Political Ideologies in the Curriculum: World War II in Vietnamese, Chinese, and American History Textbooks

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 2
  In Roundtable Session: Readings of Curriculum as Political Ideologies, Possibilities, and Contradictions in Textbooks

Abstract

The study explores how ideologies are embedded in the secondary school History textbooks of three countries: the U.S., China and Vietnam, through the narratives of World War II. The study employed a combined qualitative method of ideological discourse analysis and narrative discourse analysis and gathered data from three textbook samples of Vietnam, China and the United States. Findings illustrated that each country’s textbook sample was densely embedded with political ideologies, namely democracy, socialism, and Marxism-Leninism. At the same time, three countries shared similar attempts to promote exceptionalism and nationalism through the textbooks they produced. The study concluded with implications for the teaching of world history in a global context.

Author

• Chau Bao Vu, Louisiana State University