A study of Georgia's hidden curriculum: Institutional discrimination in the eighth grade

This study was about African American students and their textbooks. This study was based on Georgia's textbook curriculum and four of Georgia's middle school history textbooks. The four Georgia history textbooks were analyzed for their treatment of African Americans within Georgia's eighth grade history textbooks. The instruments used to analyze the four textbooks for their treatment of African American history were, the African American Textbook Checklist (Council on Interracial Books for Children, 1980), the Garcia-Armstrong Matrix System (Garcia & Armstrong, 1979), and the Evaluation Coefficient (ECO) Analysis (Pratt, 1972). The instruments were used in this study to answer the following research questions: (a) what was the relationship, if any, between the active sentences and passive sentences with respect to the treatment of African Americans in the eighth grade Georgia history textbooks, (b) in what ways do Georgia history textbooks recreate past events of African Americans that may lead to an understanding of how racism operates in the state, and (c) to what extent does the information from the textbooks meet the criteria of a racially balanced history? The study showed that all four Georgia history textbooks that have been used in the past and some that are currently being used today produced low scores on all three instruments.