![Director of the Library's Office of Scholarly Programs Prosser Gifford (left) convenes a panel including participants Azyumardi Azra, Susan Douglass and Rubina Saigol.](images/textbooks_1.jpg)
Director of the Library's Office of Scholarly Programs Prosser Gifford (left) convenes a panel including participants Azyumardi Azra, Susan Douglass and Rubina Saigol. - Yusef El-Amin
By DONNA URSCHEL
Scholars from America and the Islamic world gathered at the Library this fall to explore and discuss how their cultures are depicted in textbooks, primarily in the history, geography and literature curriculum of the middle and high school years.
Participants of the Oct. 25 workshop, titled "Teaching the Other: Muslims, Non-Muslims and the Stories They Teach," revealed failures in many textbooks to portray accurately and comprehensively the civilizations of the "other," America's view of Islamic countries and the Muslim world's view of the West. One problem occurs in Saudi Arabia, where elementary through high school students receive no textbook lessons on world cultures. The consensus: more textbook revision is needed.
Michael W. Suleiman, professor of political science at Kansas State University, warned, "We need to be open-minded on both sides. We want to avoid a clash of civilizations."
The workshop, co-sponsored by the Office of Scholarly Programs and the African and Middle Eastern Division, consisted of three panels: Religion, Tolerance and Identity; History: Different Perspectives; and Ethnicity: Images of the Other.
Religion, Tolerance and Identity
Azyumardi Azra, rector of the Agama Islam Negeri Institute in Jakarta, Indonesia, launched the first panel on a positive note when he discussed tolerance of the religious "other" in Indonesia. He said Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, promotes mutual respect and cooperation among adherents of its five main religions, Islam (followed by 87 percent of its population), Protestantism, Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
This inter-religious harmony is reflected in state-produced textbooks. Azra said, "In general, there are no negative or bad descriptions of followers of other religions, especially non-Muslims in textbooks of Indonesia."
Unlike Indonesia, Pakistan, in its state-prepared textbooks, presents intolerant and negative images of the religious "other," according to Rubina Saigol, the Society for the Advancement of Education, in Lahore, Pakistan. The main religious "other" in Pakistan is the Hindu "other." She looked at textbooks in the middle and secondary levels and found many stories on how Hindus were "tricksters, conniving and scheming."
Saigol attributes this negative perspective to the animosity between India and Pakistan, starting with the violent 1947 split of Pakistan from India. Afterwards, Pakistan needed to construct a new national identity and persuade its citizens to think of themselves as Pakistanis. "The construction of the self is always simultaneous with the construction of the other," said Saigol.
In Pakistani textbooks of the last few years, Muslims are depicted as a "besieged self," and all the "others," the Christians and Jews, are represented as the attackers. Saigol said, "I think it's because all over the world Muslims are feeling besieged—in Israel, Bosnia and Chechnya."
Susan Douglass, from the Council on Islamic Education in Fountain Valley, Calif., discussed how Islam was inadequately depicted in U.S. world history textbooks. She said, "In the United States in the 1960s and early 1970s, Islam did not play any role in the curriculum at all. When information came into textbooks in the 1970s and 1980s, it was ludicrously incorrect and significantly flawed. By the mid-1980s, Islam became a standard topic in textbooks, but there were many errors and biases."
Even in the 1990s, there were "textual land mines." For example, one textbook contained an "excellent feature to help students understand people from other lands" by looking up close at an individual, such as a Samurai soldier, his clothing, food and role in society. These features were dispersed throughout the book. "When it came time to cover the Muslim world, the book featured a camel, unaccompanied by any human being." Douglass said.
"It took 11 years of work and interaction with the publisher to get the camel replaced by a scholar," she said.
Douglass said books in the United States are changing to better depict Islam, but progress is slow. She also credited the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va., with issuing guidelines for teaching about different religions in the public school curriculum.
Left, Abdelkader Ezzaki; center, Michael Suleiman; and right, Tariq Rahman. - Yusef El-Amin
History: Different Perspectives
Pakistani textbooks were discussed again in the second panel on "History: Different Perspectives." Tariq Rahman, professor of linguistics and South Asian Studies at Quaid-I-Azamm University, in Islamabad, Pakistan, presented charts showing how images of the "other" varied according to the type of school.
In the elitist, English-speaking schools that educate primarily wealthy students, positive Western images were the norm. But in the vernacular institutions, where students spoke Urdu and Sindhi, the images of the "other" were anti-Hindu, anti-India, and the West was ignored. This anti-Hindu, anti-India and non-West bias also appeared in English-speaking schools of non-elitist students.
Karima Alavi looked at how American textbooks view the Islamic Revolution of Iran. Alavi, director of Islamic World Services and a teacher at the Dar al-Islam Teachers' Institute in New Mexico, focused her examination on three textbooks used to teach the Advanced Placement World History course in high schools.
She found failings in all three books: "World Civilizations: The Global Experience: 1450 to Present" by Peter Stearns, a professor at George Mason University; Richard Bulliet's "The Earth and Its People: A Global History Since 1550"; and "Traditions and Encounters" by Jerry Bentley. Each of them leaves out one or more major issues that were important factors in Middle Eastern history, according to Alavi.
Alavi also pointed out "loaded language in educational materials." In a Time magazine product for classroom use called "Leaders of Revolutions," the profile on David Ben-Gurion of Israel referred to him as "part Washington, part Moses with a halo of silvery hair." In contrast, the profile on Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran described negative features, "hooded eyes, an untidy, severe look … the image is the man."
