The Politics of the Textbook

Abstract

Abstract Textbooks play a paramount role in Western education in general and social work education in particular. They are a major conveyor of the curriculum and are found in almost every classroom and, for better or worse, dominate what students learn. This article reports the results of a content analysis carried out on the coverage and treatment of feminist, anti-racist and radical social work scholarship in a sample of fourteen American introductory textbooks published between 1988 and 1997. Agger's “Critical Theory of Text” was used as the theoretical framework for this study. It holds that social science textbooks play a political role by serving as delivery systems for assumptions about the social world that largely reflect the interests of capitalism and patriarchy. The results of this study are consistent with Agger's theory. It was found that feminist, anti-racist and radical social work scholarship received scant attention and that, for the most part, when they were present they tended to be discredited in ways that reduced their political charge and transformative potential.