Representation of Minorities in Textbooks Representation
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Beyond the initial socialization at home textbooks are often the first point of contact for the children to the outside world. Few, if any, educational and pedagogical materials, shape and condition the worldviews, personalities, and identities of young pupil citizens than the textbooks used in schools and beyond. In some societal and national contexts, textbooks are cultural icons that come second only to religious texts. They REPRESENTATION OF are used as instruments of nation-building, ideological con- MINORITIES trol, and at times for outright indoctrination depending on the IN TEXTBOOKS national, social, and cultural contexts. Contributions in this volume examine the impact of text- books in contexts of diversity. Especially, using a comparative perspective the contributors critically examine the repre- sentations of minorities in pedagogical texts and how these INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES representations impact social relations in increasingly di- verse societies. Selections in the volume examine discursive and empirical evidence from Canada, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, Norway, Iran, Spain, and Columbia to deconstruct the representations of minorities in textbooks and suggest ways in which these pedagogical tools could be made more inclu- sive. REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES IN TEXTBOOKS REPRESENTATION EDITORS Colaboration: M. AYAZ NASEEM ADEELA ARSHAD-AYAZ JESÚS RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES IN TEXTBOOKS: INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES EDITORS: M. Ayaz Naseem Adeela Arshad-Ayaz Jesús Rodríguez Rodríguez Santiago de Compostela, 2016 International Association for Research on Textbooks and Educational Media (IARTEM) Edited by: M. Ayaz Naseem, Adeela Arshad-Ayaz, Jesús Rodríguez Rodríguez © Text: authors Cover design: José María Mesías Lema ISBN: 978-84-8408-927-8 DL: C 1292-2016 Printed in Spain by Tórculo Comunicación Gráfica, S. A. TABLE OF CONTENTS Prologue. Representation of Minorities in Textbooks: International Comparative Perspectives. M. Ayaz Naseem, Adeela Arshad-Ayaz and Jesús Rodríguez Rodríguez .............................7 Representations of First Nations in Quebec History and Citizenship Textbooks. Adeela Arshad-Ayaz ...........................................................................................................13 Diversity and Local Cultures in Brazilian Textbooks. Tânia Maria F. Braga Garcia, Edilson Aparecido Chaves and Luciana Braga Garcia ..... 25 Summer Heights High: The Portrayal of Tongan Australians and Approaching Culturally Responsive Teaching. Mike Horsley and Kipi Fifita ............................................................................................37 Same Textbooks – Different Perspectives. Discussing Apartheid in Two Very Different South African School Settings. Henning Hues ...................................................................................................................59 Crossroad and Loom: Intersectionality and Whiteness Studies in the Analysis of Minorities and Majorities in Norwegian History Textbooks. Susanne V. Knudsen.................................................................................................79 Construction of Religious Enemies in Iranian Textbooks. Leila Simai .............................................................................................................93 Migration Movements in Textbooks and Didactic Material in the Spanish Context. Jesús Rodríguez Rodríguez and Mª Montserrat Castro Rodríguez ..............................105 Racism in Geography, History and Social Studies School Textbooks in Colombia And South Africa. Diana Rodríguez-Gómez and Yusuf Sayed .......................................................................119 List of autors ...........................................................................................................143 Representation of minorities in textbooks: international comparative perspectives 7 REPRESENTATION OF MINORITIES IN TEXTBOOKS: INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES M. AYAZ NASEEM, ADEELA ARSHAD-AYAZ AND JESÚS RODRÍGUEZ RODRÍGUEZ Beyond the initial socialization at home textbooks are often the first point of contact for the children to the outside world. Few, if any, educational and pedagogical materials shape and condition the worldviews, personalities, and identities of young pupil citizens than the textbooks used in schools and beyond. In some societal and national contexts, textbooks are cultural icons that come second only to religious texts. They are used as instruments of nation-building, ideological control, and at times for outright indoctrination depending on the national, social, and cultural contexts. Textbooks in themselves are shaped in the intersections of national/global demands of the capital (economy) and the dynamic demands of social cohesion and nation building. It is, thus, not surprising that most of the states jealously guard the contents of the textbooks and maintain strict control over the design and production. On the other hand, publishing houses view textbooks as any other profit making activity. Regardless whether states maintain strict control over the content and design of the textbooks or take a relatively laisser faire approach to them, textbooks are without a doubt an essential part of what Louis Althusser (1971) calls the ideological state apparatus. Bush and Saltarelli’s conceptualization of two faces of education (2000) can equally be applied to textbooks. They can be used to produce social harmony and peace on one hand and on the other can be (and have been) used to sow seeds of distrust, and produce and exacerbate conflict (Naseem and Stober, 2015). For example, textbooks produced in Sri Lanka under the Sinhala dominated govern- ments in the 1970s sowed the seeds of discord that in combination with many oth- er factors resulted in feelings of mis/under-representation among the Tamils that in turn resulted in a long drawn civil war (Hayes, 2002). The inclusion of militaristic and nationalistic content in textbooks and curricula in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the decades of 1980s and 1990s created militarized citizenry in both countries. These changes played a major role in shaping conflicts in South-Central Asia, and in shaping the geo-political and strategic policies of the US, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The conflict dynamics in this region have affected much of the world in many ways (Naseem, 2009). Similarly, the exclusionary content in religious studies and Pakistan studies textbooks in the Gilgit-Baltistan region (disputed be- tween India and Pakistan) resulted in the alienation of the Shi’ite minority in the region. The violence that ensued led to the loss of life and property in an otherwise serene region and left deep scars on the social fabric of the society (Stober, 2007; 8 M. Ayaz Naseem, Adeela Arshad-Ayaz and Jesús Rodríguez Rodríguez Naseem, in press). In contrast, textbooks produced under the Franco-German text- book project spearheaded by the Georg Eckert Institute has resulted in calming down tensions aggregated over a very long period and a tumultuous history of enmity and violence. Both the negative and the positive aspects of textbooks, namely production and/or exacerbation of conflict and violence, and reduction of tensions tie into issues of representation and misrepresentation. The former, in this case, refers to how certain individuals, groups, and nations are represented in the textbooks. Representation, it can be argued, are never neutral. They are laden with power dynamics. Representations in textbooks, in this sense, are manifestations of power that one group has to ‘name’, to interpellate another person or group. As Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2008, p.44) puts it so eloquently and succinctly, Systems of classification and representation enable different traditions or fragments of tradition to be retrieved and reformulated in different contexts as discourses and then to be played out in systems of power and domination, with real material consequences for colonized [represented/interpellated] people (Parenthesis ours). Through representations people are classified into, for example, citizens, and non-citizens with each category having consequences for the extent to which they are (or are not) accorded rights, privileges, and share in material, social, political, and psychological resources. Representations are not limited to interpellation but intrinsically work through processes of inclusion and exclusion. Who becomes a part of the national/ global narrative and who does not and in what way is determined by representa- tion through the mechanism of inclusion and exclusion. For example, as Naseem (2010) demonstrates, in the case of textbooks in Pakistan the large-scale exclu- sion of minorities from the national/societal narrative constructed by the textbooks is explicit and brazen. An analysis of the social studies and language textbooks shows that the textbooks create an impression of a homogeneous society in which there are no minorities at all. They are absent, silent, and thus inconsequential. Similarly, women in Pakistani textbooks are excluded visually i.e. they are dis- proportionately represented in the graphics and pictures that accompany the nar- ratives in the textbooks. Even when they make an appearance in the textbooks, they are represented in gender specific patriarchal ways. On the other hand, the textbooks are replete with images of men in authority positions thus ‘articulat- ing’ them as the real power holders in the society. The accompanying