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Progress and Problems in Curriculum Desegregation Dr. Geneva Gay Professor Department of Education University of Washington, Seattle Students and teachers will look at the content in textbooks as if it is uncontestable truth…(text)books are written with what some scholars describe as a certainty of rhetoric to it, that there is a tone that the information that is presented…is almost sacrilegious.

Dr. Gay talked about curriculum desegregation in relation to textbooks. Since there is not much analysis on students with special needs and abilities, she focused on people of color. Key reasons for focusing on textbook analysis include:
• Textbooks continue to be the most frequently used source of content for instruction in classrooms

• Textbooks tend to be oriented toward the needs and educational standards of the states where there is the highest purchase volume, e.g., Texas and California

• Students and teachers view the content in textbooks as if it is uncontestable truth and do not tend to challenge it. This is exacerbated because textbooks are often written in a tone that makes the information presented seem almost sacrilegious.

Dr. Gay provided a brief overview of the textbook analysis for racial and ethnic diversity that has occurred since it began in the 1890s and discussed the major trends:
• At some times a lot was done and at other times very little was done.

• An increase now probably because of the current political issues and the grappling with diversity issues.

• A shift from primarily quantitative emphasis to a more qualitative analysis.

• Movement from analysis by single ethnic groups to multicultural analysis.

• Increasing attention to gender representation in textbooks, but it has focused on white people and not women of color.

• Shift from just focusing on individuals to focusing on issues and events as well as individuals

• Most of the analysis is still limited to social studies and language arts.

Some of the types of criteria used in textbook analysis include:

• How often are different ethnic groups included in the text, the illustrations and charts, and the questions and activities at the end of chapters?

• When people of a particular group are presented, who is being presented and what is being presented about them? How realistic are the portrayals? Is the most important information being presented? How much detail is given?

• How balanced is the information in terms of the range of perspectives and types of people presented as being within the particular ethnic group?

• How authentic is the information in terms of accuracy, e.g., is the portrayal of an event oversimplified?

• Beyond the factual information being presented, what are the subtle, underlying messages being conveyed?

Over this 100-year period that analysis has been done, there has been some improvement in the representation of different groups, but there is still a lack of representation of people of color. The oversimplification also still exists but has taken new forms. For example, people of color:

• May be included but they are still secondary in the stories being told and are only portrayed in certain types of roles

• Are still people who are acted upon rather than generating actions and making decisions of their own

• May be included mainly as decorative objects, i.e., they are in pictures but not discussed in the text

• May be shown only in the same few historical figures, e.g., Martin Luther King

Dr. Gay suggested the following steps that need to be taken at this point in analyzing for inclusion of different racial/ethnic groups:
• Include more different subject areas and other types of curriculum materials

• Include more different ethnic groups more often

• Analyze materials from kindergarten through the post graduate level

• Extend the analysis to classroom instruction

• Extend the analysis to the programs and publications of professional organizations

• Teach students to be critical analysts of the materials they see and read

• Study the effects of textbooks on different kinds of achievement among different kinds of students

BIOGRAPHY

Geneva Gay is Professor of Education at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the recipient of the 1990 Distinguished Scholar Award, presented by the Committee on the Role and Status of Minorities in Educational Research and Development of the American Educational Research Association, and the 1994 Multicultural Educator Award, the first to be presented by the National Association of Multicultural Education. She is nationally and internationally known for her scholarship in multicultural education, particularly as it relates to curriculum design, staff development, classroom instruction, and intersections of culture, ethnicity, and learning. Her writings include more than 135 articles and book chapters, including Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Practice & Research, which received the 2001 Outstanding Writing Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE).