balance teaching of historically marginalized cultures with the instruction in basic skills. Student-led movements to incorporate minority voices in school content such as the Denver, Colorado, blowouts soon spread to demands to include local voices in school administration. The texts began to shift to include such issues, and there were texts written specifically about cultural studies. While

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rudimentary in approach, the roots of multicultural education planted by John Dewey in the early 1900s were finally beginning to grow and bear fruit. This push for more culturally aware textbooks did not come without backlash. By the 1980s, a counter-movement of sorts was afoot. As argued by Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux (1991), many perceived that this movement proved “disastrous to the preservation of the inherited virtues of Western culture” (p. 213) by downgrading the importance of key literary and philosophical traditions, giving equal weight to the dominant knowledge of the ‘Great Books’ and to an emergent potpourri of ‘degraded’ cultural attitudes. Allegedly, the last twenty years have witnessed the virtual loss of those revered traditions that constitute the core of Western heritage. (p. 213)

The result of this belief was exemplified in right-wing curricular movements such as E. D. Hirsch’s cultural literacy, movements that purposefully legitimize “a particular version of Western civilization as well as an elitist notion of the canon” while also working to “exclude all those other discourses, whether from the new social movements or from other sources of opposition, which attempt to establish different grounds for the production and organization of knowledge” (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991, p. 215). IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRENT PRACTICE

Understanding the evolution of the American textbook from Enlightenment roots to Dick and Jane leads the reader to two disparate sets of implications on our contemporary practice, one discouraging and one hopeful. First, to understand how textbooks shaped our American society is to understand their role in the Culture Wars of the 21st Century: the preservation of Western civilization, as previously carried through from Comenius to McGuffey, versus the incorporation of new voices and legitimization of multiple discourses. Many Americans argue that historically it is our textbooks that have put the unum in our nation’s motto, E Pluribus Unum. Allowing texts to include minority and critical voices undermines the very fabric of our society. Arguing against this view are scholars who believe students need to be protected from the worst elements of stereotype and hate while concomitantly being exposed to multiple viewpoints on history and the current state of the nation. This struggle has led to the near annihilation of the worth of contemporary texts and the subsequent production of an alliterate society. As summarized by Diane Ravitch in The Language Police (2003), it comes down to censorship, exemplified in the battle for textbook content led by the two states with the largest school-age populations: California and Texas. To be profitable, textbook publishers must create books that will be adopted in both of these states. These states represent two of the major discourses governing textbook production in contemporary society: cultural awareness/political correctness and character education/pushing morality. To satisfy California standards, texts must be completely politically correct in their language and content, not reinforcing any stereotype whatsoever. For example, women cannot be portrayed in domestic roles and men cannot be portrayed as 251

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breadwinners; the young cannot be portrayed as dependent on adults and the elders cannot be portrayed as having any kind of age-related disability such as glasses or a cane. However, these standards must be matched with those of Texas, which still favors a pan-Protestant approach to teaching character and morality. For example, Mary McLeod Bethune’s story had to be edited to delete any reference to her son, because it would lead to an acknowledgement of her divorce before opening her school. What this leads to is a series of texts and connected materials used in U.S. classrooms that, according to Ravitch (2003), have four “pernicious and pervasive” negative effects on American youth: lower literacy levels of materials, restricted language in materials, reduced interest by children because of how “deadly dull” the materials have become, and ultimately the undermining of our common culture “by imposing irrelevant political criteria on the literature and history that are taught” (pp. 159-160). Beyond these, this push is counterproductive to our purposes of schooling. First, without ever being exposed to challenging material, how can students ever learn to think critically about social issues? Second, because the material is so banal, students see no relevance in what they read, causing them to become alliterate. It is not that they cannot read, it is that they choose not to because they don’t see any reason to. However, all is not lost; lessons learned from the development of the textbooks in the United States also shed light on a potentially hopeful future. The new frontiers of school textbooks are going to be in the digital world as much as brick and mortar institutions. While many educators have thrown up their hands in defeat to the mass media of video games, social networking, film and television, there are moments that prove all is not lost; children still love to read when the material is good. As the popular author Stephen King reminded us at the time, how many millions of children and teenagers set their Facebook status on the day of the release of the last Harry Potter book to “can’t talk – reading”? Technology has evolved to allow us to tap into the skill set of students of the Millennial/Alpha generation, those more comfortable looking at an inches-large screen than the eyes of someone seated across the table, more skilled at talking with their thumbs than their tongues. There are multiple platforms on which to read electronic books – not the least of which exist on smart phones and tablets. A child with a smart phone and Internet connection has access to more information, a vaster library, than did President Bill Clinton in his first term of office. It is up to teachers to become once again the principal agents of subversion in our public schools. Teachers must be willing to abandon the standardized texts in favor of primary documents, to reject sanitized history in favor of messy facts, to refute a dichotomous, black and white view of curriculum in favor of multiple shades of grey. The question is “now what?” We live in an age where, if teachers are willing to be somewhat subversive and teach beyond the proscriptive curricula dominating American classrooms today, Apple’s question of “whose knowledge is of most worth” becomes moot: It is everyone’s. Teachers can share multiple perspectives on an issue; they can tap into the latest high-interest reading material with the click of a mouse. Teachers can create their own reading series, aligning it to the highly 252

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localized and ever changing interests of the children in front of them rather than some imaginary other to whom proscriptive packaged programs cater. In doing so, teachers can ensure students are exposed to multiple perspectives. While mainstream society tends to seek out text that conforms to their own belief system, teachers must see it as their duty to instill in their students a desire to read conflicting points of view and a desire to challenge their own personal status quo. While textbook publishers insist on perpetuating monolithic views of literacy and history, there no longer has to be one narrative, one discourse, shared throughout texts if nobody is reading those texts. The Primer, the Blueback Speller, and McGuffey’s Readers are today recalled because they sold the most and were therefore of the most influence; however, teachers of those generations did not have access to the materials and information as teachers today. Ultimately it is up to the classroom teachers; to paraphrase John Lennon, the days of a traditional book series such as McGuffey’s, or even contemporary programs such as Reading First, are over – if you want it. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

Comenius set forth a set of values of teaching that have waxed and waned in popularity with the more general political/social trends of the nation; for example, they were very popular at the height of the Progressive Era between 1890-1920, then again in the late 1960s through early 1980s. Thinking about the present national conversations taking place surrounding schooling, are Comenius’ values popular today? If so, where do you see them demonstrated? If not, why do you think not? While it is easy to pigeonhole the New England Primer as a Puritanic text that would be deemed near-ridiculous in a contemporary classroom, the argument can be made that its legacy endures. Think about contemporary controversies in public textbooks; are there any issues that grow from the Primer’s roots? Which ones? What is the connection? Noah Webster tried to create and perpetuate an American linguistic culture that was in marked separation from English linguistic culture. Think about the cliché that the United States and Great Britain are two nations divided by a common language; how did Webster accomplish this division? How do you define patriotism and nationalism? Did the McGuffey Readers inspire one over the other, or both? How? All of the texts and series cited in this chapter were instrumental in shaping their respective societies. Thinking about the textbooks and curricula used in most public schools today, do you think there are any that will prove to have this same cultural impact in the United States? One hundred years from now, will a historian of education be discussing any of them?

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REFERENCES Agnello, M. F. (2001). A postmodern literacy policy analysis. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Apple, M., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. In M. Apple & L. K. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook (pp. 1-21). New York, NY: Routledge. Aronowitz, S., & Giroux, H. A. (1991). Textual authority, culture, and the politics of literacy. In M. Apple, & L. K. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook (pp. 213-241). New York, NY: Routledge. Brameld, T. (1945). Design for America: An educational exploration of the future of democracy. New York, NY: Hinds, Hayden & Eldredge. Comenius, J. A. (1777). Orbis sensualium pictum: Hoc est omnium principalium in mundo rerum & in vita actionum, or Comenius’ visible world or a nomenclature and pictures of all the chief things that are in the world and men’s employments therein (12th ed.). London, England: The Globe, CharingCross. Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of knowledge and the discourse on language. New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Gibson, C., & Lennon, E. (2008, July 9). Region of birth of the foreign-born population: 1850 to 1930 and 1960 to 1990. United States Census Bureau. Retrieved from the United States Census Bureau website: http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab02.html. Hanks, D. T. (1981). McGuffey’s readers. Children’s Literature, 9, 200-202. Johnson, C. (1963). Old time schools and school-books. New York, NY: Dover. Kaestle, C. (1983). Pillars of the Republic: Common schools and American society, 1780-1860. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. Luke, A. (1991). Basal reading textbooks and the teaching of literacy. In P. G. Altbach et al. (Eds.), Textbooks in American society: Politics, policy, and pedagogy (pp. 201-217). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Mann, H. (January 1841). Introduction. Common School Journal, 3(1), 1-16. McGuffey, W. H. (1909a). McGuffey’s eclectic primer (Rev. ed.). Cincinnati, OH: American Book Company. McGuffey, W. H. (1909b). McGuffey’s first eclectic reader (Rev. ed.). Cincinnati, OH: American Book Company. McGuffey, W. H. (1909c). McGuffey’s third eclectic reader (Rev. ed.). Cincinnati, OH: American Book Company. McGuffey, W. H. (1909d). McGuffey’s fourth eclectic reader (Rev. ed.). Cincinnati, OH: American Book Company. McGuffey, W. H. (1909e). McGuffey’s fifth eclectic reader (Rev. ed.). Cincinnati, OH: American Book Company. McGuffey, W. H. (1909f). McGuffey’s sixth eclectic reader (Rev. ed.). Cincinnati, OH: American Book Company. Mencken, H. L. (1949). A Mencken chrestomathy: Edited and annotated by the author. New York, NY: A.A. Knopf. Population, housing units, area measurements, and density: 1790 to 1990 (2011). Retrieved from United States Census Bureau website: http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/ table-2.pdf. Ravitch, D. (2003). The language police: How pressure groups restrict what students learn. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Roediger, D. R. (2005). Working toward whiteness: How America’s immigrants became white. New York, NY: Perseus Books. The New England primer: Improved for the more easy attaining the true reading of English. (1991). Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press. Webster, N. (2004). The American spelling book; Containing the rudiments of the English language for the use of schools in the United States. San Antonio, TX: Vision Forum.

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REMEMBERING THE PRESENT IS THE PAST WRIT LARGE Webster, N. (1789). An American selection of lessons in reading and speaking. Calculated to improve the minds and refine the taste of the youth. And also to instruct them in the geography, history, and politics of the United States (6th ed.). Newport, RI: Peter Edes. Writings: Precepts. (2011). Education, Properly Understood. Retrieved from The Claremont Institute website: http://www.claremont.org/publications/precepts/id.108/precept _detail.asp.

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SOCIAL SCIENCE AND HUMANITIES EDUCATION

TIMOTHY LINTNER & DEBORAH MACPHEE

SELECTING HISTORY What Elementary Educators Say about Their Social Studies Textbook

To a significant extent, textbooks define and determine what is important in American history (Romanowski, 1996, p. 170). In a way, the textbook lies to our students – Participant

Education is not neutral. As McLaren (1989) serves to remind us, schools are contested spaces where social, economic, and curricular inequities exist, often to the detriment of student learning. The idealistic notion of education for education’s sake runs counter to a more insidious, more layered educational construct that promotes the prominent while dismissing the marginalized. The same can be said about social studies textbooks. They are contested texts in which omission offsets contribution and uniformity is touted to the exclusion of diversity. Perspectives are promoted, thus heard; perspectives are ignored, thus silenced. The construction of a social studies (i.e. history) textbook is a purposeful and negotiated balance among readability (the author), affordability (individual states), and marketability (textbook publishers). Though issues of audience and affordability are important, one needs to mine deeper for the more pressing, more critical questions regarding textbook design and delivery: Who writes them and, ultimately, for what purpose? LITERATURE REVIEW

The sweeping (and some may argue innocuous) purpose of the history textbook is to present young learners with a glimpse of the past. Anderson (1991) likens the textbook to a conceptual or historical map that students follow in attempts to make sense of events long ago. Stories are told, lives and contributions presented, triumphs and tragedies displayed through text and image. The result is an historical representation encapsulated in several hundred pages. Questioning the historical representations displayed in textbooks is not new. For decades, scholars have decried the inadequacies of social studies texts (Allen, 1971; Anyon, 1979; Banks, 1969; Gagnon, 1987; Giannangelo & Kaplan, 1992; Loewen, 1995; Van Sledright, 2002). Much of the scholarship has charged that textbooks skim important events, over generalize, or simply exclude diversity or difference (Brown & Brown, 2010; Foster, 1999). Notably absent from the

H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 259–270. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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historical discourse are women (Baldwin & Baldwin, 1992; Blumberg, 2008; Julian, 1979), African Americans (Nelson, 1988), Native Americans (CaldwellWood & Mitten, 1992; Finchum, 2006; Sanchez, 2007), and Latinos/as (Cruz, 1994). The history that is presented is a superficial catalog of facts and faces that limits the facilitation of a deeper understanding of multiple historical interpretations. So what does this mean for social studies design and delivery? The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) (2010) defines social studies as: the integrated study of the social sciences and humanities to promote civic competence. The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society and interdependent world. (p. 3)

Central is the notion of informed and reasoned decision-making. Social studies spurs creativity, wonder, debate, and analysis. It is premised on student exposure to and evaluation of complex historical thought and action. Such opportunities allow students to cull disparate information and, ultimately, formulate reasoned conclusions. A more insidious discourse argues that the curriculum (i.e., the history textbook) is used to promote a national identity and a common set of values premised on a shared heritage (Banks, 1995; Commeyras & Alverman, 1994; Levine, 1996; Ogawa, 2001; Reynolds, 1981; Wills, 2000). Above and beyond the content displayed, “[textbooks] offer a window into the dominant values and beliefs of established groups” (Foster, 1999, p. 253). Though textbooks may appear innocuous and nondescript, their power to persuade cannot be underestimated. For the most part history textbooks were never intended to promote reflective thought, to stimulate critical analysis, or to celebrate cultural diversity. The function of history in American schools essentially has been to instill in the young a sense of unity and patriotism and a veneration for the nation’s glorious heritage. With few exceptions history textbooks have supported this indelible tradition. (Foster, 1999, p. 253)

If textbooks promote a common set of values through shared historical experiences, one must ask whose history are we talking about and how are we talking about it. Romanowski (1996) asserts that, “History textbooks incorporate attitudes and ways of looking at the world. In making judgments about what should be included and what should be excluded textbook authors assign positive or negative interpretations to particular events, thereby asserting a set of values” (p. 170). What authors consider worthwhile history is often laced with social, political, economic, and gender marginalization. Omissions in the text often lead to historically incomplete understandings. Students perceive history as a clear distinction between those who made it and those who missed it. The resultant emphasis on the “winner’s perspective presents a skewed view of history that allows [students] to make incorrect assumptions” (DeVoogd, 2007, p. 21). These assumptions often reinforce what some students already believe – that history is clean, concise, and above all neutral. 260

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This perceived neutrality is not challenged through the critical examination of history textbooks. The author, it is assumed, is the supreme authority and, with this authority, comes power and omniscience. The importance of the content coupled with the esteem of the author leaves students at the mercy of bias, prejudice, and a one-dimensional perspective of history (Romanowski, 1996). A good social studies text should provide students opportunities to weight all options, hear all perspectives, and analyze all positions. Only then can young students make reasoned decisions. Unfortunately, the exposure to perceptual difference is not found in many social studies classrooms (Klemp, McBride, & Ogle, 2007). Wineburg and Martin (2004) believe that the natural place to question the prescriptions found in textbooks is in the social studies classroom. Soares and Wood (2010) contend that, “The social studies classroom is the best place to teach students to be critical consumers of the many sources of information they encounter” (p. 487). Here, inquiry, discovery, and the critical consumption of information should be promoted, valued, and sustained. Instead of merely accepting the storyline and automatically adopting the author’s perspective, [students] must enter into a kind of challenging dialogue with the text, looking around it and behind it, not for what is in the text but for what is left unsaid. (DeVoogd, 2007, p. 22)

Therefore, it is incumbent upon social studies teachers to “search for those voices missing or silenced in texts and bring them to the forefront of the classroom – to argue with or reject the author’s point of view” (Luke & Freebody, 1997, p. 186). Teachers need to approach the history textbook critically, assuming and understanding that biases exist, deconstructing the position of the author, providing alternate perspectives, and empowering students to challenge and ultimately, change conventional representations of historical understandings (Brown & Brown, 2010; Carlson, 1989; Dhand, 1988; Freebody, Luke, & Gilbert, 1991; Giroux, 1987). DeVoogd (2007) concludes that, If schools only teach social studies content typically found in standard textbooks, they are leaving students vulnerable to manipulation by texts. Schools need to prepare students, not just to learn information, but to learn strategies that will help them understand the perspectives behind the way the information is presented and what other perspectives may exist. (p. 24)

Given the above, this chapter will explore historical bias as gleaned through the insights of preservice and inservice educators regarding text and image found in select elementary social studies textbooks. Three theoretical and practical constructs serve to guide this chapter: content inclusion, teacher utility, and the author’s purpose. METHODOLOGY

To examine the topic of bias in elementary social studies textbooks, the input of preservice and inservice educators in a single school district in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) of South Carolina was solicited. The University of 261

