The Option For Pluralist Models In School Textbooks In Romania After December 1989

Page 1 of 5

The single model paradigm has functioned for a lot of years in the Romanian education system. Almost 50 years of communism have determined important changes in the strategies of handling issues promoted in textbooks.

Everything had to be interpreted in a partisan manner. The evaluation of any theoretical position had to be made from the standpoint of a “valid” theory, which was the communist ideology. Due to this state of affairs, everything that was present in textbooks represented the officially accepted point of view and any other position was considered wrong by default. This way of writing textbooks could not be replaced immediately after 1989.

Many textbook authors have continued to search for the “truth”, generating many disputes regarding the way it had been presented. Pluralist models have been promoted gradually, as even the idea of alternative textbooks imposed on them the effort to make the possibility available (in teaching, learning and evaluating).

We now move on to present the evolution towards pluralism in the case of school textbooks for Economics (high school education, textbooks for the 10th and the 11th grades) and for Romanian History (secondary education, textbooks for the 8th grade).

Economics Textbooks
To identify how the transition was made from a unique approach to a pluralistic one regarding Economics as a high school discipline, we turned to a brief review of existing student’s books for between 1989-2006, taking into account the three periods considered in the development of post-communist school textbooks. The textbook from 1989 was set as a benchmark and the analyse followed the following points:

a. to what extent information is offered to students from the axiological perspective in textbooks after 1989;
b. whether the authors of textbooks considered it appropriate to provide students with alternative references, and if they did, what type of sources appeared the most (press articles, world-renowned economists, public figures, other economics textbooks);
c. the extent to which various schools of economic thought are presented to students.

Economic science, as presented in textbooks for high school students, appears rather as something given, but, as in any social science, its truths are not perfect. A short presentation of various schools of economic thought is a good sign of a pluralistic approach. Even if the entire content of the textbook presents economic science in its mainstream version, a review of other schools of thought puts the student in a position to critically assess the strong and the weak points of each theoretical approach.

Some new generation textbooks also focus in the same way on the presentation of various systems of economic organization. The fact that market economy exists, that one learns about it through daily interactions and at school does not imply, however, the universality of the concept. It is important for students to be familiar, at least theoretically, with other types of economic organization, and to be able to understand the process during which the transition from subsistence economy to market economy was made, to understand that market economy is an alternative to planned economy.
 

Index of contents Previous Next