Gregory Starrett, associate professor of anthropology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, discussed Egyptian textbooks on Islamic studies from the 1980s and how they treat non-Muslims in two very different ways. In texts on the history of the Muslim community, the lessons portray non-Muslims (primarily pagans and Jews) as treacherous populations, and the duty of the Muslims is the duty to fight. But in sections dealing with the contemporary world, the texts counsel students that citizenship rights of non-Muslims are absolute, and Muslims need to treat others with kindness and respect.
Ethnicity: Images of the Other
At the start of the third panel, Mounir Farah, professor of education and Middle East studies at the University of Arkansas, came to the defense of the United States. "In the United States, in all fairness, I have to say, we have been the pioneer in this direction. Back in the 1970s, we formed an image committee to look at textbooks in the U.S. and see how they portrayed the Middle East," he said.
"Shortly following that, the Middle East Studies Association formed a committee, chaired by Michael Suleiman, a speaker on this very panel, and continued the work. It did have an impact on textbooks. Although there's much to be done, we have seen a noticeable improvement, a remarkable change in textbooks and in teacher training," Farah said.
"Was there a comparable movement in the Middle East? No. There was no movement for self-evaluation or critical thinking about what they're teaching in schools," he added.
In Farah's subsequent presentation, he examined the textbooks of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Jordan and revealed noteworthy findings. In Saudi Arabia, the textbooks do not deal with world civilizations outside of the Middle East.
"What struck me, and I'm still shocked at, is how the Saudi textbooks have a huge gap in covering world civilizations. If you look at the texts from elementary to high school, there is nothing on Latin America, North America, Europe, China, India and ancient Greek-Rome civilizations—as if they don't exist! The focus is on the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic civilization," Farah explained.
Unlike Saudi Arabia, the textbooks in Syria include "plenty of coverage of world history and world geography." The information, however, is data, such as population, products and size of areas, and contains very little analysis of cultural regions, Farah explained.
Further along in its efforts is Jordan, which is swiftly making changes in its treatment of ancient world civilizations and modern world history. It received funding from the World Bank in 1989-1999 to prepare a new curriculum on world studies and to train teachers. Farah said he, himself, directed the writing of the revised textbooks.
Abdelkader Ezzaki, professor of education at Mohamed V University in Rabat, Morocco, looked at middle school textbooks in Morocco in three subjects, Islamic studies, social studies and foreign language.
From left: Karima Alavi, Gregory Starrett, Mounir Farah and Fatiha Hamitouche. - Yusef El-Amin!
In Islamic studies texts, Ezzaki found no direct reference to "the other." The texts present the Islamic tradition followed in Morocco, which preaches moderation, as opposed to extremism, in all walks of life, including politics, social activities and ethical issues. "The key word here is tolerance," Ezzaki said. The social studies textbooks contain a great variety of topics, including histories of Europe to South America, and the foreign language books also provide a variety of images, which are mostly positive with regard to British and American cultures.
But Ezzaki added a disclaimer: "It is no secret that there is a strong dissatisfaction among youngsters with the foreign policy of America and the Western world and its unconditional support of Israel against the Palestinians."
A successful approach to teaching the "other" occurs at the University of Algiers. Fatiha Hamitouche, an associate professor of language and linguistics at the university, discussed the textbooks designed by the American Language Center for teaching English literature, after the school detected an animosity that students brought to the study of foreign cultures.
"We tried to adopt a different approach based on humanistic psychology. Its principle is based on the opening up of students to express themselves and to share experiences," Hamitouche said.
"Our purpose is to teach highlights of American literature through text analysis adapted to the students' background. We make the students aware of the topics and thoughts of U.S. literature through its historical periods, and we draw thematic parallels between American and Algerian literature in order to underline common principles and similar human patterns of thought in literature, cultures and religion as well," she explained.
The new approach seemed to reduce the gap between the two cultures. "Students learned about both cultures, the American and their own, which they had an opportunity to talk about," Hamitouche said. After a while, the new approach brought a comfortable atmosphere and feeling among students and a feeling of acceptance and tolerance between teachers and students, she said.
Suleiman was the final speaker; he discussed opinion surveys of school children in Morocco and Tunisia and also offered a few concluding remarks.
Suleiman said children in Morocco knew they were Muslim and Arab and had a well-defined sense of self. When he asked them what nationality they would want to be if they were not Moroccan, the children often said, "If I were not Moroccan, I would want to be Moroccan." In political terms, the Moroccan children were Western-oriented in terms of news. They were able to identify Western leaders more often than Arab world leaders.
In Tunisia, Suleiman asked the students to rank 22 countries according to preference. "The Arab countries came out on top, and at the top of the Arab countries are Saudi Arabia and Palestine," Suleiman said. With elementary students, the United States ranked 11th, with secondary school students it ranked 14th and with technical institute students it ranked 19th. "The higher the education of the student, the lower the opinion of the United States," Suleiman explained.
Offering thoughts on the teaching of the "other," Suleiman said, "The 'other' is something every country faces, every individual, also, and it is changing all the time."
He referred to a paradox in the way the United States views the Middle East and the way the Middle East views the United States. "Many countries in the Arab/Muslim world have really excellent working relationships, and almost alliances, with the United States, and yet American views of the Arab/Muslim world, especially post-9/11, are quite negative, and Arab views of United States are negative."
Suleiman said the two sides need to address these issues and determine what causes these opinions. He said tolerance and acceptance of the "other" needs to be encouraged.
Donna Urschel is a freelance writer.