The Stealth Curriculum

Abstract

World history textbooks for junior and senior high school students have been found to contain many outright errors, much misinformation, and many other deficiencies in their coverage of Islam. Because they bypass official scrutiny in textbook adoption states, what is more troubling are many of the supplementary curriculum resources on Islam available to teachers. Although their ostensible goal is to expand students’ knowledge of Islam, give them other “points of view” on Islamic history and culture, combat intolerance, and/or promote “critical thinking,” their real goal, suggested by an analysis of their materials and their effects on teachers, is to influence how children come to understand and think about social, political, and religious issues involving Islam and the Islamic world. Their political agendas are so subtly embedded in their readings and learning activities that apolitical teachers are unlikely to spot them. And to facilitate acceptance, they appeal to teachers’ sense of fairness and their presumed obligation to promote “social justice” and withhold negative moral judgments about other people or cultures, especially those deemed victims of imperialism or colonialism.