The curious case of impairment and the school textbook

Alan Hodkinson and Amir B Ghajarieh

Abstract

This ‘think piece’ re-casts the school textbook as ontological envelopes which enfold an unresolved dialectic between constituting and constituted power into the education of every school pupil. Informed by the writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) the authors reveal that textbooks act as ‘majoritan’ to categorise, contain and constrain societal conceptions of the ‘Other’. The authors propose that educators must reinvent notions of freedom, authority and ethical responsibility. The authors conclude that to undermine the pernicious power of the ‘normalising’ textbook we need the production of a counter signifying semiotic to overcome pathologies existing in schools today.

 

Hodkinson, A. and Ghajarieh, A. (2014) The curious case of impairment and the school textbook. Educationalfutures, [online] Vol. 6(2). Available at: https://educationstudies.org.uk/?p=2769 [Accessed 29 Mar, 2024].