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South Carolina Aiken (USCA) supports a Professional Development School (PDS) model of instructional collaboration with three elementary schools in the CSRA. Upon receipt of district approval, inquiries were made (either via e-mail or in person) to the respective principals at each of the three PDS partner schools, plus an additional elementary school not part of the PDS network. All schools were selected due to ease of access and previous facilitation of university-sponsored research. Three principals agreed to facilitate the research. A fourth principal did not respond to several additional contacts. This research focused exclusively on content found in fourth and fifth grade social studies textbooks. Only educators teaching social studies at these grade levels were selected for participation. Nineteen fourth and/or fifth grade inservice educators from three elementary schools participated in this study. In addition to garnering the insights of inservice educators, the perceptions of preservice educators were also sought. Two groups of preservice educators seeking elementary certification (grades 2 – 6) were asked to participate. These students were enrolled (or would have been in the following semester) in Teaching Social Studies in the Elementary School, a required course for all elementary certifiers at USCA. Eighteen preservice educators agreed to share their insights. Thus, a total of 37 preservice and inservice educators participated in this study. For this study, select excerpts from the fourth and fifth grade social studies textbooks adopted by the participating school district were used. The excerpts were culled from Building a Nation (Fourth Grade) and Growth of a Nation (Fifth Grade), both published by Scott Foresman (2005). In elementary schools in South Carolina, American history is taught over the course of two years. Fourth grade students examine history from pre-Colonization to the Civil War; fifth grade students cover Reconstruction to the present. After examining both student and teacher editions, three historical events were selected, which can be presented through multiple historical perspectives: the Indian Removal Act, Immigration, and Japanese Internment. To supplement the content presented in the textbook, a number of primary sources were culled that offered additional insights and perceptions pertinent to each topic. Supplemental information for the Indian Removal Act included a copy of Andrew Jackson’s Case for the Removal Act, First Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1830. Supplemental material pertinent to Immigration consisted of three magazine publications regarding select immigrant groups (Jews, Germans, and Italians), four photographic images gleaned from Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lived (1901), and three additional cartoon-based images. For Japanese Internment, a combination of first-hand narratives, wartime poster propaganda, photographs, a newspaper editorial and a copy of Executive Order No. 9066 (Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas) were included for reference. The textbook passages and supplemental information not found in the textbook or teacher’s edition were photocopied for distribution and provided to each participant. Starting with the Indian Removal Act, participants were asked to read the content narrative found in the textbook and any additional information included in 262

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the teacher’s edition. They were then asked to read (or examine) the supplemental material(s) provided. Impressions and opinions regarding all material presented were then sought. A similar format was followed for all three topics. With permission, all participant comments were tape-recorded and subsequently coded and transcribed. From these conversations, three dominant themes emerged: general perceptions of the content presented, the teacher’s role in content presentation and its resultant impact on student learning, and the sweeping objectives of the textbook authors. RESULTS

General Perceptions of the Content Participants overwhelmingly stated that the content provided for each selected topic in their respective history textbook was, at a minimum, incomplete. In teasing out the notion of selectivity, several participants commented that the textbook content might be driven by, amongst other variables, the sheer volume of information that could have been included. If the [textbook] authors would have included multiple perspectives for every event in history, the book would have been twice as big. If you have a textbook that is already huge, how much more can you realistically put in it? How much more can a fifth grader handle in one year? One participant added, “My students struggle with the amount of reading already. More, in this case, may not be better.” A lone participant offered this compromise: “Trim the fat in the textbook. Reduce the amount of fluff. You can keep the volume of the book the same by offering condensed yet accurate representations of history.” Or maybe, as a participant noted, the volume of the textbook, and its apparent imbalanced portrayal of select historical events, is driven more by economics than equity. “The textbook author’s job is to sell books. They don’t want to offend anyone. They can’t create any controversy. So they put in their books what will sell, which is the simplified, non-confrontational version of history.” The Indian Removal Act. Many participants felt that the textbook was both incomplete and biased in its presentation of the Indian Removal Act. One participant commented that the content was “whitewashed, with the shiny parts polished up, and the unsavory parts skimmed or ignored.” A preservice participant added: There wasn’t too much general information to go by in the textbook. It was a fairly basic understanding of what was happening to the Native Americans. But the textbook completely glosses over Andrew Jackson’s part in it. Not saying that his way was the right way. The textbook just doesn’t provide his side.

The absence of the Native American perspective was observed as well. A participant wondered, “What were [the Native Americans] thinking?” Ultimately, 263

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some participants noted inadequacies in both the textbook content and the supplemental information provided: I don’t think our textbook gives a clear perspective of the Indian Removal Act. And I don’t think that Jackson’s speech does either. We need a textbook that shows both sides of this issue. Our textbooks never give students enough on either side that allows them to compare and contrast ideas and perspectives and to come up with their own conclusions. Immigration. As with the Indian Removal Act, several comments were made regarding the lack of balance or perspective as noted in the textbook passage regarding Immigration. “All we get from the textbook is that immigrants came over for religious reasons and looked for jobs. Though this may be partially true, there is so much more to the immigrant story than what is told in the textbook.” Another participant noted that, “The content is watered-down. What’s in the textbook paints such a wonderful picture of immigration. The book fails to talk about all the hardships, the prejudice that they faced once they were here.” As a preservice participant stated, “It’s like the ‘immigrant’ perception, which is light and fluffy, and ‘our’ perspective, the perspective of immigrants from folks who are already here, which is harsh, cruel, and honest.” Japanese Internment. A participant commented that, “The textbook doesn’t even touch upon the prejudice against the Japanese Americans. The pictures [in the textbook] show nothing of discrimination. Yet when I see the images in the supplemental material, I really see the racial prejudice of that time.” Dovetailing off this initial comment, a preservice participant noted that, “Some of these pictures in the supplemental stuff bother me, and I’m white! I can’t imagine if I was a Japanese American looking at them.” Another preservice participant observed that, “The textbook doesn’t show you where the internment camps were. How life was in these camps. What happened to their possessions? Why they were interned in the first place? The textbook tells me nothing.” THE TEACHER’S ROLE IN MITIGATING BIASED HISTORY

Virtually every participant advocated for supplementing the scant content included in the textbook. One participant stated, “We present our students with a whole lot of information. But if we just stick to the textbook, its not quality information. We must use other resources. We must supplement like crazy.” Many participants supplement the textbook by creating PowerPoint presentations, incorporating primary sources, pulling up websites and downloading video streams. One participant flatly stated, “I create my own curriculum. The textbook is bland. Boring. If I want my students engaged, and if I want to create balance, I do it myself. I certainly don’t rely on the textbook.” A handful of participants noted the struggle to present what they called “appropriate” content in “appropriate” ways. A fourth grade teacher participant noted, “As teachers, we often want to sugar-coat [history] to try and protect our 264

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students. We don’t want to offend or isolate our students.” A fifth grade teacher responded, “There is only so much that kids can take in at this age. I don’t think they really need to be given the full picture. They need to be told the truth, just in a way that they can handle.” One preservice participant added, “Kids need to see history from a realistic point of view. But again, they need to see it from their age perspective. After all, they are just kids.” Yet a number of participants felt that challenging students to view history through multiple – and oftentimes uncomfortable – perspectives was both acceptable and appropriate. One participant commented, “You can’t let discomfort take away from the impact it may have on our students. We should strive to make our students uncomfortable. Until teachers move outside of their own comfort zones, the students will only get what’s in the textbook.” Another participant followed by stating, “Maybe the textbook authors think that the students can’t handle the realities of history. But they can. Students are extremely resilient. Thinking that students cannot understand this stuff is like babying them.” Specifically addressing the images found in the textbook, a participant stated, “The pictures that are included in the textbook don’t portray real events or real emotion. Students need to a see real picture of what really happened.” Another participant noted: If we don’t present our students with the other side of history we are, in fact, lying to them. We are only giving them a partial picture of what really happened. We’re only giving them the good side of history. The full truth is not in our textbook. And our students need to know the full truth.

A preservice participant summarily asked, “Terrible things have happened in history. Don’t we have an obligation to present this to our students?” THE AUTHORS OBJECTIVES

Many participants shared their insights regarding the perceived objective(s) of the textbook authors. One participant commented, “The way the authors present history, it’s like America was perfect. Above the rest. Happily-ever-after.” A preservice participant noted that the authors seem to present a positive image of America, yet fail to provide students with “all that America is not so proud of. The authors gloss over our past indiscretions. [The authors] don’t talk about our past – our dirty little secrets. The students then see America as perfect. But America was never perfect.” A fifth grade educator further added, “The textbook is kind of like a romance novel. You had struggles but, in the end, everything is tied up in a nice, pretty bow.” With particular reference to students, a participant stated, “The textbook authors want to mold students. If they only show students one side of American history – the positive side – then this is what the students are going to believe.” Another participant added, “I think that it’s the idea that we are raising young Americans and these young Americans have to have the perspective that America is good.” A fifth grade educator flatly stated:

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These authors are historians. How can they, with good conscience, let this get presented? They know the history. Then why is the history presented in my textbook so flawed? Why are they so concerned with shaping my students? And why do we let them have that power in the first place? DISCUSSION

The content provided for all three “moments in history” may be best summarized as incomplete. Throughout the interviews, participants desired a more comprehensive representation of history. Yet consistently absent from the textbook were representations of the lives and experiences of Native Americans, Immigrants, and Japanese Americans. Where were their narratives? Where were their interpretations of their history? And, more insidiously, why is the history about them being written for them? This historical marginalization may lead students to believe, as many participants feared, that these groups were powerless or, worse yet, irrelevant. It was this perceived irrelevance through omission that forced educators to supplement the textbook. There was an innate belief that good history is balanced history. Students deserved the opportunity to wrestle with perceptual differences inherent in a balanced representation of history. When the textbook did not afford such analytic opportunities, it was incumbent upon the educator to do so. Supplementing the textbook with a wide variety of primary sources enabled educators to make the lives and experiences of the powerless and peripheral, if just for a moment in time, viable and visible. As one participant noted, “I need to recognize the history that’s forgotten.” An interesting strand emerged that juxtaposed access with appropriateness. The vast majority of participants believed it imperative that elementary students be exposed to varied historical representations, even if these representations were harsh, raw, and controversial. Many felt that young learners could handle the more unsettled historical perspectives typically absent from their textbook. Commenting upon the supplemental materials provided to them, a participant flippantly stated, “Our students hear and see much worse than this.” Knowing the boundary between appropriate and offensive, it was commonly felt that students should be presented with an unbiased representation of history even if this representation is uncomfortable. Yet a few educators disagreed. Though concurring that the textbook was incomplete, they cautioned against a history that was too harsh, too raw, and too controversial. Students should be presented with an accurate portrayal of history, they agreed, yet this presentation had it limits. They worried that an overexposure of historical perspectives may be both cognitively and emotionally overwhelming. They argued for incremental historical exposure that limited student access to only what they deemed appropriate perspectives of history. This narrative of appropriateness speaks to the balance that many educators strike when providing supplemental historical material not found in the issued textbook. How to negotiate the delicate balance between appropriate and offensive is challenging. Though educators are free to exercise autonomy in the selection and 266

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presentation of historical content, the nature of this autonomy appears dependent upon the degree of perceptual difference educators wish to offer their students. Interestingly, not a single participant noted that the manner in which they present history is dictated by internal (administration) or external (parental, social, economic, or religious) factors. Though admitting that a balanced representation of history can be controversial and, at times, unsettling, the majority of participants embraced the belief that young learners deserved accurate and unbiased history. The publisher’s authority in controlling the content quickly became evident. It was clear to many participants that the historical omissions were just as important as what was included. Approaching the text with a healthy dose of criticality, participants began to question the validity of the text when the text was so blatantly biased. The text, they agreed, was a purposefully constructed narrative that was used to present a skewed version of history. And if, as a participant noted, textbooks are written by professional historians, how could they blatantly misrepresent history by providing only a partial picture? And, more importantly, what would be the purpose in doing so? The notion of purpose became an interesting and engaging point of discussion throughout the interviews. Supporting the research by Foster (1999), participants noted that the textbook constructed a dominant and often patriotic ideology that touted an unspoken allegiance to America. At an impressionable age, elementary students are presented with a singularly positive historical impression of America, an impression that is idealistic, paternalistic, and purposefully selective. Though inservice and preservice educators shared many of the same impressions regarding the evidence and impact of textbook bias, some subtle yet telling differences were noted. Preservice educators were much more willing to share their insights. They were inquisitive, honest, and generally unabashed in their responses. They readily admitted gaps in their own content understanding. As one preservice educator stated, “We don’t know everything about social studies but we sure are going to try.” Additionally, preservice educators frequently contextualized historical bias within the experiences of their own K-12 social studies learning. Their educational past served to shape their pedagogical present. Conversely, inservice educators were generally guarded and limited in their responses. Elaboration was inconsistent at best. Only one inservice educator admitted that their understanding of the state mandated curriculum was “emerging.” Not a single inservice educator referred to their own K-12 educational experiences as influencing the way they understand and subsequently teach social studies. Though the participation of inservice educators was essential and their responses insightful and well intentioned, the promise of combating textbook bias may in fact reside in the passionate idealism of the preservice educators. They approached their own historical understandings, and those presented through the textbook, with a reflection that challenged assumptions and expectations. They comfortably and confidently deconstructed what it meant to understand and to teach history. They supplemented the admitted lack of content knowledge with a philosophical and pedagogical practice that mitigated textbook bias through a criticality premised on

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inclusion and historical balance. Such practice bodes well for the future of social studies instruction. CONCLUSION

What was true decades ago sadly remains true today; textbooks present students with biased and skewed historical representations. Instead of providing complete, impartial, and descriptive portrayals of the past, students are given purposefully selected historical fragments that gloss over indiscretions and indignities in the promotion and preservation of a revered nationalism. In this contested space stands the educator who must temper the biases of both content and ideology with a historicism that recognizes diversity, advocates criticality, and assures that students receive a truth worth telling. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

How does the institution of school/school culture position teachers in terms of mandated curriculum? How can teacher-training institutions prepare preservice teachers for the culture of school? Are teachers’ voices heard when it comes to what and how their students are taught? If not, how might educational institutions writ large begin to push against the status quo? How can teachers advocate for a more well-rounded social studies curriculum? How might teacher-training institutions get a dialogue started between preservice and inservice teachers? How might they support one another in addressing bias in curriculum materials? REFERENCES

Allen, V. S. (1971). An analysis of textbooks relative to the treatment of Black Americans. Journal of Negro Education, 49(2), 140-145. Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London, England: Verso. Anyon, J. (1979). Elementary social studies textbooks and legitimating knowledge. Theory and Research in Social Education, 6(3), 40-55. Baldwin, P., & Baldwin, D. (1992). The portrayal of women in classroom textbooks. Canadian Social Studies, 26(3), 110-114. Banks, J. A. (1995). Multicultural education: Historical development, dimension, and practice. In J. A. Banks, & C. A. M. Banks (Eds.), The handbook of multicultural education (pp. 3-24). New York, NY: Macmillan. Banks, J. A. (1969). A content analysis of the Black American in textbooks. Social Education, 33(8), 954 – 957. Blumberg, R. L. (2008). The invisible obstacle to educational equality: Gender bias in textbooks. Prospects: Quarterly Review of Comparative Education, 38(3), 345-361.

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SELECTING HISTORY Brown, A. L., & Brown, K. D. (2010). Strange fruit indeed: Interrogating contemporary textbook representations of racial violence toward African Americans. Teachers College Record, 112(1), 3167. Building a Nation. (2005). Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman. Caldwell-Wood, N., & Mitten, L. (1992). I is not for Indian: The portrayal of Native Americans in books for young people. Multicultural Review, 1(2), 26-33. Carlson, D. (1989). Legitimation and delegitimation: American history textbooks and the Cold War. In S. DeCastell, A. Luke, & C. Luke (Eds.), Language authority and criticism: Readings on the school textbook (pp. 46-55). Philadelphia, PA: The Palmer Press. Commeyras, M., & Alverman, D. E. (1994). Messages that high school world history textbooks convey. Social Studies, 85(6), 268-274. Cruz, B. C. (1994). Stereotypes of Latin Americans perpetuated in secondary school history textbooks. Latino Studies Journal, 1(1), 51-67. DeVoogd, G. (2007). Critical comprehension of social studies texts. RHI: Promoting Active Citizenship, 7(1), 21-26. Dhand, H. (1998). Bias in social studies textbooks: New research findings. The History and Social Science Teacher, 24(1), 23, 25-27. Finchum, M. (2006). “I” is for Indian?: Dealing with stereotypes in the classroom. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 18(4), 4-5. Foster, S. J. (1999). The struggle for American identity: Treatment of ethnic groups in United States history textbooks. History of Education, 28(3), 251-278. Freebody, P., Luke, A., & Glibert, P. (1991). Reading positions and practices in the classroom. Curriculum Inquiry, 21(4), 435-457. Gagnon, P. (1987). Democracy’s untold story: What world history textbooks neglect. Sacramento, CA: State Department of Education, Bureau of Adult Education. Giannangelo, D. M., & Kaplan, M. B. (1992). An analysis and critique of selected social studies textbooks. Retrieved from ERIC database (ED353173). Giroux, H. (1987). Critical literacy and student experience: Donald Graves’ approach to literacy. Language Arts, 64(2), 175-181. Growth of a Nation. (2005). Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman. Julian, N. N. (1979). Treatment of women in United States history textbooks. Retrieved from ERIC database (ED178371). Klemp, R., McBride, B., & Ogle, D. (2007). Building literacy in social studies: Strategies for improving comprehension and critical thinking. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Levine, L. W. (1996). The opening of the American mind: Canons, culture, and history. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Loewen, J. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American history textbook got wrong. New York, NY: Touchtone. Luke, A., & Freebody, P. (1997). The social practices of reading. In S. Muspratt, A. Luke, & P. Freebody (Eds.), Constructing critical literacies: Teaching and learning textual practice (pp. 185225). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton. McLaren, P. (1989). Life in schools. New York: Longman, Inc. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2010). National curriculum standards for social studies: A framework for teaching, learning, and assessment. Silver Spring, MD: NCSS. Nelson, M. R. (1988). Merl R. Eppse and studies of Blacks in American history textbooks. International Journal of Social Education, 3(3), 84-90. Ogawa, M. (2001, April). Building multiple historical perspectives: An investigation of how middle school students are influenced by different perspectives. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA. Reynolds, J. C. (1981). Textbooks: Guardians of nationalism. Education, 102(1), 37-42. Riis, J. (1901). How the other half lives. New York, NY: Dover Inc.

