ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Islam and Muslims are being represented in US public schools today, with special attention to changes in representation since 9/11. It focuses on state educational standards for social studies and textbooks in world history and geography, examining how Islam and Muslims are discussed in these resources. More substantive and factual than those provided in mass media, representations of Islam and Muslims in standards and textbooks are clearly less biased than media representations, and are also a major improvement on past educational treatments. However, typical educational representations are minimal, usually historical, and identify Islam and Muslims in contemporary settings with conflicts in the Middle East and Western Asia and terrorism, given the focus, as in the media, on the narrowest minority of Muslim experiences seen as exceptional and socially significant from a US foreign policy perspective. The chapter considers other important elements of formal education: evidence about teacher's pedagogy and beliefs, and their use of supplementary resources.
