Flanders: Stereotyping in schoolbooks

The Center for Diversity and Learning (Steunpunt Diversiteit en Leren) of Ghent University investigated 12 recent schoolbooks for stereotyping. For example, most stories about families involve a mother and father and one or two children.

Other stereotyping is done in a sneaky manner. For example, in the language book Taalsignaal almost all the names used are Flemish, until a story is told of an unruly student named Hassan.

On a completely different level, a text about fundamentalism in the book Utkijk brings a newspaper article about the headscarf ban in France as an illustration. According to the report this unintentionally labels a religious symbol as problematic.

Source: HLN (Dutch)

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