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TIMOTHY LINTNER & DEBORAH MACPHEE Romanowski, M. H. (1996). Problems of bias in history textbooks. Social Education, 60(3), 170-173. Sanchez, T. R. (2007). The depiction of Native Americans in recent (1991-2004) secondary American history textbooks: How far have we come? Equity & Excellence in Education, 40(4), 311-320. Soares, L. B., & Wood, K. (2010). A critical literacy perspective for teaching and learning social studies. The Reading Teacher, 63(6), 486-494. Van Sledright, B. (2002). In search of America’s past: Learning to read history in elementary school. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Wills, J. S. (2000, May). Missing in interaction: Diversity, narrative, and critical multicultural social studies. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Wineburg, S., & Martin, D. (2004). Reading and rewriting history. Educational Leadership, 62(1), 4245.

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IMAGINING NATION IN ROMANIAN HISTORY TEXTBOOKS Towards a Liberating Identity Narrative

INTRODUCTION

Reading Romanian history textbooks, one does not get the feeling that the “Romanian nation” is an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1991) or a “creation of modernity, [a] creation of an elite” (Boia, 2005, p. 40). Rather, the nation is presented as a natural and unstoppable development brought about by the inherent logic of history. Likewise, national identity is offered as the most salient identity category in the historical narrative - the one category that can explain every major historical event. These rhetorical and epistemological choices do not only favor the currently dominant demographic group that describes itself as ethnic Romanian (whose members now have proof that they are the premier inheritors of all things Romanian), but they also position the students who read these textbooks to internalize an unproblematic account of true Romanian identity – an account that does not allow them any freedom to negotiate the nuances of their identity for themselves. Coming from a critical pedagogical perspective, a paradigm which urges attention to the effects of language deployment, commitment to praxis and political action and the valorization of diversity and multiculturalism (see, for example, Dewey, 2003; Freire, 2000; Giroux, 1983; hooks, 1994; McLaren, 2009; Shor, 1992), this essay seeks to trouble and decenter the ethnonational narrative with the eventual aim of seeing it offer up a heterogeneous, less essentialist, even counterhegemonic, account of Romanian identity. Like all calls for institutional reform, this chapter rests on the twin assumptions that 1) people can, indeed, be influenced in some way or another by the narratives these books present us with, and 2) there is something wrong with the message(s) espoused by these narratives (see, for example, Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Giordano, 2003; Johnsen, 1993). This chapter focuses on the second assumption, as it seeks to offer a new politics of the textbook that is more critical about identity matters and more politically aware of its language choices. More specifically, this chapter works with an understanding of identity as “fluid, fragmented, discountinuous, decentred, dispersed, culturally eclectic, hybrid-like” (Eliott & du Gay, 2009, p. xii). However, as Stuart Hall (2000) explains in his celebrated essay H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 271–286. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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“Who Needs Identity?” this admittedly postmodern view of identity does not require one to completely decouple one’s subject positions from the structures of power that organize one’s everyday life: [p]recisely because identities are constructed within, not outside, discourse, we need to understand them as produced in specific historical and institutional sites within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies. Moreover they emerge within the play of specific modalities of power, and thus are more the product of the marking of difference and exclusion, than they are the sign of an identical, naturally constituted unity – an “identity” in its traditional meaning (that is, an all-inclusive sameness, seamless, without internal differentiation). Above all, and directly contrary to the form in which they are constantly invoked, identities are constructed through, not outside, difference. This entails the radically disturbing recognition that it is only through the relation to the Other, the relation to what it is not, to precisely what it lacks, to what has been called its constitutive outside that the “positive” meaning of the term – and thus its “identity” – can be constructed. (p. 17, original italics)

My critique of the identity categories offered by Romanian textbooks is justified by my belief that the identity labour undertaken in these texts works in favor of some (i.e., the nation’s leaders who need their subjects’ unquestioned allegiance) and to the detriment of others (i.e., the Other, as well as the citizens who are born into an ethnonational identity category from which there is no escape). The explicit aim of this chapter, then, is threefold: 1) To raise awareness that the Romanian ethnonational category is produced in “specific historical and institutional sites within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies” (Hall, 2000, p. 17). 2) To point out that this identity is indeed “the product of the marking of difference and exclusion,” rather than a “naturally constituted unity,” and thus amenable to deconstruction and, more importantly, reconstruction, in accordance with the individual’s personal principles and values (Hall, 2000, p. 17). Such work, one hopes, will lead to the empowerment of the individual and will minimize the type of violence that is predicated on identity politics. 3) To exemplify how historical narratives “fix” ethnonational identity through the deployment of specific “configurations of lexico-grammatical items” (such as names for certain “imagined communities”), and to suggest alternatives that could “unlock” this naturalized identity category (Hall, 2000, p. 17). The first part of the chapter includes a rather lengthy account of my own take on identity – a critical task if I am to propose that textbooks be revised to allow for more liberal Romanian identifications. I will then briefly go over my method of choice, (Critical) Discourse Analysis, which Phillips & Hardy (2002) describe as an approach that “subverts and challenges taken-for-granted understandings and 272

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undermines the tendency to reify and solidify knowledge” (p. 84). In the third part of the chapter, I offer a critical examination of the manner in which two contemporary Romanian textbooks treat the rather thorny question of the Romanians’ ancestors. Finally, the essay will close with five recommendations for writers of history textbooks, in the hope that they might start a conversation about the role – and responsibilities – of historical narratives in creating national identity. IDENTITY: BETWEEN THEORY AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

My critique of contemporary Romanian historical textbooks is undertaken with the specific aim of facilitating the emergence of a new type of public discourse around the issue of Romanian identity – a cosmopolitan, tolerant, generous discourse, rather than a parochial, bigoted, narrow-minded one. As such, I spend a significant part of this chapter accounting for my perspective of Romanian identity as “performed rather than as prior to language, as dynamic rather than fixed, as culturally and historically located, as constructed in interaction with other people and institutional structures, as continuously remade, and as contradictory and situational” (Benwell & Stokoe, 2006, p. 138). I begin with a brief personal account, in order to inform my reader of the origins of my critical views, as well as to assure him or her that this is more than a scholarly project for me; it is a personal project in which I am deeply invested intellectually, as well as emotionally. The autobiographical notes are followed by an account of several scholarly ideas that have served to anchor my argument. I begin with Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen’s (2006) vision of a society where people have the unfettered right to nurture and deploy different identities in different situations, and where no one is defined as the Other on account of one of his or her (acquired or ascribed) identities. I then seek to defend my points about identity against predictable accusations of dismissing (or at least patronizing) the millions who regard themselves as undoubtedly and solely Romanian; I do so by drawing on Stuart Hall’s (1986) skillful rescue of the concept of false consciousness from the clutch of old-school Marxist categoricals. THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

Born and raised in Communist Romania, I have benefitted immensely from that country’s opening up to the rest of the world after 1989. I was at one time a high school exchange student in the United States; I attended a multinational university in Bulgaria, and have married an Italian-American in my current country of residence (i.e., New England). I have also “changed” races, from a taken-forgranted white in Eastern Europe (an ascribed identity determined primarily by my native fluency in the Romanian language), to an anything-but-white individual in America (an identity predicated on my relatively dark skin tone and my ESL accent). Accordingly, my sense of national identity has progressed from unquestioning acceptance of the Romanianness I was supposedly born into, to a more nuanced “a Romanian is practically indistinguishable from a Bulgarian” -type 273

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of perspective, to a “I’m not exactly sure what a Romanian even is, and that’s ok” view. For more than a decade, I have struggled to negotiate the ethnic, racial and cultural categories that have been imposed on me as a result of what, I can only suspect, was a conspiracy between My People and the Others. I am now at a point where I have used both my personal experiences and my scholarly study of identity to create for myself a narrative that allows for a rather nuanced (ethno)cultural identity. I now approach the discursive terrain of roots/origins and national pride with immense apprehension and not a little cynicism. I speak, read, write, and dream comfortably in both Romanian and English, and I immensely enjoy my experience with both languages. I consider both my native Romanian town and my current American town to be home. I am thus unable to give a straightforward answer when prompted to confess my homecategory (“So what are you, really?”). I understand, of course, exactly what is asked of me, but I have often refused to play that game and to provide the type of answer that is expected of me (e.g., “I am a Romanian” or “I am a RomanianAmerican”). I do not, however, deny or minimize my active participation in the Romanian cultural space; when relevant, I discuss my Romanian childhood, my knowledge of the country and its culture, and my current work of journalism in the Romanian language. If pressed, however, I will explain that “my people” are the millions of cultural sponges out there who recognize that each culture has desirable and undesirable elements, and who would be willing to relocate to any country in the world, provided that the local environment (town, workplace, friends, etc.) was a good personal match. This openness to alternative cultural narratives has not led me to experience a loss of identity; I am not uprooted and do not experience cultural schizophrenia. My Eastern European self (acquired during my college years) has not replaced my Romanian self; rather, it has added to it, as has my American self. I identify with like-minded people around the world, and will unabashedly refuse to identify with nationalists of all stripes and colors, including American and Romanian. IDENTITY AS A HUMAN RIGHT

I fully recognize that my ability to identify myself with more than one nation or culture (as well as to say so when asked to explain my allegiances) is a luxury that is unavailable to many. I do not, however, perceive it as a corrupted by-product of privilege that should be discarded, but rather as a fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to all. In Identity and Violence (2006), Sen makes the case for a type of cultural freedom that allows one to “question the automatic endorsement of past tradition” and maximizes one’s ability to choose one’s cultural identities (p. 114). The plural in “identities” is particularly important to Sen’s argument, as he denounces those societal forces that perceive people as belonging to only one salient category (say, “Muslims” or “Indians” or “men”) – an approach which he describes as “the reductionism provided by a solitarist understanding of people” (Sen, 2006, p. 179). Everybody comes from somewhere, Sen says, but that “somewhere” is never one thing that will inevitably and exclusively determine 274

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one’s identity. Identity is intrinsically pluralistic (and, I would add, ambiguous), and there is nothing natural about attempting to streamline it, clarify it and pin it down with the help of categories that live and die by the vagaries of language. Indeed, much of the violence that plagues the world is enabled by the “cultivation of a sense of inevitability about some allegedly unique – often belligerent – identity” (Sen, 2006, p. xiii). The emphasis on choice and reasoning in Sen’s democratic project does not come at the expense of realism. Sen is fully aware that individuals cannot just be anything and anyone they want to be. It is hardly possible, in today’s world, to switch identifications from, say, a rich, conservative, heterosexual male Czech to a working-class, liberal, lesbian female Chinese. But that does not mean that the field of choices is so constrained that one can only be conservative or only Czech. Multiple identifications are always possible, as are differentiated identifications: It is possible that the often repeated belief, common among advocates of singular affiliation, that identity is a matter of “discovery” is encouraged by the fact that the choices we can make are constrained by flexibility […], and these constraints would rule out all kinds of alternatives as being nonfeasible. And yet even after that, there will remain choices to be make, for example, between priorities of nationality, religion, language, political beliefs, or professional commitments. (Sen, 2006, p. 30)

A Romanian student might not readily imagine himself as a Chinese. But the awareness that his current Romanianness might historically be a result of an older iteration of Romanianness combined with an older iteration of Hungarianness combined with an older iteration of Catholicism, etc. can, indeed, be facilitated by historical narratives that do not explain all past events through the prism of a clash of civilizations (or ethnic groups, or religious groups). In turn, this awareness will hopefully lead this student to be more tolerant of different contemporary performances of Romanianness. There is nothing wrong, Sen argues, with identifying with a cultural tradition, as long as that identification comes as a result of a process of reasoning that does not dismiss a priori other cultural traditions as aberrant, irrational, or downright evil. Sen does not propose that one should do away with ethnic, national, or religious identity. Nor does he propose that individuals re-invent themselves by first severing all connections to the cultural tradition in which they have initially been socialized. “Choice,” writes Sen, “does not require jumping out of nowhere into somewhere, but it can lead to a move from one place to another” (2006, pp. 35-6). In part because of my personal experience detailed above, I believe that this journey “from one place to another” is a highly empowering human experience in and of itself, regardless of the destination. It is this journey that a society’s master narratives (including those put forward by history textbooks) should make possible, if that society is to abide by the democratic ideal. I do not seek to convince Romanian schoolchildren to become Americans or Hungarians (or even better Romanians, for that matter); I seek to convince them that they have a choice in these matters, and that one can be loyal to more than one cultural tradition in more than one way. Furthermore, following Sen, I seek to persuade them that each such tradition (and especially that which we call 275

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the Romanian way) is far from monolithic; rather, it is itself a deliciously unstable and ambiguous construct built on a diversity of Weltanschauungs (which are themselves built on a plurality of perspectives, and so on). Choice, in other words, is not just possible, but also necessary. There will always be someone who decides which elements of Romanianness are salient at any given time and which are not. It is my goal to take at least some of that decision away from the hands of textbook authors and place it into the hands of the individual student. “It is unfair to children who have not yet had much opportunity of reasoning and choice,” Sen writes, “to be put into rigid boxes guided by one specific criterion of categorization and to be told: ‘This is your identity and this is all you are going to get’” (2006, p. 118). My advocacy of a history textbook that presents students with an open-ended ethnonational narrative that emphasizes potentialities rather than clarities, beginnings rather than closures, and choice rather than predestination, seeks to minimize that fundamental unfairness. In Identity and Violence, Sen (2006) also touches on the well-intentioned, but nevertheless misguided, attempts by European and American liberals to combat fundamentalist hate-speech while still using its solitarist vocabulary. To the fearmongering assertion that “All X are violent,” the liberals respond with its “No, true X are peaceful” counterpart, thereby perpetuating the logic of singular, onedimensional, and homogenous demographic categories as the only possible descriptors of human identity. Romanian history textbooks are by no means as racist and as dismissive of the Other as they have been at other times in the country’s history. Indeed, they exhibit more tolerance and understanding towards such traditional Others as the Hungarians or the Ottoman Empire than ever before. But they still do not allow for multiple identifications within the same category (e.g., individuals of mixed ethnocultural backgrounds), multiple identifications across different categories (e.g., individuals for whom their class identity was far more politically salient than their ethnic identity), and changing identifications (e.g., individuals who, at different times in their lives and in different contexts, took on a variety of labels). Thus, they still present the student with a clear, normative definition of Romanianness, rather than enable her to take as much ownership over her own identity as possible. IDENTITY AND “FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS”

Presented with my indictment of ethnonationalism as a dangerously limited (and limiting) perspective on human identity, as well as with my (admittedly leftist) call for the replacing of this perspective with a more democratic one, one would be justified in asking whether I perceive ethnonational identity to be nothing but a form of “false consciousness.” And, in keeping with my preference for nuance, if not ambiguity, the answer is well, yes and no. In “The Problem of IdeologyMarxism Without Guarantees,” Stuart Hall (1986) offers a brilliant escape from the arrogant certainties of the Marxist notions of truth/science and falsity/illusion, while retaining the right and the ability to pass ethical judgment on various ways of knowing the world: 276

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Is the worker who lives his or her relation to the circuits of capitalist production exclusively through the categories of “fair price” and a “fair wage,” in “false consciousness”? Yes, if by that we mean there is something about her situation which she cannot grasp with the categories she is using; something about the process as a whole which is systematically hidden because the available concepts only give her a grasp of one of its many-sided moments. No, if by that we mean that she is utterly deluded about what goes on under capitalism. The falseness therefore arises not from the fact that the market is an illusion, a trick, a sleight-of-hand, but only in the sense that it is an inadequate explanation of a process. It has also substituted one part of the process for the whole – a procedure which, in linguistics, is known as “metonymy” and in anthropology, psychoanalysis and (with special meaning) in Marx’s work, as fetishism. The other “lost” moments of the circuit are, however, unconscious, not in the Freudian sense, because they have been repressed from consciousness, but in the sense of being invisible, given the concepts and categories we are using. (p. 37)

Hall has no appetite for denying the existence of the market, since that conceptual category passes the “material consequences” ontological test with flying colors. Similarly, I have no intention of making the claim that ethnonational identity is “an illusion, a trick, a sleight-of-hand” inflicted upon the masses by unscrupulous leaders. For millions of people, Romanianness is, indeed, an unambiguous, inherited and fundamental identity that organizes part of their worldview, influences some of their actions and shapes some of their interpersonal relationships. But the current history textbooks would have us believe that Romanianness is the only (or at least the most) adequate explanation for momentous historical events, such as wars and revolutions, and the one subject position that should take precedence over all others. To my mind, a “true” account of the motivations and actions of people who lived hundreds years ago must go beyond the circular logic of “They fought the enemy because they were true Romanians; they were true Romanians because they fought the enemy.” Undoubtedly, appeals to ethnonational solidarity played a significant role in determining, say, a peasant to pick up a scythe and go battle “the Turks,” but I find it difficult to believe that some of his other identities (e.g., that of an indentured worker, that of a “man”) had no bearing on his decision. In other words, the story we are given is not necessarily false, as much as it is incomplete. The fetishizing of one identity category, to the detriment of all others, is, of course, precisely what Amartya Sen is also bemoaning in his Identity and Violence (2006). To paraphrase Hall’s account of the apparent normality of the market category, I recognize that the ethnonational “experience” is “the most immediate, daily and universal experience” of history for most Romanians (1986, p. 37, original italics). That reality, of course, guarantees that ethnonationalism is the premier, naturalized, taken-for-granted prism through which identity is perceived. Like Hall, I am looking for those concepts “with which to cut into the process at another point, frame another set of questions, and bring to the surface or reveal what the overwhelming facticity of [ethnonational identity] constantly renders invisible” (1986, p. 37). My call, therefore, is not for a Communist-style replacing of the strict ethnonational narrative in the textbooks with a strict class narrative (or a gender narrative, or a racial narrative, etc.), but rather for the performance of a 277

