Critical Discourse Analysis of Financial Education Textbooks in the Era of Digital Media: The Suppression of Democratic Thinking

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Youth and civics education as a discourse on democratic thinking

Proposal

This paper is part of a critical discourse analysis study that applies Fairclough’s (2010) approach, alongside critical pedagogy lens (Apple, 2013; Freire, 2021), to examine financial education textbooks and curricula in Quebec, Canada. For the conference, I aim to critically analyze the content of a Grade 11 financial education textbook, approved by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education of Quebec (2018) for use in English schools as part of the social sciences curriculum.
In the era of digital media, platforms increasingly shape both individual and collective agency. However, the current financial education curriculum reveals significant gaps in fostering students’ ability to critically engage with these digital influences. Rather than equipping students to understand how media affects decision-making, social participation, and democratic engagement, the textbook reinforces a neoliberal framework. This framework emphasizes consumption, individual rights, and personal responsibility within legal and popular cultural contexts. This focus on neoliberal values prioritizes individual merit and privileged agency over collective action and structural transformation, while neglecting the crucial distinction between formal equality and substantive equity.
Drawing on McChesney’s (2013); my paper will also elaborate how the capitalist-driven structure of digital media suppresses opportunities for critical democratic engagement. McChesney’s critique of how the internet, once viewed as a tool for democracy, has instead become a vehicle for consumerism, parallels the focus of the financial education curriculum on promoting individual consumer culture rather than democratic thinking. Furthermore, Noble’s (2018) Algorithms of Oppression will provide insight into how algorithms and digital tools reinforce existing inequalities and limit critical engagement with media. This aligns with the gaps in the textbook, which fails to promote media literacy that would enable students to critically assess how digital media shapes their worldview and perpetuates systemic biases.
By incorporating key concepts from the textbook, this research will demonstrate how the content not only fails to cultivate democratic literacy and creativity but also contributes to a merit-based, consumption-driven culture. This culture, as Michael Apple suggests, privileges neoliberal values that diminish collective thinking, thus hindering students’ participation in democratic processes. By neglecting to encourage a critical understanding of digital media’s socio-political implications, the textbook constrains students’ ability to engage in meaningful civic participation and assess media’s role in shaping public discourse.
This proposal emphasizes the urgent need for educational reform that integrates democratic thinking, media literacy, and critical evaluation of digital media within financial education programs and materials. Such reforms are necessary to challenge neoliberal values and foster democratic engagement in an increasingly digital world.
References:
Apple, M. W. (2013). Teachers and Texts: A Political Economy of Class and Gender Relations in Education. Routledge. http://www.myilibrary.com?id=552675
Freire, P. (2021). Pedagogy of Hope Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. http://public.eblib.com/choice/PublicFullRecord.aspx?p=6628595
McChesney, R. W. (2013). Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. The New Press.
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press.

Author

• Azadeh Javaherpour, McGill University & Bishops university