(Mis)educating England: eurocentric narratives in secondary school history textbooks

Abstract

ABSTRACT The shortcomings of the current English secondary school history curriculum have been widely discussed since its inception in 2013. Less widely explored, however, are the narratives underpinning a key classroom resource: textbooks. In this paper, I review nine history textbooks currently in use in schools across the country, drawing on post-colonial theories in order to assess the extent to which the narratives of these textbooks are fundamentally rooted in Eurocentric discourses of superiority. Findings demonstrate that textbooks across the sample draw on outdated tropes when discussing Others in a global and historical context, ultimately reifying notions of ‘Oriental’ barbarism, despotism, and religious fanaticism, ‘African’ servility and submissiveness, and ‘native’ savagery and backwardness, whilst also emphasising ideas around European civility and advanced development. Accordingly, with few exceptions, the ‘master narratives’ of these textbooks wholly conform to the model I identify for Eurocentric worldviews, being (i) totalistic; (ii) oppositional; and (iii) teleological.