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“thick description” (Geertz, 1973) of human identity that allows for complementary or alternative explanations of identifications and individual motivations. To give but a quick example, the many battles that prince Vlad Tepes (i.e., the famous Dracula) fought during his three reigns on the Wallachian throne cannot all be reasonably explained by a national liberation narrative. A ruthless leader, the Ottoman-educated Tepes did not hesitate to ally himself with Turks and Hungarians against rival Romanian-speaking nobility. As such, while ethnonational considerations cannot – and should not – be dismissed out of hand, the story of Tepes’ struggles for dominion over the Wallachian principality should include, at a minimum, a properly researched account of Tepes’ personal ambitions and priorities. METHODOLOGY

I have found the concepts “with which to cut into the process at another point [and] frame another set of questions” (Hall, 1986, p. 37) about Romanian history in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), an interdisciplinary epistemological and methodological approach that seeks to identify (and sometimes correct) the effects of the strategic deployment of language. “Whereas other qualitative methodologies work to understand or interpret social reality as it exists,” write Phillips & Hardy (2002, p. 6), “discourse analysis endeavors to uncover the way it is produced. This is the most important contribution of Discourse Analysis: It examines how language constructs phenomena, not how it reflects and reveals it.” CDA’s lineage is a messy affair, and different writers have uncovered different relevant roots (see, for example, van Dijk, 1997, 2001; de Beaugrande, 1997 and Fairclough, 1989, 2003). Insofar as there is a red thread running through the different accounts of CDA’s rise, the approach, which emerged in the 1960s, is said to draw on Marxism (and in particular the cultural criticism of the Frankfurt School), the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, ethnography (in particular ethnography of communication), semiotics, sociolinguistics, cognitive and social psychology, communication studies, critical theory and post-structuralism. Like critical pedagogy, CDA is activist. Norman Fairclough (1989, 2003), one of the founding fathers of CDA (which he initially called “critical language study”) spoke of his aim of making “a contribution to the general raising of consciousness of exploitative social relations, through focusing upon language” (p. 4), a goal with which I too identify. Also like critical pedagogy, CDA is normative, “only with the proviso that it espouses new and unorthodox norms, a new grammar, and not the old established norms of the hegemonic status quo” (Toolan, 1997, p. 227). In “Discourse and Racism,” Wodak and Reisigl (2001) provide us with a useful set of CDA-inspired research questions: (1) How are persons named and referred to linguistically? (2) Which traits, characteristics, qualities and features are attributed to them? (3) By means of which arguments and argumentation schemes do specific persons or social groups try to justify and legitimize the exclusion, discrimination, suppression, and exploitation of others? (4) From which perspective or point of view are these nominations,

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attributions and arguments expressed? (5) Are the respective discriminating utterances articulated overtly, are they even intensified, or are they mitigated? (p. 385)

The following paragraphs will address but the first question. A comprehensive CDA project focusing on history textbooks would, of course, have to attend to all five questions. THE CASE OF THE “GETAE-DACIANS”

In this section, I will analyze one instance of textbook content where language is strategically deployed to create a rather homogenous identity category, that of the Getae-Dacians,1 which allows little room for human diversity and multiculturalism. I do so by comparing similar chapters in two fourth grade history textbooks, Sigma’s Istorie (referred to below as the Sigma textbook) and ALL Educational’s Istoria Românilor (referred to as the ALL textbook). Both chapters purportedly discuss the ancestors of the Romanian people. My goal is to see precisely how a Getae-Dacian identity is created in language – for I believe that the Getae-Dacian (like the Romanian) is, indeed, a linguistic artifact. As with virtually all other countries, Romania has a rich mythological narrative that is deployed every time the question of Romanian identity and of Romanianness comes up. As with all Eastern European countries, this narrative is organized around the tropes of origins and continuity. Both of these tropes have received considerable critical treatment from many quarters (see, for example, Boia, 1997). The idea of nation (as a homogenous entity that has a history) is often said to rest on three main pillars: language, religion and territory. Indeed, both of the textbooks under study abound in references to these three elements, as they are repeatedly employed as proof of that all-important unbroken link between the Daco-Roman entity and contemporary Romanians. Of the three workhorses of national continuity, territory is clearly granted primacy in the textbooks, perhaps due the easiness with which one can imagine a people that has always lived in the same naturally unchanging geographic space. (In contrast, one is more likely to empirically observe the ambiguity, heterogeneity and dynamism that characterize a religion or a language). Indeed, both chapters that discuss “Our Ancestors” open straight away with a reference to territory: ALL: “In Antiquity, the region between the Carpathians, the Danube and the Black Sea was called Dacia or Getae. The ancient writers used the name of Dacia” (original italics, p. 12).2 Sigma: “The people who lived on our country’s territory over 2,500 years ago were called Getae – by the Greeks, and Dacians – by the Romans. Their country was called Dacia” (original bold, p. 21). –––––––––––––– 1 Barbarian people(s) thought to inhabit parts of contemporary Romania roughly between 650 B.C. and 270 A.D., who were conquered by the Romans in 102 A.D. and then again in 106 A.D. The Romanian origins myth points to the Getae-Dacians and the Romans as the Romanian nation’s two “parents.” 2 I have translated all quotes from the two textbooks from the Romanian language.

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Continuity is operationalized by recourse to the territorial argument (“They were here, where we are now, so we must be their continuators!”) which begins as a biological argument (since people who live together in the same area are likely to mate with each other, thus ensuing an unbroken hereditary line) but is quickly used to foreshadow a continuity in spirit (“nationhood”) also. Note, however, the difference in the level of preciseness with which the two textbooks define this territory. While Sigma has no qualms in placing “Dacia” and “our country’s territory” in a report of perfect equivalence, ALL provides three geographical coordinates that would seem to restrict Dacia to a far smaller territory than that of contemporary Romania (for much of Moldavia and especially Transylvania3 lies outside of that triangle). Identifying the exact location of Dacia, of course, has powerful ideological repercussions: which contemporary Romanian region can claim a “more authentic” Romanianness based on Dacian territorial lineage can indeed make a difference in many political and cultural venues. As Boia (2005) notes in the similar case of the “Daco-Romans” (i.e., the protoRomanians), pinpointing a population’s original territory is an impossible mission, if only because ancient Dacia was not the equivalent of an average modern state that has clearly demarcated frontiers and a more or less stable population. Sigma’s identification of Dacia as a country, therefore, is simply a contemporary projection on the past that serves an eminently ideological purpose: the consolidation of the continuity proposition. In contrast, ALL’s use of the word “region” (and, subsequently, of “area” and “territory”) betrays, perhaps, a welcome awareness of the drawbacks of using contemporary labels for administrative arrangements that have few (if any) present-day correspondents. Insofar as, in this chapter, I seek not only to critique strategic language choice but also to provide good-faith suggestions for alternatives, I would recommend that textbook authors avoid framing Dacia as a country (just like, say, contemporary Belgium) and provide their young readers with a more nuanced narrative that would help them become aware of the fact that building “countries” bounded by frontiers is not the only (or even best) way in which humans can organize themselves. Both textbooks start the historical clock with the Getae-Dacians. The complete lack of any reference to peoples that had predated them signals to the reader that, at best, those peoples are not worth mentioning for some reason, or, at worst, they did not even exist, as human history in this territory literally started with the GetaeDacians. The vague temporal markers that the textbook provides us with (“Antiquity” for ALL and “over 2,500 years ago” for Sigma) do not work toward the kind of productive ambiguity that I advocate elsewhere in the chapter, for the strategic way in which contemporary historians date the historical narrative is not problematized in any way; instead, “Antiquity” seems to be used here as a synonym for “the beginning of the world,” and “over 2,500 ago” only marks (and thus exclusively valorizes) the period between the present and (the end of?) the Getae-Dacian era to the detriment of all pre-Getae-Dacian periods. It is at this –––––––––––––– 3 The modern Romanian state now includes the territory of three medieval principalities: Moldova, Wallachia, and Transylvania.

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initial point in the narrative that I would include a rather generous helping of metatext, which would make it clear that the choice to start the historical narrative with the Getae-Dacians is just that, a choice. I would also recommend that that choice be briefly justified. Should the historian discover that the only way to do that is by making unpalatable references to a population’s cultural or civilizational superiority over another, she would perhaps be forced to reassess the crucial historiographic trope of “origins” – a felicitous development, from my perspective. Alternatively, should the historian be forced to invoke the lack of historical evidence (archeological or otherwise) related to pre-Getae-Dacian peoples, she would still be teaching what I consider to be a valuable lesson about historiography. Either way, I believe that the readers would greatly benefit from the historian’s candid, reflexive and critical explanation of her choices at this important juncture in the narrative. Perhaps even more problematic than delineating an original territory and a timeline, however, is the task of naming groups of people. By what name should one call the people(s) who inhabited “our country” more than two millennia ago? Should one give more than one name? And whose names should one use – the names that those populations gave to themselves, or the names that others have given them? If the former, what happens when different factions of the same group use different names? If the latter, which Others do we privilege and on what grounds? Answering that last question should not be too difficult a task in our case, given that virtually all historical evidence referring to the Getae-Dacians comes from Greek sources (notably Herodotus and the geographer Strabo). Indeed, the Sigma textbook operates a swift differentiation between the terms “Getae” and “Dacians” (by simply attributing them to two different sources, the Greeks and the Romans), but not within two actual “peoples.” The straightforward identification of the Getae with the Dacians (one people, two names) is juxtaposed with a much more ambiguous Strabo quote included on the previous page under the heading of “Historical Evidence:” “The Dacians have the same language as the Getae” (Giurescu, Berciu-Drăghicescu, & Grigore, 2006,, p. 20). Should the reader accept the proposition that ethnicity is primarily a function of common language (a conclusion reached, however reluctantly, by Boia, 2005), the quote would indeed seem to validate the Getae-Dacian identification. However, should one allow that two different peoples can indeed speak the same language, the Strabo quote would not be of much help to the claim made in the main text. The ALL textbook also quotes Strabo alongside the narrative, but the sentences preceding the “same language” comment would seem to invalidate Sigma’s claim that the Getae are the same people as the Dacians: The Getae are the ones who have spread towards the Pontos [the Black Sea] and towards the East, and the Dacians the ones who live on the opposite side, towards Germany and the springs of Istros [the Danube]. I figure that they used to be called davi … The Dacians have the same language as the Getae. (brackets and ellipsis in the original, Burleac, Lazãr & Teodorescu, 2005, p. 12)

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In his endeavor to (productively) lay waste to the Romanian myths of national continuity and unity, Boia (2001) relies on Alexandru Vulpe’s work on the GetaeDacian population(s) to make the argument that the label is but a historiographic convention that should not be used to claim a putative “common history” (let alone a “common spirit”) for the various tribal groups in Southeastern Europe. In addition, Boia challenges Strabo’s ability to distinguish between various regional languages. In doing so, he also constructs something of a chain of evidence when referring to the unsatisfactory credibility of the individual that Strabo used as his source, Poseidonius. As seen above, the ALL chapter’s first sentence identifies “the region between the Carpathians, the Danube and the Black Sea” as “Dacia or Getae.” So far, so good (“one people, two names”), but the very next sentence thoroughly confuses the matter: “The ancient writers used the name of Dacia” (Burleac, Lazãr & Teodorescu, 2005, p. 12). If “the ancient writers” (Which ones? All of them?) did, indeed, call the territory Dacia, then who called it Getae and why is that name in any way relevant to us? These questions are left unanswered, but the authors do provide a justification for eventually choosing to go with the “same people” thesis: “The Getae and the Dacians were related, [sic] they spoke the same language, that’s why we call them Getae-Dacians or Dacian-Getae”(original italics, Burleac, Lazãr & Teodorescu, 2005, p. 12). Aside from the welcome inclusion of metatext in the form of justification for one’s lexical choice, I would also be remiss not to note the grammatical shape of the two ALL sentences under scrutiny here. Concretely, in stark contrast to much of the rest of the textbook, the claims made in these sentences are explicitly attributed to agents. What’s more, those agents (i.e., “the ancient writers” and “we”) constitute the Subjects of the respective sentences, a transitive choice that serves to clearly assign responsibility where responsibility is due. It is my belief that the student who makes it a habit to inquire after the source of important information (“Says who?” “How does he/she know?” “How credible is he/she?”) is a student who is exercising critical thinking. Of course, as indicated above, ALL’s attributions are not without fault (Who are the “ancient writers”? Who is “we” – “we, the authors,” “we, historians,” or “we, Romanians”?), but the mere fact that a crucial naming operation is attributed to somebody deserves, I believe, a measure of appreciation. FIVE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AUTHORS OF HISTORY TEXTBOOKS

The length restrictions of this chapter evidently limit the amount of detail I can provide about the alternatives that I recommend to the language used in these textbooks. As a measure of compensation, I conclude this essay with a list of recommendations which are meant specifically for writers of history textbooks but which, I believe, can also be of use to critical readers of textbooks. The list items are taken from Phillips & Hardy’s (2002) Discourse Analysis, where they are offered as “dimensions of reflexivity” to be observed when formulating a critical discourse analysis (p. 85). Given that my ideal historical narrative is, from an

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epistemological and methodological point of view, a CDA text, I believe these recommendations are an excellent fit for my project: 1) “Acknowledge that language constructs rather than reveals” (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 85). A whole lot of that which we call “reality” (including “the nation”) is constructed and lives in the laboratory of the human mind. Indeed, it is perpetually re-constructed, with every communicative act that we and everybody else undertakes. In Carey’s (1992) words, reality is “humanly produced and humanly maintained” (p. 16). Being offered historical narratives that take this fundamental process into account and do not try to gloss over the fascinating inconsistencies of human identity would go a long way towards empowering the student, who could now begin her life-long quest for identity, rather than have it end in the pages of a textbook. Writers of historical textbooks should recognize that ideograms like “unity,” “the people,” “nation,” “homeland,” “country,” etc. are linguistic phenomena with powerful ideological, political and emotional effects (McGee, 1980) and should avoid using them uncritically. 2) “Allow different voices to pervade the text” and “[e]ngage in debate among and between theoretical communities” (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 85). According to Apple (1996), [e]ducation is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. The curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone’s selection, some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge. (p. 22, original italics)

This should be made clear to the students at all times, and that can be achieved, at least in part, through the liberal use of metatext, particularly the kind that Vande Kopple (1985) calls “narrators”: “phrases and clauses [which] function primarily to let readers know who said or wrote something” (p. 84). The simple addition of the phrase “according to X,” followed by a brief identification of X’s credentials (e.g., “according to Thucydides, a Greek historian who himself fought in the Peloponnesian War”) would teach students that all sources are not created equal, and that one would be hard-pressed in finding such a thing as an unbiased source. The constant exercise in evaluating sources and connecting their lives and interests to the historical information they provide us with would help develop those critical thinking skills that many pedagogues today claim to be teaching. 3) “Acknowledge that not all possible voices appear in the text, and those that do are not expressed in equal terms” (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 85). Absolute fairness with regards to all possible sources of relevant information is impossible to achieve, for reasons of space limitations, knowledge gaps on the part of the writer, as well as personal and scholarly biases. All issues deemed controversial by contemporary historiography should be tagged as such, and caveats should be offered in the interest of intellectual honesty and transparency. 4) “Engender multiple meanings and alternate representations” (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 85). Were this list to be cut down to only one item, this would be it. As mentioned throughout the paper, allowing students the possibility of imagining their Romanian identity in multiple ways, some perhaps incorporating elements of rival ethnonational identities, would, in my opinion, go a long way 283

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towards creating a tolerant, peaceful people. When appropriate, confess uncertainty, discuss the lack of documentary and archeological evidence; do not offer a neat, seamless historical narrative whereby each major moment (e.g., political decision, war) is assumed as emerging cleanly and obviously from the “facts.” Employ metatext, and more specifically, “validity markers,” which are used to “indicate how we assess the probability or truth of the propositional content that we express and to show how committed we are to that assessment” (Vande Kopple, 1985, p. 84). Hedges (e.g., “perhaps,” “might,” “to a certain extent”) are preferable to emphatics (e.g., “clearly,” “undoubtedly”). 5) “Take responsibility for our texts” and “be aware of political aspects of research.” Once again, sourcing one’s information helps the reader understand that the “reality” rendered in the text is, at least to some extent, an effect of the strategic deployment of language and, as such, could indeed be laid out in a different manner. Unsourced declarative sentences imply the existence of an immutable truth that can be explained in only one way, regardless of who is doing the explaining. Vande Kopple’s (1985) “illocution markers,” that is, that metatext through which “we can make explicit to our readers what speech or discourse act we are performing at certain points in our texts” (e.g., “we conclude that,” “we offer two examples”) are one way in which the author can disclose her active participation in the process of meaning-making through storytelling (p. 84). I am fully aware of the political implications of my proposal to revisit Romanian historical narratives with the goal of refashioning “Romanian identity.” Likewise, I believe that all writers of history should explicitly acknowledge their participation in a discourse that is eminently political. Education itself, with its normative slant, is unavoidably political; how much more so is the education institution that purports to tell students “where they come from” and “who their people is”? CONCLUSION

Situated within the Critical Discourse Analysis paradigm, this study has examined the categorization effects of the deployment of language in Romanian historical textbooks. Working with a concept of “identity” rescued by Stuart Hall and others from both orthodox Marxist determinism and postmodernist irrelevance, I sought to deliver a critique of the manner in which the historical narrative offered to Romanian schoolchildren presents them with an unnecessarily (and undesirably) fixed, closed, unambiguous, Western-oriented ethnonational identity category. This study was based on the constructivist premise that nations are not only “imagined” entities, but they are also brought into existence through linguistic labor. I believe that a close reading of the language employed in the history textbooks, dialectically coupled with an understanding of the “grand narratives” of “Romanianness,” can yield a useful diagnosis of the Romanian “nation-building” discourse.

