Ideology, Value Orientation And Material Selection In College English Textbooks

From the critical perspective of Sociology of Education, education is deeply embedded in the cultural politics. The school curriculum, what counts as legitimate knowledge or "official knowledge", is not neutral, nor is it randomly chosen or value-free. Rather, it is socially constructed on the basis of predetermined principles and value clusters, as the result of a selective tradition, which refers to the practice of certain individual’s choice and some group’s vision of legitimate knowledge. According to Michael Apple, American Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, textbooks are produced out of the cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises that organize and disorganize a people. To a large extent, the legitimate knowledge is the "mirror" of power relations in society and it often reflects the ideology of the ruling class as a means to impose social control.This research, based on the writer’s understanding of Professor Apple’s theory, attempts to analyze the legitimate knowledge in post-1949 college English textbooks officially compiled after 1949 in China. These textbooks (a total of 43), grouped in 4 different periods, have been generally regarded as the most popular and influential college English textbooks from the eras when they were produced to this day. Through the methods of literature research and content analysis, this research focuses on the value orientations of the texts and tries to theoretically and empirically interpret how they were schemed, organized and presented. It also elaborates on how these textbooks are related to the national educational and foreign language teaching policies, the 5 official syllabi and the dominant ideology standing behind them in the historical, social and cultural context. This research sets out to examine whether the Theory of Cultural Politics is applicable in the context of college English teaching in modern China.This dissertation begins with an explanatory overview of the ongoing dialogue between Social Conflict Theory and Structural Functionalism in terms of the relationship between education and society, and between ideology and curriculum. Then it is followed by an introduction to the recently developed critical theories in the field of Sociology of Education, especially Sociology of Curriculum. Then it presents a historical review and a theoretical and empirical analysis of the power relations among the political leaders, the syllabi compilers, the editors and the reviewers of the college English textbooks. Before reaching its conclusion, the dissertation renders a panoramic empirical analysis of the categorical structure, the historical changes of the value orientations in all these textbooks, as well as a theoretical interpretation of their linkage to the dominant ideology and social context.The major research findings are as follows. First, as the value orientations largely conform to the changing ideological features, both the compilation of the official syllabi and the material selection of the textbooks prove to be remarkably guided and controlled by the dominant ideology in all historical eras. Second, supported by its political power, the ruling class successfully exercises social control by arranging curicular standards, centralizing the compilation and production of both the syllabi and the textbooks, and approving the curicular text. Third, as the Chinese society constantly undertakes dramatic political, societal and cultural transformations, both continuities and contradictions of various degrees and forms, along with value deviations from the dominant ideology, are seen in the textbooks, reflecting the complexity and the dynamic mechanism of power relations in modern Chinese society. These findings basically prove the applicability of the critical hypothesis which states "the conflict over the legitimate knowledge is not just educational, but ideological and political." Meanwhile, as the Chinese society further develops, as more and more social groups are committed to the selection and reproduction of the legitimate knowledge, there is a growing tendency of the dominant educational power being more decentralized while the social control becomes more hidden.