ABSTRACT
To explore fully the role and potential impact of history textbooks in different nations it is important to appreciate the complex relationship between textbook production, mandated curricula and the stated educational aims of national governments. It is too simplistic to view the process of textbook production as a linear top-down process in which official knowledge valued by the prevailing socio-political establishment is easily transported into classrooms in uniform ways. Furthermore, as Michael Apple and Linda Christian-Smith remind us ‘we cannot assume that what is “in” the text is actually taught. Nor can we assume that what is taught is actually learned’.2 The manner in which textbooks arrive in school classrooms varies from nation to nation. For example, in England, although a national curriculum and national assessment regime has existed since 1988, individual schools (and sometimes individual teachers) can select history textbooks from an assortment of commercial publishers. By contrast, in the United States no federally mandated curriculum exists and individual states are able to determine how textbooks are selected. In the two dozen or so textbook adoption states, agencies select a limited number of approved state textbooks from which local school districts can choose. On the one hand, this ensures that textbooks are carefully screened for their suitability and for their close relationship to statewide standards and testing mechanisms. On the other hand, critics argue that textbooks that appear bland, homogenized, dominated by
powerful publishing houses and unresponsive to the wishes of individual teachers and local contexts are often selected.