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QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. Apple (1996) offers a stinging critique of the “progressive-sounding”

2.

3. 4. 5.

textbook discourse that emphasizes the fact that nearly all Americans are immigrants: “We are all immigrants. […] Well, sure we are. But such a story totally misconstrues the differential conditions that existed. Some immigrants came in chains, were slaves and faced centuries of repression and government-mandated segregation” (p. 17, original italics). If one important purpose of a critical historical narrative is to trouble the discourse of “origins” and “direct lineage,” how exactly does one handle the question of American immigration? Given that ethnic identity can be forged not just by identification with a language or a religion, but also by being subjected to the same type of mistreatment by a dominant group, how does one problematize, say, American identity categories, while also recognizing that “taking away” one’s previously untroubled sense of identity might end up effectively reproducing oppression? Ethnicity/nationality is arguably a much less salient identity category than gender. How does one go about problematizing gender categories in historical narratives? Is the process of globalization (manifested through such phenomena as the European Union, the internet and American pop culture) already achieving the kind of identity narrative proposed in this chapter? Given that traditional historiography has, by and large, privileged ethnonational identity over all other identity categories (with the exception of early Communist historiography, which adopted a classoriented perspective), where does one find the relevant historical evidence one needs to propose an alternative historical narrative? REFERENCES

Anderson, B. (1991). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. New York, NY: Verso. Apple, M. W. (1996). Cultural politics and education. New York, NY: Teacher’s College, Columbia University. Apple, M. W. (2000). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. New York, NY: Routledge. Apple, M. W., & Christian Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. New York, NY: Routledge. Benwell, B. and Stokoe, E. (2006). Discourse and identity. Edinburgh, Great Britain: Edinburgh University Press. Boia, L. (2005). Două secole de mitologie naţională [Two centuries of national mythology]. Bucharest, Romania: Humanitas. Boia, L. (1997). History and myth in Romanian consciousness. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press. Burleac, L., Lazăr, L., & Teodorescu, B. (2005). Istoria românilor [The history of the Romanians]. Bucharest, Romania: ALL Educational. Carey, J. (1992). Communication as culture: Essays on media and society. New York, NY: Routledge.

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RAZVAN SIBII Dewey, J. (2003). Democracy and education. Boston, MA: IndyPublish.com. Elliott, A., & du Gay, P. (2009). Identity in question. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. New York, NY: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (1989). Language and power. New York, NY: Longman. Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Towards an interpretive theory of culture. The interpretation of cultures. New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. Giordano, G. (2003). Twentieth-century textbook wars: A history of advocacy and opposition. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. Giroux, H. (1983). Theory and resistance in education: A pedagogy for the opposition. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. Giurescu, D. C., Berciu-Drăghicescu, A., & Grigore, S. D. (2006). Istorie [History]. Bucharest, Romania: SIGMA. Hall, S. (1986). The problem of ideology-Marxism without guarantees. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10, 28-44. Hall, S. (2000). Who needs “identity”? In P. du Gay, J. Evans, & P. Redman (Eds.), Identity: A reader (pp. 15-30). New York, NY: Sage Publications Inc. hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York, NY: Routledge. Johnsen, E. B. (1993). Textbooks in the kaleidoscope: A critical survey of literature and research on educational texts. Oslo, Norway: Scandinavian University Press. McGee, M. C. (1980). The “ideograph”: A link between rhetoric and ideology. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66(1). McLaren, P. (2009). Critical pedagogy: A look at the major concepts. In A. Darder, M. P. Baltodano, & R. D. Torres, R.D. (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader (pp. 69-96). New York, NY: Routledge. Phillips, N., & Hardy, C. (2002). Discourse analysis: Investigating processes of social construction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Sen, A. (2006). Identity and violence. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. Shor, I. (1992). Empowering education: Critical teaching for social change. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Toolan, M. (1997). What is Critical Discourse Analysis and why are people saying such terrible things about it? Language and Literature, 6(2), 83-103. Vande Kopple, W. J. (1985). Some exploratory discourse on metadiscourse. College Composition and Communication, 36(1), 82-93. Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). The study of discourse. In T. A. Van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse as a structure and process (pp. 1-34). Van Dijk, T. A. (2001). Critical discourse analysis. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 352-371). Wodak, R., & Reisigl, M. (2001). Discourse and racism. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), The handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 372-395).

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IDEALIZING AND LOCALIZING THE PRESIDENCY The President’s Place in State History Textbooks

For better or worse the president is the visible face of the United States of America and history is marked with many powerful presidential moments (e.g., Adler, 2005; Cronin, 1974, 2004; FitzGerald, 1979; Hoekstra, 1982; Kinder & Fiske, 1986; Loewen, 1995; Sanchez, 1996; Stern, 1996; Skowronek, 1993). Some of the most memorable include Abraham Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address, the inaugural addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan demanding Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” But history also presents us with presidential moments many would rather forget. Consider Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal or Bill Clinton and the definition of “is” during the Lewinsky affair. Nevertheless, the presidency is more than a set of memorable or forgettable moments or individuals. The presidency is an institution with certain domestic and international responsibilities, such as creating a national budget and recognizing other nations, that forces the men or women who hold the office to represent the United States in the eyes of the world. The president sits at the head of an executive branch whose authority rests with one individual. For that reason the president is often the most easily recognizable among the 537 individuals elected to national office. With this recognition comes certain responsibilities and attributions of blame or appreciation. A contemporary example is when gas prices increase the president receives blame for his inability to control the market even in the midst of an uncontrollable situation. Alternatively, when a national disaster or tragedy occurs the president is expected to attend to those affected by events and provide them comfort. With all of these perceived responsibilities the president has few actual stated responsibilities in the United States Constitution. For example, while many in the media and many textbooks attribute the president to leading the nation into war against other nations, the actual responsibility for declaring war or approving actions rests with Congress. The president’s role in relation to military action is to serve as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and not to determine whether or not force is applied. Even if Congress has a recent history of allowing the president to assume Congress’ responsibility of declarations of war (i.e., the War Powers Act) – those individuals or texts that make comments such as “the president declared war” are nonetheless inaccurate. According to Loewen (1995), history textbooks such as Berkin and Woods’s (1986) Land of Promise are filled with inaccuracies such as the one mentioned H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 287–303. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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above. We found this to be true in a recently published elementary level textbook, America the Beautiful: Ohio, which claims that William McKinley “declared war on Spain” (Stile, 2009, p. 85). Though these inaccuracies and political biases are found concerning many people and events in history textbooks, some of the most important, and in some cases shocking, inaccuracies involve the depiction of the presidency and the portrayals of the 43 men who held the office (Alridge, 2006; Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; Fitzgerald, 1979; Loewen, 1995, 2010). Specifically, in three prior studies we have found that the portrayal of presidents in state history textbooks, an understudied medium in the transmission of historical content, offers textbook authors the ability to promote particular presidential biases and inaccuracies differently that those found in textbooks written for a national audience (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). Our studies included two thoroughly conducted content analyses that examined the portrayals of 20th and 21st century presidents found in 62 state history textbooks that were used in 14 states and written over a 50 year period (1951–2010). We compared our findings to the literature of three disciplines (i.e., education, history, and political science) concerning the national portrayal of individual presidents and the institution of the presidency found in textbooks and other sources as well as the “costly implications” that may come with an inaccurate portrayal of presidential power on American society (e.g., Adler, 2005; Cammarota, 1963; Cronin, 1974, 2004; CSPAN, 2009; Kinder & Fiske, 1986; Loewen, 1995; Siena Research Institute, 2002; Wall Street Journal, 2005). In this chapter we discuss the concept of the “over-idealized” presidency. We then move to a discussion concerning the president’s place in state history textbooks and the implications that these portrayals may have on the historical understandings of those students who take these courses. Additionally, we offer suggestions for textbook authors, classroom teachers, and teacher educators and their students about how to neutralize the biases and inaccuracies encountered in these texts and how to use them to enhance their classroom instruction. THE “OVER-IDEALIZED” PRESIDENCY

Most researchers agree that presidents receive an inaccurate portrayal in textbooks (e.g., Alsfield, 1995; Hoekstra, 1982; Sanchez, 1996). The general consensus is that textbooks offer idealized and often incorrect images about the office of the president and those who hold the office (e.g., Adler, 2005; Cronin, 1975; Cronin & Genovese, 2004; Jenkins-Smith, Silva, & Watermen, 2005; Kinder & Fiskie, 1986; Loewen, 1995; Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). The first of these studies is considered the most influential in the genre (Cronin, 1974). Cronin suggests that textbook authors present an over-idealized image of the presidency and that their texts “incline toward exaggerations about past and future president[ial] performance” (1974, pp. 54–55). Although Cronin’s primary focus was the examination of the presidency and not the individuals elected to that office, he highlights several 20th century U.S. presidents to illustrate aspects of the “ideal” presidency. 288

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Cronin (1974) argues that, in political science textbooks, only certain presidents live up to this idealized vision of the office. These presidents, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, demonstrate the fortitude to “expand the federal governments’ role in order to cope with the increasingly nation-wide demands of social justice and a prosperous economy” (Cronin, 1974, p. 55). Other presidents, such as Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and even “popular” presidents such as Dwight Eisenhower, are portrayed as failures because they did not take on the managerial responsibilities textbook authors revere. Cronin’s later work continues to assert the legitimacy of this theory even after such events as Watergate and the Vietnam War removed some luster from the public image of the president (Cronin, 1975; Cronin & Genovese, 2004). Cronin (1975) concludes that there are several costly social and political consequences based on textbooks portraying the dominant ideology of textbook presidency. These consequences include “the quality of civic participation, the potential for cynicism toward government, and distorted perception within the presidential establishment itself” (pp. 45-46). In our own research we have discovered that this over-idealized portrayal of the president extends to state history textbooks as well. We found that this portrayal was prevalent in the 42 most recently published state history textbooks used by the 14 birth states of the nation’s 20th and 21st century presidents (excluding President Obama, who had not been elected at the time of this study) (Roberts, 2009; Roberts & Butler, 2010). In addition, the results of a longitudinal review of 20 Georgia history textbooks written from 1951–2005 showed similar results (Roberts, 2011). For example, former Union officer and Republican President William McKinley received an extremely positive depiction in a 1954 Georgia textbook. At the time, Georgia was a solidly Democratic state. The authors wrote in the following about a speech McKinley gave in Atlanta: [H]e said ‘Sectional lines no longer mar the map of the United States. Sectional feeling no longer holds back the love we bear each other.’ Although he had been an officer in the Union army, he said that the graves of Confederate soldiers were graves of honor … He touched the hearts of all as he wore a Confederate badge which had been presented to him. (Coulter, Saye, & King, 1954, p. 234)

Nonetheless, unlike the observations about the presidents made by researchers who analyze the textbook presidency at a national level, how presidents are overidealized differs in state history textbooks as compared to those written for a national audience. Some examples of these differences include the positive presidential portrayals based on the political allegiances of the state, the connection that the president had to the state (by birth or by visiting), and if the president was currently in office at the time of the textbook’s publication (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). These differing portrayals offer support and insights into the critiques made about the inherent weakness of state history textbooks found in previous research (e.g., DeLuca, 1984; Lothrop, 1989; McLaurin, 1971; Moore, 1969; Terry, 1983).

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THE PRESIDENT’S PLACE IN STATE HISTORY

State history courses are offered mostly to young adolescents (ages 10-14) in 49 of 50 states, with the exception being West Virginia (Stern & Stern, 2011). These courses are not a recent invention as they have been part of the social studies curriculum continuously since the late 19th century (Isner, 1990; Percy, 2003). State history is normally incorporated into a state’s social studies curriculum to provide students with an examination of the state’s history, geography, economics, and government. Moore (1969) offers more detail about the purposes of state history. He suggests that these courses provide students with an “appreciation of the state,” “build[s] good citizenship through the knowledge of the society in which he lives,” and “relat[es] the state to the United States and world history” (p. 267). Although the subject is widely taught in schools, there is a level of ethnocentrism present in state history textbooks and standards as historic people and events at a national level are regularly passed over in favor of local figures. Moore (1969) lambastes state history textbooks for their “ethnocentric belief in the superiority of the state’s culture and disparagement of ‘outside’ contributions” (p. 267). He goes on to claim that state history textbooks “rarely satisfy … the requirements of scholarship, the curiosity of students, or the needs of society” (Moore, 1969, p. 275). Additional critiques leveled at state history textbooks include the presentation of material in a “choppy” nonlinear fashion or topics covered in an over-idealized or over-emphasized fashion based on their connection to the state (Blaga & Nielsen, 1983; Moore, 1969; Roberts, 2009). State history in the age of standardization is somewhat of an outlier when it comes to how content is addressed. State history textbook authors are given an autonomy not often found in the authorship of national texts. This freedom can be found readily in the representation of a national topic like the presidency. For example, only two 20th century presidents (i.e., Franklin Roosevelt and Jimmy Carter) are listed in the Georgia state standards (Georgia Department of Education, 2008). However, the four Georgia state history textbooks we reviewed mentioned each of the 20th and 21st century presidents (Roberts & Butler, 2010). In contrast, the state of Massachusetts lists one 20th century president, John F. Kennedy, and he is the only president that textbooks discuss (Massachusetts Department of Education, 2003; Roberts & Butler, 2010). While it should be noted that there is nothing erroneous with the freedom textbook authors have to discuss the presidents they choose there is evidence that the nondescript nature of discussing prominent historical figures at a state level allows for the possibility of a more biased, inaccurate, and over-idealized (or in some cases unjustly vilified) portrayal of those individuals who may already be romanticized nationally. We have come to find that state history textbooks tend to offer more of an overidealized and less critical portrayal of the president than those textbooks written for a national audience. In many cases, presidential failings or presidents who are relatively unpopular are either left out of texts entirely or are downplayed by the authors of the texts. An example of this includes the lack or minimal discussion of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush in the textbooks of their native states (Banks et al., 2007; Ifkovic, 2002; Lukesh, 2004; 290

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Porter et al., 2007; Stockwell & Thomas, 2004; Viola, Bednarz, Jennings, Schug, & White, 2007; White, 2006). In turn, the only instances where presidents are criticized are to have them serve as antagonists to more popular presidents. Some examples include Herbert Hoover in relation to Franklin Roosevelt in an Arkansas textbook (Hopper, Baker, & Browning, 2008) and Gerald Ford in relation to Jimmy Carter in Georgia textbooks (Hodge, 2005; Jackson, Stakes, Hepburn, & Hepburn, 2004; Kline & Pascoe, 2005; London, 2005). In the remainder of this section we share some of the more interesting presidential inaccuracies found in state history textbooks. Specifically, we discuss the presidents’ place in state history textbooks through three lenses: the president as “Head of State,” “Protector-in-Chief,” and “Spoiler-in-Chief.” THE “HEAD OF STATE”

One of the primary duties of the president is to serve as the nation’s “head of state.” This role requires the president to meet with foreign dignitaries, attend state funerals, take international goodwill tours and to serve as the first citizen of the nation. Consequently, we found that in most cases the authors of state history textbooks strive to draw parallels to this role of the presidency to the history of their states. More often than not, state history authors point out any connection, no matter how inconsequential, a former or sitting president has with a state. The most common and understandable occurrence of discussing a president in a state history textbook is if the president was either born or raised in the state. For example, in our previous studies we found that presidents received the largest number of mentions in the states they were born or raised in 11 of the 14 states we examined (Roberts, 2009; Roberts & Butler, 2010). As such, with the large number of references each of these men received in the texts of their native states, students are taught that these presidents are one of, if not the most, important figure from that state. Though understandable, too many references about a native president can open the door to bias and an inaccurate portrayal of the men who held the presidency. For example, a relatively unpopular president such as Jimmy Carter is portrayed in an over-idealized manner in Georgia history textbooks. More often than not his presidential accomplishments are highlighted while his shortcomings as president are minimally discussed (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). As the author of one Georgia text claims: While president of the United States Carter did many things that helped our nation. He increased jobs by 8 million and helped decrease the national debt. He added millions of acres to the national parks system and hired many minorities into government jobs. Internationally, he helped bring peace to the Middle East by negotiating with the leaders of Egypt and Israel to sign an important treaty at Camp David called The Camp David Peace Agreements. Since leaving office in 1981, President Carter has become the most successful former President of all time. (Hodge, 2005, p. 275)

A second example concerns another relatively unpopular president, Calvin Coolidge, whose administration is not well respected by historians and political 291

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scientists alike (Stern, 1996). Nevertheless, a textbook used in his home state of Vermont claims that Coolidge’s quiet personality personified the “traditional character” of Vermonters as a whole (Heinrichs, 2001, p. 111). Presidents like Carter and Coolidge receive increased consideration to their status as native-born sons. Although they do not receive extensive coverage in other state textbooks, Georgia and Vermont continue to reinterpret these former national leaders’ often tarnished legacies as positive. A far more disturbing example of this pattern is the portrayal of Richard Nixon in California textbooks. Nixon was only referenced for being born in the state and there was no discussion of the Watergate scandal or his escalation of the Vietnam War in these texts (Porter et al., 2007; Viola et al., 2003). In addition, part-time California resident Herbert Hoover was shielded from the blame he generally receives nationally for his Great Depression policies. In the textbook California Vista: Our Golden State, Hoover was not mentioned by name in the chapter on the Great Depression. However, Calvin Coolidge was discussed, and in effect, held responsible for the Great Depression. Banks et al. (2003) begin their chapter on the Great Depression with: “During the 1920s, the economy of the United States was growing. President Calvin Coolidge said ‘the chief business of the American people is business.’ Unfortunately hard times were ahead” (p. 347). The second element of the Head of State pattern is the large number of references and, in many cases, an overemphasis of a president simply visiting the state. These presidential references include relatively unpopular presidents such as Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. For example, both Nixon and George H. W. Bush are mentioned in an Arkansas history textbook for attending the 1969 football game between the University of Arkansas and the University of Texas (Hooper et al., 2008). In another example both Jimmy Carter and sitting President George W. Bush were mentioned in the text From Sea to Shining Sea: Iowa for visiting the state during the Iowa Caucus in 1980 and 2000 respectively (Balcavage, 2002). George W. Bush was also mentioned in separate Arkansas and Georgia texts for visiting the states as well (Hopper et al., 2008; London, 2005). Finally, presidents are mentioned for visiting a state even before they became president. Theodore Roosevelt was mentioned in two Texas history textbooks for training the “Rough Riders” in San Antonio while Dwight D. Eisenhower was mentioned in a Georgia textbook for being stationed at a military base in the state in 1926 (Anderson, Wooster, De Leon, Hardt, & Winegarten, 2003; Hodge, 2005; Willoughby, 2003). THE “PROTECTOR-IN-CHIEF”

