Civic Education Texts as Social Construction: Learning to Work

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar II

Abstract

I view civic textbooks from the 1910s to the 2000s as moments in history as well as comparatively across decades. The textbooks offer opportunities to broaden understandings of civics education in contemporary American schools: particularly how vocational education evolved from an explicit aspect of the curriculum to a more implicit, structural aspect of how, what and why we teach. I highlight this trend through critical analysis of civic textbooks as vehicles of socially efficient education.

Author

• Chad Becker, Indiana State University