Silencing the Poor and Working Class: Analysis of the Georgia Economics Standards, 1990–2016

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Curriculum, Textbooks, and Nation-State

Abstract

Since the implementation of curriculum standards began in the late 1980s, national and state agencies decide and edit what students will learn as part of the official curriculum. As a result of ongoing revisions to the economics standards implemented in Georgia, elements of the course related to moral and ethical discussions, such as the study of labor unions and workers’ rights, disappeared from the published standards and led to the omission of issues related to poor and working class people. Using critical hermeneutics, this study seeks to gain a greater understanding of classed narratives present in the official curriculum and to begin theorizing ways of making the content more inclusive of poor and working class perspectives.

Author

• Glenda Wheatley, University of Georgia