As almost any U.S. citizen can attest, one of the official titles that the president holds is that of “Commander-in-Chief.” In this role, the president is the commander of the armed forces and responsible for protecting the people of the United States from enemies both foreign and domestic. However, authors of state history textbooks often take this idea further and make mention of any president who performed a task perceived as protecting the people or interests of the state. 292

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Though some of these presidential references are positive in nature, many offer an over-idealized and inaccurate portrayal of the certain presidents. In turn, if a particular president did not live up to this ideal or make a decision that was desirable to the state, textbook authors suddenly became critical of the president without offering students suggestions about why this decision may have been more beneficial to the entire country. Nonetheless, authors usually reap praise on the subsequent president because he “made up for the mistakes of his peers.” In our analysis, 13 of the 19 presidents were referenced for taking the role of “Protector-in-Chief” for a state. This depiction was often found in the presidents’ native states such as Theodore Roosevelt in New York and Dwight D. Eisenhower in Texas (Anderson et al., 2003; Banks et al., 2001; Cotter, 2008; Fehrenbach, Siegel, & Crowley, 2003; Gelman, 2002; Rocha, Crawford, McDonald, & Elbow, 2003; Willoughby, 2003). Nevertheless, there were also several examples of nonnative presidents being praised in states, such as Theodore Roosevelt in Arkansas, California and Georgia (Banks et al., 2007; Hodge, 2005; Hopper et al., 2008; Porter et al., 2007), and Bill Clinton in Iowa (Balcavage, 2002; LaDoux, 2002). Perhaps based on Theodore Roosevelt’s national reputation as a “cowboy,” “rough rider,” and “trust buster,” he was mentioned as the Protector-in-Chief in three states outside his native New York. In Arkansas, Roosevelt was mentioned for protecting the rights of African Americans by speaking out against lynching laws (Hopper et al., 2008). The authors write, “When President Theodore Roosevelt came to Arkansas in 1905, Davis [the Governor of Arkansas] used his formal welcome speech to defend lynching. Roosevelt . . . ignored his planned remarks and condemned Davis’s lawless and disrespectful ideas” (p. 281). In California he is portrayed as the savior of California’s natural treasures (Banks et al., 2007; Porter et al., 2007). In Georgia, Roosevelt is given sole credit for the progressive movement and convincing the people of the state that “reform was very important” (Hodge, 2005, p. 193). Nonetheless, in some state textbooks a president is portrayed as the Protector-in-Chief for simply making declarations related to the state. For example, in two Iowa textbooks Bill Clinton was referenced for declaring the state “a disaster area” after a flood ravaged the area in 1993 (Balcavage, 2002; LaDoux, 2002). Interestingly enough, presidents receive the most critique in state history textbooks when they do not act as the Protector-in-Chief when supporting a state’s interest. In these portrayals bias becomes much more apparent in the texts. References to the presidencies of Coolidge, Hoover, Truman, and Ford in the most recently published state history textbooks of Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas serve as examples for this element of the Protector-in-Chief theme. Similar to what Stern (1996) found in his examination of Calvin Coolidge in national history textbooks, state history texts tend to either lump the administrations of Coolidge and Hoover together and, for the most part, their portrayals tend to be negative. In the California textbook chapter on the Great Depression we mentioned previously, a quote by Coolidge was used to shield some of the traditional blame given to California resident Herbert Hoover. However, an

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example of the link between Coolidge and Hoover can be found in the University of Arkansas’ textbook (Hopper et al., 2008). In it Hopper et al. (2008) write: Arkansas looked to their state and federal government for help and guidance. President Calvin Coolidge, a Republican, named Herbert Hoover to arrange for private relief efforts. However, due to government ‘red tape’ … none of the relief funds went directly for the victims. (p. 326)

Later in the textbook the authors critique Hoover and praise Franklin Roosevelt by writing: Real help for Arkansas would eventually come from the U.S. Government. When President Herbert Hoover was president, the government gave no aid to individuals and only some aid to businesses. In the 1932 election the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt was elected … He was deeply concerned about the people’s distress and was willing to try a number of new programs. (Hopper et al., 2008, p. 334)

Another relatively unpopular president Gerald Ford receives similar treatment in Georgia history textbooks (the only state textbooks examined that reference him). In order to make Jimmy Carter the “native son” look more impressive, the Georgia history textbooks offer an unflattering portrayal and in some cases inaccurate information about Gerald Ford and the election of 1976. The authors of one text claim that “during Ford’s administration the economy was in bad shape and people lost their jobs” (Kline & Pascoe, 2005, p. 489). In another text there is an extremely inaccurate accounting of the election of 1976 that is presented to Georgia’s students. Hodge (2005) states that Carter won the election with “297 electoral votes, while his opponent, President Gerald Ford, had only 241 votes” (p. 275). This is by no means an accurate depiction. In fact, the election of 1976 was one of the closest in the 20th century with Carter wining 51% of the popular vote and 23 of the 50 states. Finally, it should be noted that this type of treatment is by no means reserved for unpopular presidents. Harry Truman, whose administration ranks in the top 10 in most presidential polls (C-SPAN 2009; Siena, 2002; Wall Street Journal, 2005), received similarly unflattering references in the state history textbooks used in Texas. In these texts Truman was referenced for holding and putting into action ideals that pushed the conservative Texas Democrats into the Republican Party. These actions included his lobbying for civil rights legislation, vetoing bills that would have allowed Texas to receive revenues from the oil that was found in the “tidelands” and vetoing the Taft-Hartley Act that was designed to limit the power of labor unions (Anderson et al., 2003; Rocha et al., 2003). THE “SPOILER-IN-CHIEF”

The Pendleton Federal Civil Service Act of 1883 signaled the termination of the “spoils system” and the introduction of the merit system in federal, state, and local government. Today, however, many state history textbooks still reference presidents who reward citizens of a state for a variety of contributions. In most cases these references tend to be about a president appointing a loyal citizen of the 294

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state to a high-ranking government position, though it can also include calling athletes for significant events or directly praising the state for an action the president agreed with. In our research, 15 of 19 presidents received at least one reference in a state history textbook for rewarding a state’s citizens through appointment or a congratulatory act. Presidential popularity was not a factor as those who received mentions ranged from some of the more popular (i.e., Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson) to those presidents rarely mentioned in state history texts such as William Taft. Traditionally unpopular presidents, such as Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover, received these types of references as well. For example, popular president Franklin Roosevelt was mentioned in the textbooks of three states for appointing individuals to high-ranking position. These states were spread throughout the country and included the textbooks used in Iowa, Missouri, and Texas. These references include the appointments of Iowan Henry Wallace, Missourian Harry Truman, and Texan John Gardner as Vice-President and Texan Frances Perkins as the nation’s first female cabinet member (Anderson et al., 2003; Brown, 2010; Gall, 2006; McCandless & Foley, 2001; Rocha et al., 2003; Schwider, Morain, & Nielsen, 2002; Willoughby, 2003). Similarly, Woodrow Wilson received references in textbooks from Georgia, Iowa, and Ohio for his political appointments (Hodge, 2005; Kline, 2002; Schwider et al., 2002). Arguably the most unique appointment credited to Wilson is that of Georgian Mary Harris Armor “to represent the United States at the World Congress of Alcoholism held in Milan, Italy” (Hodge, 2005, p. 207). In comparison, the sitting and relatively out of favor president at the time of the study, George W. Bush, was mentioned for political appointments in three of the states that supported him in the 2000 and 2004 elections – Arkansas, Georgia, and Texas. In fact, two Texas textbooks appeared to take pride in Bush’s appointment of several Texas natives to federal positions (Fehrenbach et al., 2003; Willoughby, 2003). In addition, Republican Richard Nixon was mentioned in two Georgia textbooks for celebratory actions including a call to Hank Aaron to congratulate him on hitting his 714th homerun and for naming a nuclear powered aircraft carrier after Georgia Representative and father of the “two-ocean navy” Carl Vinson (Kline & Pascoe, 2005; London, 2005). In fact, this lens of the presidency was so dominate in state history even one of the lowest ranked presidents of the 20th century, Herbert Hoover, was referenced in a Texas textbook for his appointment of Texan Jesse Jones to a position in the federal government (Willoughby, 2003). Finally, as previously mentioned, the Spoiler-in-Chief role in state history extends to almost all presidents. Usually, a lesser known president is referenced in a textbook for his act of appointing his succeeding vice-president as in the case of “forgotten president” Warren G. Harding’s appointment of Calvin Coolidge (Connolly, 2007; Czech, 2002; Heinrichs, 2001; Pelta, 2002). However, it should also be noted that one of the lesser-known presidents, William Howard Taft, was randomly mentioned in a Georgia history textbook for his appointment of Georgian Joseph Rucker to the Supreme Court (Hodge, 2005).

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IMPLICATIONS

Generally, this chapter does not offer any new conclusions in relation to the argument that history textbooks, whether written for a national or state audience, hold a degree of bias. This idea was evidenced not only in the results of our study, but in the conclusions of various other social studies textbook analyses as well (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; FitzGerald, 1979; Jennings, 1994; Loewen, 1995; Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). Because textbook analyses continuously come to the same conclusions (i.e., presence of bias and inaccuracies), several researchers have critiqued the methods of those who study textbooks (Frankel, 1987; Wade, 1993). In congruence with arguments presented by Wade (1993), almost every national or state history textbook analysis we reviewed examined individuals, events, or eras that contained similar findings about biases and weaknesses in the discussion of the particular historical topic considered. It should be understood that not every topic or detail can be covered in these books, especially to the degree that the textbook critics would like. Many researchers seem enamored with their topics and began their studies with the assumption that the topic is not being written about thoroughly enough. Contrary to the critiques made by Wade (1993), we believe it is still important to study and critique all portrayals of historical events, eras, and individuals found in textbooks, even if the findings are similar. A few of the textbook examinations, such as the recent study conducted by Wineberg and Monte-Sano (2008), comment on the improvements about the portrayals and number of mentions concerning women and minorities they found in textbooks over time and one can hope that if researchers continue to conduct and publish these studies, then textbooks may improve with every adoption cycle. Based on this belief, in our prior research we offered suggestions to both textbook authors and classroom teachers about how they can use their knowledge of textbook bias about the presidency to enhance the quality of textbooks or the lessons used in classroom (Roberts, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). However, we did not include another important group affected by this research: teacher educators and the preservice teachers they instruct. The remainder of this section reviews the suggestions we provided to textbook authors and classroom teachers and offers new suggestions to college professors and their students about the importance of state history and how they can do their part to neutralize the bias found in historical texts by learning to critically analyze the presidential portrayals found in state history textbooks. SUGGESTIONS TO TEXTBOOK AUTHORS

In previous work we offered suggestions to textbook authors about how they can use their knowledge of the textbook presidency to write more accurate depictions of the president and his powers (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). We return to those suggestions in this section. First, we encourage textbook authors to remain cognizant of how they portray the presidents and whether or not they present the Office of the President in an over-idealized fashion. Next, we suggest textbook authors offer an accurate depiction of the president and the powers of the 296

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office. For example, no textbook author should ever write a statement to the effect that “The president declared war on …,” which we found in several texts. These blatant inaccuracies that describe the powers of the presidency broaden students’ misconceptions and over idealized image of the president and should be eliminated from textbooks entirely. Our third suggestion is that textbook authors provide the appropriate amount of credit or blame to presidents based on their role in historic events. Closely associated with this suggestion is our fourth suggestion that authors offer more balance in their discussion of the successes and failures of all presidents. In other words, for every glowing reference the author includes about a popular president such as Franklin Roosevelt the author should provide a critical view of Richard Nixon and his wrong doings as president. As we suggest: If students are taught that a man like Roosevelt can lead the country in overcoming obstacles such as the Great Depression and a World War, they also need to be taught that presidents can become power hungry, dishonest, and more importantly, that they are not above the law. (Roberts & Butler, 2010, p. 33)

Before we conclude this section, we should note that in 2010 one of the authors of this chapter (Scott) was given the opportunity to serve as a co-author of the second edition of one of the textbooks critiqued in this study, Time Travel Through Georgia (Hodge & Roberts, 2011). Fortunately, Scott found that the publisher provided him with the freedom to add to, change, correct, and rewrite any section of book. While Scott is currently in the process of documenting his experience about authoring a history textbook, we can report he took his own suggestions to heart and made sweeping changes to the presidential portrayals and other historical inaccuracies and bias found in the original text. While it is up to others to judge the effectiveness of his effort, Scott believes he did his best to write the most accurate and least biased state history textbook he could. We should also point out that even with these sweeping changes, the state approved the revised textbook and it is currently on the state’s approved textbook adoption list (Georgia Department of Education, 2010). SUGGESTIONS TO CLASSROOM TEACHERS

In our prior work we also offer suggestions to classroom teachers about how they can use the inherit biases that are found in textbooks as a tool and point of interest in their state, U.S., or World History courses. Most importantly, we advocate that teachers should understand that they must serve as the guide to assist students in developing an understanding of the problems found in textbooks and how they can learn more about history by critically analyzing textbooks (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). In other words, textbook analysis should be a studentcentered activity. Though these exercises can – and should be – conducted about every person, place, or event discussed in a history textbook, our suggestions were based on the primary focus of our study: the presidency in state history textbooks. In all, we provide three suggestions to state history teachers about how they could use their 297

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textbook as a powerful teaching tool in order to help their students both learn and understand more about their state’s history, the realistic responsibilities and powers of the president, and textbook bias in general (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). The suggestions include: – Utilizing Bob Bain’s (2006) analytic approach to encourage students to write textbook authors about the presidents they feel have been portrayed in an inaccurate fashion. – Creating “powerful” questions and facilitating discussions about an overidealized president or presidents in their state history textbooks such as “What is your political identification?” With this in mind, if you were to write a textbook, how would you represent a president from another party, even if he was ‘good?’ Why? – Offering students the opportunity to “prove the textbook wrong” by allowing students the ability to analyze multiple sources and discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each in a historical inquiry lesson. We believe that these types of exercises could help students understand that there is a large number or resources, both primary and secondary, that they should analyze in developing their own understanding of history. More importantly, with the overidealized portrayals of presidents we believe that these types of strategies will help dilute elements of the textbook presidency found in state and national history textbooks (Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATORS AND PRESERVICE TEACHERS

After further reflection on this topic, the most important group we neglected to offer suggestion to in our prior studies was that of teacher educators and the preservice teachers they supervise and/or teach. While it is important for textbook authors to be aware of what they can do to improve their textbooks and how current teachers can adapt their lessons to incorporate the suggestions we made, those students who are learning how to teach should be made aware of state standards, adoption committees (if applicable) and the importance of understanding the biases found in textbooks and what can be done to combat them before they enter the classroom. First and foremost, teacher educators need to make their students aware of all of the social studies disciplines that they may teach. Since state history is offered in every state except West Virginia, there is a strong possibility that at least a few of a social studies education professor’s students, either elementary, middle, or secondary, may teach a state history course at some point in their careers. Nevertheless, as we discussed previously, due to it being arguably the most underresearched and under-discussed topic in social studies education many teacher educators offer limited state history instruction in their methods courses, if any. However, these educators should understand that contrary to reports made by critics of nationally focused textbooks and their lambasting of state adoption 298

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committees, state history textbook authors appear to have more freedom in whom they discuss in their texts as long they discuss these individuals in a positive and noncritical manner and include any historic figure who is mentioned in the state’s standards (Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; FitzGerald, 1979; Loewen, 1995; Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010). Overall, taking the limited research about state history into mind, it can be argued that by its very nature state history is more susceptible to biases, inaccuracies, and over-idealized portrayals of the people and events discussed in these courses and texts than those found in national texts, with the president being one of the most poignant examples (e.g., DeLuca, 1984; Lothrop, 1989; McLaurin, 1971; Moore, 1969; Roberts, 2009, 2011; Roberts & Butler, 2010; Terry, 1983). Due to the overlap of certifications found in most teacher education programs (i.e., 4th-8th for middle grades and 6th-12th for secondary) social studies teacher educators at both middle and secondary levels should consider the unique attributes of teaching state history as they develop their courses (Conklin, 2010). One strategy instructors might use is allowing students to compare the state history standards of the state that they plan to teach to a textbook that has made the state’s adoption list or, in a non-adoption state, a text used in a local school district. If they were to examine a topic such as the president from that state or a state nearby, the preservice teachers might go a step further and compare the depiction of the native president to the portrayal of the president in other state or U.S. history textbooks from the same grade level. An exercise such as this would provide preservice teachers with the opportunity to discover for themselves whether or not they believe the findings of a study such as ours correspond to the standards and textbooks used in their state. This exercise would open the opportunity for an in-depth and meaningful discussion of some of the major topics found in social studies today, such as standards, high-stakes testing, political bias, and the overuse of state mandated textbooks. These are topics preservice social studies teachers should have a greater understanding of prior to beginning their career. CONCLUSION

In this chapter we explored how U.S. presidents are portrayed in state history textbooks. Like the representation of presidents in national history textbooks, the president is portrayed in state history textbooks in an over-idealized and inaccurate fashion. However, where our work is set apart from other studies is in the localized nature of state history textbooks. We revisit the words of Moore (1969) who notes the purpose of state history is to provide students with an “appreciation of the state” (p. 267). If this is a primary purpose of state history, to promote the state at the expense of a national history, then how can students be expected to gain a sense of a “national memory” when what they learn of events or individuals is biased? We have provided only a few of the many over-idealized images and misrepresentations of the presidency that mark each state history textbook in our study and perhaps state history texts outside the purview of our research. At this 299

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point, we are left with few certainties and many questions about the representation of individuals and events in state history. Through our extensive analysis of the president in 42 textbooks across 14 states, and along with the findings of other researchers, we can safely argue that state history textbook authors have a distinct freedom afforded to them about how they portray individuals or events that authors of national texts do not have (e.g., Apple & Christian-Smith, 1991; FitzGerald, 1979; Loewen, 1995; Lothrop, 1989; McLaurin, 1971; Moore, 1969). That said, we have also found that this freedom allows the authors of state history textbooks the opportunity to misrepresent historical information and figures like the president to better publicize the contributions of the state. Although state history is not extensively studied by researchers nor heavily considered in the textbook authorship and adoption process there is a need for educational groups to take the findings of this study into consideration and to take on the duties and responsibilities of educating students who are required to take these courses. In regard to an important national topic such as the presidency, textbook authors should be made aware of the textbook presidency and strive to make sure they offer correct and non-biased images of the office of the presidency and the men who have held the office. Classroom teachers should be aware of the biases that may be found in textbooks such as those found about historic figures like the president. Since textbooks appear to contain inherent biases, it is up to teachers to develop lesson plans and strategies that allow students to analyze textbooks and use this knowledge in developing their students’ historic understandings. Finally, due to the fact that 49 out of 50 states have a required state history course and these courses have been proven to have elements of ethnocentrism and inaccurate portrayals of national historic figures such as the president, it is up to teacher educators to discuss state history with their preservice students. Instructors can use the topic of state history textbooks as a way to discuss important social studies issues, such as standards, high-stakes testing, political bias, and the overuse of state mandated textbooks. Using state history textbooks and their presidential portrayals as an example, we hope that these types of discussions and exercises only result in the betterment of both state history textbooks and the pedagogy found in state history classes throughout the nation. QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. 2. 3.

