Education and Economy

A common theme of my readings on textbook content and curriculum is the relationship between education and the economy. “We need to educate children to be leaders in the technology/energy/health/ sectors!” is a common political battle cry from many corners. Politicians want to breed the next generation of workers, schools adopt approaches to comply and get funding, and textbook companies provide materials oriented in that direction. Refocusing on “core curriculum” is a common direction taken, as if somehow by just drilling harder better faster MORE on rote memorization and particular facts will make kids smarter.


This "core curriculum" as its always been taught just so happens to have little perceived relevance to the life and experiences of students for whom the achievement gap is widest. In Minnesota the high school graduation rate for African Americans is 44%. For white students, it's 82%. Hello! Let's connect some dots here. It shouldn’t really come as a shock that the “core curriculum” generally approaches subjects from a white/Euro-centric viewpoint, and although there are clearly lots of factors involved in graduation rates I think that the presence (or lack thereof) of culturally relevant materials is important to consider.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, just think this:

vs. this:

Apple reports that teachers tend to resist top-down approaches to school reform like "refocusing on core curriculum"; this doesn’t really surprise me. Teachers are professional educators, which requires having ownership over which decisions need to be made in the classroom. This varies from class to class, and teachers need the flexibility to do what their class needs for learning to take place. Part of this includes adapting materials and curriculum to the needs and interests of students.

People are not manufactured goods, and education can’t be approached from a factory perspective. Which brings me back to the emerging theme in my understanding of textbook content processes--that in focusing on the inclusion or exclusion of this word or that opinion, we are missing the bigger picture. There's no way we're going to see it if we continue to devote entire state school boards (like Texas) to blatantly injecting ideologically derived information into our nations textbooks.