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What is the purpose of teaching state history? Does this subject add to or take away from the idea of a “national memory?” Why or why not? Review the references about the presidency in your state’s history textbooks. How do these depictions compare to your prior knowledge about them? Is the president in your state history textbook portrayed in a biased or inaccurate fashion? Why or why not? What do these potential biases or inaccuracies mean to a student’s understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the president?

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4.

5.

What other topics in your state’s history text lend toward bias or an inaccurate portrayal of events or individuals? In your position (i.e., preservice teacher, classroom teacher, teacher educator), what can you do to counter these biases or inaccuracies? In the writing of state history, who has the most influence in determining which content appears in the textbooks (i.e., authors, adoption boards, special interest groups)? How does this compare with that of national history? REFERENCES

Adler, D. G. (2005). The law: Textbooks and the president’s constitutional powers. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 35(2), 376-388. Alridge, D. P. (2006). The limits of master narratives in history textbooks: An analysis of representations of Martin Luther King, Jr. Teachers College Record, 108(4), 662-686. Alsfeld, R. W. (1995). The presidency reconfigured? The textbook presidency yet again. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 25(4), 677-682. Anderson, A. N., Wooster, R. A., De Leon, A., Hardt, W. W., & Winegarten, R. (2003). Texas & Texans. New York, NY: Glencoe-McGraw-Hill. Apple, M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer. Banks, J. A., Beyer, B. M., Contreras, G., Craven, J., Ladson-Billings, G., McFarland, M. A., & Parker W. C. (2001). New York: Adventures in time and place. New York, NY. McGraw-Hill. Banks, J. A., Colleary, K. P., Cunha, S. F., Echevarria, W., Parker, W. C., Rawls, J. J., Salinas, R., & Schell, E. M. (2007). California vistas: Our golden state. New York, NY: Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. Bain, R. B. (2006). Rounding up the usual suspects: Facing the authority hidden in the history classroom. Teachers College Record, 108(10), 2080-2214. Balcavage, D. (2002). From sea to shining sea: Iowa. New York, NY: Children’s Press. Blaga, J. J., & Nielsen, L. E. (1983). The status of state history instruction. Journal of Social Studies Research, 7(1), 45-47. Brown, R. F. (2010). Missouri: Gateway to the west. Atlanta, GA: Clairmont Press. Conklin, H. G. (2010). Preparing for the educational black hole? Teachers’ learning into two pathways into middle school social studies teaching. Theory and Research in Social Education, 38(1), 48-79. Connolly, C. (2007). Seven presidents nobody remembers. Retrieved from http://articles.cnn.com/200709-28/living/forgotten.presidents_1_first-president-ohio-gang-second-term?_s=PM:LIVING Cotter, K. (2008). From sea to shining sea: New York. New York, NY: Children’s Press. Coulter, E. M., Saye, A. B., & King, S. (1954). History of Georgia. New York, NY: American Book Company. Crammarota, G. (1963). Children, politics, and elementary social studies. Social Education, 27, 205. Cronin, T. E. (1974). The textbook presidency and political science. In S. Bach & G. T. Sulzner (Eds.), Perspectives on the presidency (pp. 54-74). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath. Cronin, T. E. (1975). The state of the presidency. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. Cronin, T. E., & Genovese, M. A. (2004). The paradoxes of the American presidency (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. C-SPAN. (2009). C-SPAN: 2009 presidential survey. Retrieved from http://www.c-span.org/ PresidentialSurvey/PresidentialSurvey_SlideShow/index.html. Czech, J. M. (2002). From sea to shining sea: Vermont. New York, NY: Children’s Press. DeLuca, R. (1984). In search of the “real” California history: History in the fourth grade textbook. Paper presented at the CILO conference, Berkley, CA.

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SCOTT L. ROBERTS & BRANDON M. BUTLER Fehrenbach, T. R., Siegel, S., & Crowley, D. (2003). Lone Star: The story of Texas. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall. FitzGerald F. (1979). America revised: History schoolbooks in the Twentieth Century. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Frankel, J. R. (1987). Toward improving research in social studies education. Theory and Research in Social Education, 15(3), 203-222. Gall, J. (2006). Missouri: Our home. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith. Gelman, A. (2002). Hello U.S.A.: New York (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications. Georgia Department of Education. (2008). Georgia performance standards: Georgia Studies. Retrieved from http://public.doe.k12.ga.us/DMGet Document.aspx/Grade%20Eight%20updated%208-27 2007.pdf?p=6CC6799F8C1371F6DBFD9FE145A078BE3BF6524FBFA2142601ADB88718D25B9 C&Type=D. Georgia Department of Education. (2010). Georgia textbook and instructional curriculum guide. Retrieved from http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/ci_services.aspx?PageReq=CIServBooks. Heinrichs, A. (2001). America the beautiful: Vermont. New York, NY: Children’s Press. Hoekstra, D. J. (1982). The “textbook presidency” revisited. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 12(2), 159167. Hodge, C. M. (2005). Time travel through Georgia. Athens, GA: WesMar Incorporated DBA/Voyager Publications. Hodge, C. M., & Roberts, S. L. (2011). Time travel through Georgia (2nd ed.). Athens, GA: WesMar Incorporated DBA/Voyager Publications. Hopper, S. E., Baker, T. H., & Browning, J. (2008) An Arkansas history for young people (4th ed.). Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press. Ifkovic, J. W. (2002). The Connecticut adventure. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith. Isner, T. D. (1990). Teaching Kansas state history: The state of the state. Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, 15(1), 21-28. Jackson, E. L., States, M. E., Hepburn, L. R., & Hepburn, M. A. (2004). The Georgia studies book: Our state and the nation. Athens, GA: Carl Vinson Institute of Government, University of Georgia. Jenkins-Smith, H. C., Silva, C. L., & Waterman, R. W. (2005). Micro- and macro-level models of the president expectations gap. The Journal of Politics, 67(3), 690-715. Jennings, E. (1994). ‘Reinventing Jeanne’: The iconology of Joan of Arc in Vichy schoolbooks, 19401944. Journal of Contemporary History, 29(4), 711-734. Kinder, D. R., & Fiske, S. (1986). Presidents in the public mind. In M. G. Hermann (Ed.), Handbook of Political Psychology (pp. 193-218). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Klein, P., & Pascoe, C. (2005). Georgia in the American experience. Evanston, IL: McDougal-Little. Kline, N. (2002). From sea to shining sea: Ohio. New York, NY: Children’s Press. LaDoux, R. C. (2002). Hello U.S.A.: Iowa (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publishing. Loewen, J. W. (1995). Lies my teacher told me: Everything your American History textbook got wrong. New York, NY: The New Press. Loewen, J. W. (2010). Teaching what really happened: How to avoid the tyranny of textbooks & get students excited about doing history. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. London, B. (2005). Georgia and the American experience. Atlanta, GA: Clairmont Press. Lothrop, G. R. (1989). Women’s place in California history: An overview. Social Studies Review, 29(1), 8-13. Lukesh, J. A. (2004) The Nebraska adventure. Layton, UT: Gibbs-Smith. Massachusetts Department of Education. (2003). Massachusetts history and social science curriculum framework. Retrieved from http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/hss/final.pdf. McCandless, P., & Foley, W. E. (2001). Missouri then and now: New and enlarged edition. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press. McLaurin, M. (1971). Images of Negroes in Deep South public school state history texts. Phylon, 32(3), 237-246.

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IDEALIZING AND LOCALIZING THE PRESIDENCY Moore, J. R. (1969). State history textbooks: Essays in ethnocentrism. Social Education, 33(1), 267278. Pelta, K. (2002). Hello U.S.A.: Vermont (2nd ed.). Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications. Percy, W. A. (2003). Georgia History Textbooks. Retrieved from http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/ nge/Article.jsp?id=h-859&hl=y. Porter, P. H., Berson, M. J., Hill, M., Howard, T. C., Larson, B. E., & Moreno, J. (2007). California: A changing state. Orland, FL: Harcourt. Roberts, S. L. (2009). The textbook presidency theory and its relationship to the portrayals of 20th and 21st century presidents found in the middle level state history textbooks of AK, CA, CT, GA, IL, IA, MA, MO, NE, NY, OH, TX, VT, and VA. Unpublished Dissertation. University of Georgia, Athens, GA. Roberts, S. L. (2011). Did Georgia (eventually) like Ike? Perceptions of 20th and 21st century presidents in Georgia history textbooks: 1951-2005. The Georgia Social Studies Journal, 1(1), 1-18. Roberts, S. L., & Butler, B. M. (2010). The presidency and state history textbooks: Consequences of ideology and bias in middle grades social studies. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the College and University Faculty Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies, Denver, CO. Rocha, R., Crawford, A. F., McDonald, A. P., & Elbow, G. (2003). Celebrating Texas: Honoring the past, building the future. Evanston, IL: McDogual-Littell. Sanchez, J. M. (1996). Old habits die hard: The textbook presidency is alive and well. P.S. Political Science and Politics, 29(1), 63-66. Schwider, D., Morain T., & Nielsen, L. (2002). Iowa past to present: The people and the prairie (3rd ed.). Ames, IA: Iowa State Press. Siena Research Institute (2002). Presidential survey. Retrieved from http://www.siena.edu/sri/ results/2002/02AugPresidentSurvey.htm. Skowronek, S. (1993). The politics presidents make: Leadership from John Adams to Bill Clinton. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University. Stern, S. M. (1996). The struggle to teach the whole story: Calvin Coolidge and American history education. New England Journal of History, 53(2), 38-52. Stern, S.M., & Stern, J.A. (2011). The state of state U.S. History Standards 2011. Washington D.C.: The Fordham Institute. Stille, D. R. (2009). America the beautiful: Ohio (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Children’s Press. Stockwell, M. (2004). The Ohio adventure. Layton, UT: Gibbs-Smith. Stockwell, M., & Thomas, C. J. (2004). Massachusetts: Our home. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith. Terry, S. M. (1983). Depiction of the Reconstruction period in Georgia history textbooks. Georgia Social Science Journal, 14(2), 5-10. The Wall Street Journal. (2005). The rankings. Retrieved from http://www.opinionjournal.com/ extra/?id=110007243. Viola, H. J., Bednarz, S. W., Jennings, C., Schug, M. C., & White, C. S. (2007). Houghton Mifflin: History-social science: California. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Wade, R. C. (1993). Content analysis of social studies textbooks: A review of ten years of research. Theory and Research in Social Education, 21(3), 232-256. White, W. E. (2006). History-social science for California: Our California. Glenview, IL: PearsonScott Foresman. Willoughby, L. (2003). Holt: Texas! Austin, TX: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Wineberg, S., & Monte-Sano, C. (2008). “Famous Americans:” The changing pantheon of American heroes. The Journal of American History, 94(4), 1186-1203.

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THROWING OUT THE TEXTBOOK A Teacher Research Study of Changing Texts in the History Classroom

History textbooks were the problem and they were hurting my students. As a high school social studies teacher, I had previously engaged in practitioner inquiry around my own practices related to teaching history as interpretation. The results of these studies showed that no matter how much I challenged my students to see history through multiple competing perspectives and no matter how much I had them question the textbook’s position of power, the students continued to read the textbook as the truth of the past. In my classroom, they may have seen history as constructed by humans and debatable. Yet, when they went home the power of an omniscient and authoritarian voice convinced them they were reading an objective collection of historical facts. The struggles I faced with the textbooks in my classroom were evident in the existing educational research. Numerous studies showed that in the United States a vast majority of high school history students learn from textbooks (Cuban, 1991; Paxton, 1999), which are mass-produced by an elite group of corporate educational publishers. The embedded narratives of these textbooks convince students that they represent the omniscient voice of history and they speak with an authority convincing most students they are simply the facts. Yet, these textbooks portray the dominant narrative of those who hold power in society (Anyon, 1979), serve the purpose of political indoctrination (FitzGerald, 1980; Loewen, 1995), and marginalize non-Whites, women, the poor and working classes, and others (Anyon, 1979; Avery & Simmons, 2001; Clark, Allard, & Mahoney, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 2003; Loewen, 1995). As an act of resistance and to better teach my students, I responded to the problems created by textbooks by completely abandoning the textbooks. I substituted the corporate-produced textbooks supplied by my school district with teacher-created reading packets that I assembled from primary sources, oral histories, and writings from historians and journalists. I intentionally incorporated numerous perspectives of historical events and I chose to integrate multicultural accounts, including those of non-White peoples, women, gays and lesbians, immigrants/migrants, and the poor and working classes. I designed an alternative text that did what the textbook could not – present history as debatable and interpreted.

H. Hickman and B.J. Porfilio (eds.), The New Politics of the Textbook: Critical Analysis in the Core Content Areas, 305–320. © 2012 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.

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During this process of changing texts in my history classroom, I engaged in practitioner inquiry to find out how this change in texts could have an impact on my students’ learning. I examined the following research questions: What are the students’ perceptions of the reading packets in comparison to their textbook use in previous history courses? Did the reading packets have a positive impact on the students’ learning and understanding of history? Did the reading packets enable students to question the dominant narratives of history and see history through multiple competing perspectives? THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND REVIEW OF RELEVANT RESEARCH

This study is informed by critical theories of education. Using the work of Freire (2000), Giroux (1988, 1990), Anyon (1980) and Apple (1979, 1980), this study challenges traditional history textbooks, which are embedded with discourses of power and privilege. Banks (1998) has argued that history textbooks have long been tools of oppression. This study is also guided by Segall’s (1999) use of critical history education, where students are not the receivers of information, but its producers, and one where history education provides students not with what to think, but encourages them to think. Critical history education is rooted in the view that history is socially constructed, and teachers should help students analyze the politics and ideologies of power embedded in the production of history, including historical texts. Furthermore, I take a critical inquiry as stance. This term represents the overlap between critical theories of education and inquiry as stance. Cochran-Smith and Lytle’s (1999) term “inquiry as stance” positions practitioner inquiry as a way of knowing education, a world view, that is a sharp contrast to traditional depictions of inquiry in education (p. 250). Teacher research speaks against traditional hierarchies that assume formal knowledge as the realm of a small group of elite researchers, “disempower teachers, and produce irrational practices” (Kincheloe, 2003, p. 22). Here, practitioners challenge the educational status quo, examine the role that power has on their classrooms, and, in turn, speak back to those outside the classroom who hold power. The purpose of a critical inquiry stance is to continuously engage in critical examinations of a teacher’s classroom practices and issues through a critical cycle of action research located in the classroom (Carr & Kremmis, 1986). Hence, I take on the dual role of teacher and researcher of my own practice and challenge those structures that perpetuate and maintain inequity. Over the last four decades there has been a robust criticism of the narratives that are embedded in history textbooks and the impact those narratives may have on students and citizens in a democracy. Anyon (1979) analyzed from a critical perspective the narratives in U.S. history textbooks, finding the textbooks were designed to maintain social control and serve the interest of the wealthy over the poor and working classes, as well as the interests of White males over non-Whites and women. Furthermore, two popular books about history textbooks, Fitzgerald’s (1980) America Revised and Loewen’s (1995) Lies My Teacher Told Me, have

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raised awareness among history teachers of the problems with textbooks and the possible harm caused to students by the embedded messages within textbooks. The research on history textbooks has primarily examined the discourses embedded in those texts. Paxton’s (1999) review of research on history textbooks is a starting place for situating this study. In this review, Paxton found that: (1) The authoritarian voice embedded in history textbooks is different than the voice of modern history books written for adults, which does not conceal the agency of the author or authors. (2) Textbooks, due to this authoritarian voice, create serious pedagogical problems for history teachers, as K-12 textbooks do not portray history as constructed or debated. Paxton concluded that textbooks might actually inhibit students’ learning of history, but he also noted that little is known about how and what students learn from history textbooks. Furthermore, little is known about how these books are used by teachers, as most of the research has been done by university-based researchers through either narrative analysis of the textbooks or clinical studies using K-12 students. The research on history textbooks over the last decade since Paxton’s (1999) review has been relatively thin and uneven. I found three studies that were analyses of the content found in history textbooks. Hess and Stoddard (2007) examined textbooks as part of their examination of September 11th related curriculum materials. They found that the majority of texts presented terrorism as uncontested and gave the impression that terrorism is a larger problem for the U.S. and its allies than for other nations. Related, Romanowski (2009) also analyzed textbooks’ treatment of September 11th and the so-called War on Terrorism. From his examination of nine secondary school history texts, he found that the textbooks omitted important information and disregarded the moral and ethical aspects of September 11th, the War in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq. Furthermore, the textbooks limited the perspectives that the students would be asked to consider and generally presented positions similar to that of the U.S. government. Lastly, Chappell (2010) examined one elementary history textbook used at different grade levels and found that the textbook had embedded narratives portraying America as exceptional and oppression as something that can be overcome by an individual’s hard work. Two studies examined the impact of interventions with alternative texts across multiple classes. In their study of 8th graders in four separate classrooms, Crawford and Carnine (2000) compared the effects of using a pilot version of a conceptually organized U.S. history textbook and a traditional topically organized U.S. history textbook. Posttest essays showed no difference between control and treatment groups, although student interviews indicated generally favorable attitudes toward the pilot version of the conceptually organized text, centering on ease of comprehension. Nokes, Dole, and Hacker (2007) examined 246 high school students in two schools located in the Western United States. Eight history classrooms were randomly assigned one of four possible three-week interventions involving a combination of traditional textbooks and content instruction, traditional textbooks and heuristic instruction, multiple texts and content instruction, or multiple texts and heuristic instruction. The heuristic instruction explicitly taught 307

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sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization. Students were administered pretests and posttests on their content knowledge and their use of heuristics. A mixedmodel analysis of covariance indicated that across all conditions, students who read multiple texts scored higher on history content and used sourcing and corroboration more often than students who read traditional textbook material. This study highlighted the power of the textbook, as it appeared to have a greater impact on the students’ learning than the type of instruction the teacher used in the classroom. Finally, McCormick (2008) conducted action research to examine her students’ reactions to the incorporation of historical inquiry in her classroom, which focused on having the students reach historical conclusions based on historical evidence. Although this study was not of her students’ textbook use per se, McCormick did explore the use of classroom techniques that challenged the textbook. Her results suggested that the historical inquiry-based unit positively influenced students’ motivation and interest to study history both inside and outside the classroom. There is an important gap in the research on history textbooks, as these studies do not investigate students’ perceptions of textbooks and how they learn (or do not learn) from textbooks. Most studies of history textbooks were implemented by university-based researchers and asked similar questions and found similar results. The vast majority of these studies examined the narratives found in textbooks, and they consistently found these narratives were embedded with racist, sexist, and classist messages. Although the existing research does offer an important and insightful examination of the discourses embedded in texts, the research lacks an important connection to the K-12 classroom and learning environment. The existence of this gap is corroborated by Levstik’s (2008) review of research on K12 social studies practices, which makes no mention of research on textbooks used within social studies classrooms or from the perspective of social studies teacher research. From a teacher’s perspective, this study was better positioned to understand the influence of textbooks and subsequently an alternate text on students in the classroom. METHODS

Working from an inquiry stance, I act simultaneously as a teacher and a researcher, where “inquiry and practice are understood to have a reciprocal, recursive, and symbiotic relationship, and it is assumed that it is not only possible, but indeed beneficial, to take on simultaneously the roles of both researcher and practitioner” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009, p. 95). In particular, in taking a critical inquiry stance, I continuously seek to question issues of power, equity, and social justice as they play out in my classroom practices through “an intersubjective process that is intentional, sustained, and attentive to the dialectical relationship between the students’ and the teacher’s own experiences and resources” (Campano, 2007, p. 105). Cognizant of the diverse student backgrounds present in my classroom and the lack of diverse perspectives offered by corporate textbooks, this paper presents the findings of a study when I explored my students’ perceptions and use of

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reading packets that I designed as a replacement for the corporate-produced history textbook. This practitioner study employed a mixed methods design. Using what Creswell and Plano Clark (2006) called an embedded mixed methods design, we1 used a quantitative analysis to look at the survey data and a qualitative analysis to examine the interview data, where both data sets had complimentary roles. For the survey data, descriptive statistics were generated for all items. For two items of particular interest, we used independent sample t-tests to compare the responses between White and non-White students. For the interviews, the data were coded thematically and using Erickson (1986) for guidance; assertions were generated from the data and tested. CONTEXT

The context of this study was my U.S. history classes at an urban high school of approximately 2,200 students, located in a New England factory town that has experienced economic decline. It has also been traditionally an immigrant community and most recently home to a very diverse group of immigrants/migrants from Brazil, Puerto Rico, Russia, Central and South America, the Caribbean, among many other places. As a result, the high school’s student body is economically, racially, and linguistically diverse. The school’s racial/ethnic demographics are 53% White, 19% Latino, 14% Brazilian, 8% African-American, 6% Asian, and 0.3% American Indian. About 30% of students have a language other than English as their first language and about 23% of students are considered low-income. The school district is a Title I district, but the high school is not a Title I school partially as a result of a higher percentage of low-income students choosing the vocational high school in town. Furthermore, the high school has received numerous awards from the state and private industry for its dramatic school turnaround, going from only 58% of students passing the state math and literacy graduation test in 2000 to 92% in 2006. The participants of this study were the 94 students enrolled in honors-level U.S. History I for sophomores and regular-level U.S. History II classes for juniors; there were two sections of each. The U.S. History I course covered subject matter from the first interaction of Columbus and the indigenous peoples to post-Civil War reconstruction. The U.S. History II course covered subject matter from post-Civil War interactions between Whites and American Indians to the election of Barack Obama. The ethnic/racial make up of my students were 52% White, 19% Latino, 9% Brazilian, 9% Asian, 4% Black, 6% other/multiracial, and 1% American Indian. Thirty percent of students identified themselves as having a language other than English as their first language, and 40% were immigrants or children of immigrants. –––––––––––––– 1 The authors use “I” to represent the voice of Christopher as the classroom teacher and “we” to represent the voice of Christopher and Erin as the researchers and authors of this chapter.

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Frustrated with the omniscient and authoritarian voice of textbooks, inadequate representation of the diverse population of the United States, and their hindrance in fostering democratic citizenship, I created reading packets that set out to address these core values.2 The main goal of these reading packets was to show students that history is not one story, but composed of many competing perspectives and interpretations. As a result, I created packets for 10 units of U.S. History I and 12 units of U.S. History II. These units aligned with the topics studied in the course. For example, there was a packet aligned with the unit on immigration and industrialization around the turn of the 20th century. The readings for these packets were collections of primary sources, oral histories, and writings from historians and journalists organized between five to eight separate homework assignments per unit. Each homework assignment included either an overview of the unit, two to four competing documents, or two to three competing articles written by historians or journalists about the period being studied. At the end of each of these homework assignments there were questions that asked students to critically respond to the reading or take a stand on a historical question, using evidence from the readings to support their views. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Survey. Students (N=94) were given a survey that included ten Likert-style closed questions and three open-response items inquiring about their perceptions of the reading packets as compared with their experiences using history textbooks in the past. The closed survey questions asked students about the degree to which the change in texts affected their interest in reading and completing homework, their ability to see perspectives, identify with people from the past, understand history, and recall information. We created these closed questions and then pilot tested them with a colleague’s students before using it with the study students. The survey also collected basic demographic information, so we could compare students to the larger school context. Descriptive statistics showed general patterns in student responses to survey closed-question items, and independent samples ttests were conducted on two items of particular interest. The second author of this study, who is also a classroom teacher, provided the statistical analysis of the survey data and also offered another perspective in interpreting the data as a form of triangulation. There were also three open-response questions on the survey, which asked: What did you think about the reading packets compared to textbooks you have used in the past? Can you elaborate on any of the multiple-choice questions by providing examples? Would you recommend using the reading packets or a textbook for the teaching of this class? Why or why not? The students’ responses to these questions were coded and analyzed qualitatively. –––––––––––––– 2 These reading packets are available on the website: http://www.framingham.k12.ma.us/ fhs_ss_martell.cfm.

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Interviews. A purposive sample of 10 students was selected to provide a deeper understanding of their experience. Students were chosen based on three factors: their expressed like or dislike of the reading packets, their representation of the racial/ethnic and gender diversity of students, and their willingness to be interviewed. A semi-structured interview protocol consisting of 12 questions was used, with questions grouped around three themes related to student learning, perspectives and trustworthiness, and connections to the student’s background. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. In the first stage of our qualitative analysis, we took multiple passes through raw data. This involved three thorough readings through all of our interview and openended survey data, taking extensive notes through each reading. After a rough coding of the data using a coding scheme we created based on our research questions, we then reexamined and coded the data. We used an iterative coding process, where our codes remained flexible, working through cycles of induction and deduction to power the analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994, p. 61). Furthermore, having two researchers working together through the qualitative data helped ensure a level of intercoder reliability. These codes were organized into three main categories: student learning, narratives, and perceptions, which also served as the organization for the coding dictionary we created. Finally, we used the work of Erickson (1986) for guidance in the generation of assertions and then preliminary testing of those assertions. Those assertions that had evidentiary warrant are displayed in our qualitative findings. RESULTS

Based on the quantitative and qualitative analyses, five major findings emerged from the data. First, students expressed higher levels of interest in reading about history as a result of the reading packets. Second, students reported completing more homework and subsequently recalling more historical information when using the reading packets. Third, students indicated that the reading packets helped them better understand different views of historical events. Fourth, students could better identify with the historical people depicted in the reading packet, and this was expressed by many of the students of color. Finally, a small group of students struggled to accept the reading packets as an alternative to the textbook, because they desired a return to a more simple and one-sided narrative that told them the facts and did not push them to question the past or form their own perspectives of history. INCREASED INTEREST

From the survey, the students expressed higher levels of interest in reading about history as a result of the reading packets. The majority of the students (86%) indicated they agreed or strongly agreed that the reading packets were more interesting than textbooks, and none of the students (0%) responded with disagree or strongly disagree. 311

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María, a Latina student, expressed in the interview a common theme among the students that the reading packets increased her interest by digging deeper into an analysis of the historical characters and by going beyond a text simply laden with facts. She said, I prefer the packet, because it is a little more interesting to read than the textbook. And it is like the questions, they usually only give you two or three questions and you have to write like a paragraph about each, but it really makes it. I feel when they ask you ‘what do you think about it,’ it makes it more important to you than if you [just] read it … Like you actually think about it, I go home and say mom, ‘what about this?’ Now I do that all the time with my mom.

She added, “I just felt like I thought about [the reading packets] more than I did about the textbook, about the event more or what happened in history. I guess [the textbook] was more like, I just want to get it over with and I never really thought about it again.” When I asked students if the reading packets or textbooks were more interesting, eight of the ten students described the reading packets as more interesting. These students cited their interest in reading the different perspectives about historical events and the summary questions that made them defend their own opinion. Conversely, only one student described the textbooks as more interesting as a result of its colorful pictures. In contrast, and without using the word “boring” in my interview protocol, five of the ten students interviewed described the textbooks they have used in the past as boring. Miguel, a recent immigrant from Brazil, described this when he said, Like the textbooks are so boring ‘cause it is like so long, and you just think about it and oh my God I have to read like 10 pages in one day, in one night probably and you have so many others homeworks and you like oh my God I am just going to read it and do it really fast. So when you read it, you think you do not want to. You’ll be like so lazy.

The reading packets increased students’ interest in reading history, which the next section will show directly related to their increased homework completion. HOMEWORK COMPLETION

The students reported completing more homework as a result of the reading packets. Students reported higher homework completion when using the reading packets, where 72% agreed or strongly agreed, and only 6% disagreed or strongly disagreed. During our interview, Thiago, a male immigrant from Brazil, estimated he did about 85% of his homework with the packets, compared to about 20% in past years with textbooks, mainly as a result of the reading packets’ assignments being generally shorter in length, more interesting, and (an unexpected finding expressed by many students) that, “I can carry the packet like all the time since it is not as heavy [as a textbook].” This was a common theme across the interviews, with eight of the ten students reporting doing the same or more homework than they did last year with the textbook. In fact, one student, Miguel, admitted that in 312

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past years he did not actually read the textbook, but instead looked up the answers to the review questions on the Internet. He said, “But from the textbook, I use to look [up answers] on Wikipedia. Yes, sometimes I wouldn’t even read the book and go onto Wikipedia.” Furthermore, an unexpected finding from the interviews was that the mobility of the packets, the fact that they were 20-40 photocopied and stapled pages instead of a heavy textbook, allowed the students to carry them everywhere. Students described this as making it easier to do their homework. Abby, a White female, said, I always do my homework in history, but I liked doing history homework better this year, because it was just like a hassle. This huge thing, you know, and such a tiny little font, and the packets, its like a perfect size, you can carry it around with you wherever.

Thiago said, “It is because I can carry the packet like all the times, since it is not heavy,” and Fady, a Middle Eastern male, said, “I don’t like textbooks. Well, they are heavy and you don’t get to keep them, you have to carry them back.” The mobility of the packet leading to an increase in homework was a common theme across all of the interviews, as well as many of the survey open responses. RECALL MORE INFORMATION

A related impact of the students’ increase in homework completion was their ability to recall more information about history. Results show 72% of the students felt that they could recall information they had learned from the reading packets better than what they read from textbooks, with 5% who disagreed. This finding is particularly interesting, as some scholars have argued that students need to know the basics before they can develop critical thinking (Ravitch, 2009; Ravitch & Finn, 1987). However, these readings that focus on critical thinking appear to increase students’ knowledge of facts, because they needed to understand the facts to craft their arguments. Fady said of remembering information from the textbooks he used in the past, You wouldn’t remember the textbooks. You would have to go back in class and take the same notes over. Like last year, [my teacher] would tell us if we took the notes at home, don’t take them in class. You wouldn’t learn anything.

Where he rarely did homework from his past history textbooks, Thiago said that the reading packet’s questions “[made] you go back and look up stuff,” because they required him to link his opinions to evidence from the reading. Natalie said of remembering information from the reading packets, “I think maybe just a little more the packet helped because of the perspectives and that it would just be a little blurb. It allowed me to focus more on one subject than the textbook did.” This was also a theme across the open response section of the survey. The students reported learning more facts from the reading packets, because the readings in the packets were more interesting and easier to remember.

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INCREASED UNDERSTANDING The reading packets were instrumental in helping the students better understand different views of historical events. The survey indicated that 90% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the reading packets helped them understand different views of historical events compared to their textbooks in the past. Furthermore, in the interviews students expressed seeing history for the first time as interpreted and composed of competing perspectives as a result of the reading packets. Fady expressed this in his interview: Christopher: So before you took this class, do you think you would have seen the textbook as having an author or having one perspective? Fady: No. I never thought about it before. I never thought about perspectives before you gave us the reading packet. Christopher: So when you read your textbook, what did you think it was? Fady: I thought it was the thing that happened.

Along those same lines, Mike, an Asian male, expressed that, “I think the reading packets help [us] better understand the time period, because they usually have perspectives from the time period . . . They would talk about certain dialogues from the people then.” Like many students, he connected learning about different perspectives to helping him understand history better. Students often connected this to the many primary sources found in the reading packets. One problem that arose from the reading packets was that they indirectly contributed to the students finding the textbook more trustworthy and unbiased as a result of its omniscient narrative. Abby said, “I would trust textbooks more ‘cause it gets right down to the facts. While [the reading packet] was more of a debate, this was good, this was bad. So, but yeah I would trust the textbook more.” María said, “Maybe the textbook was a little more trustworthy, ‘cause I felt it was a lot of facts. I felt like, okay, it is fact and I don’t really doubt what the book was saying.” Almost all of the students we interviewed, like Abby and María, described the textbook as more trustworthy because it was the facts, and the reading packets were composed of perspectives. The continuation of this naïve view of textbook is very problematic. While the reading packets explicitly presented history as perspectives, the reading packets also inadvertently affirmed that the textbook must be simply the facts of history, because it did not make the narratives overt nor speak in such an authoritarian tone. In a way, by not using the omniscient voice, the reading packets convinced the students that the textbooks they have used were probably more truthful.

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INCREASED IDENTIFICATION WITH PEOPLE IN THE PAST

The survey results indicated that the reading packets helped the students better identify with people in the past. Data show that 68% of students agreed or strongly agreed that the reading packets helped them identify with the people of the past more than textbooks, with 31% neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and none (0%) of the students disagreeing or strongly disagreeing with the statement. When asked specifically if their own race or ethnicity was reflected in the reading packets more than the textbooks, 32% of the students agreed or strongly agreed that it was, whereas 55% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 13% disagreed or strongly disagreed. We also wanted to determine if there was a significant difference between how non-White and White students responded to these survey questions that explicitly asked about identification and representation of race/ethnicity in the packets, since the packets were designed to show more multicultural perspectives than traditional textbooks. We analyzed these two items using independent-samples t-tests to compare the responses of non-White students (n=45) to White students (n=49). Table 1 shows that non-White students had significantly higher agreement responses to being able to identify with the people in the reading packets more than the textbooks (p