Textbooks – a crucial link between education and sustainable development

A new policy paper by GEM Report on textbooks looks at how issues central to sustainable development are covered in learning materials across the world. These issues include human rights, gender equality, climate change, global citizenship, and peace.

December 16, 2016 by GPE Secretariat
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3 minutes read
Girl in Honduras reads from a textbook. Credit: GPE/Paul Martinez

The student on this photo is studying the human body from a textbook, likely for biology class. Textbooks remain a staple tool in classrooms around the world.

Few instruments are as closely associated with school or learning as the books that often provide the basis for what is taught in a classroom and how. So much so, that access to learning materials is cited as a key strategy to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goal for Education.

However, a new GEM Report policy paper, the third in a series published this year on textbooks, reveals that, currently, textbooks run the risk of hindering our progress towards sustainable development because they “fail to deal comprehensively, clearly, and fairly with concepts that are crucial for social cohesion, political stability and the future of the planet.”

The content of learning materials is particularly important to the achievement of target 4.7 of the SDGs:

“By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development.”

The policy paper shows that between 2000 and 2011 only:

  • 30% of textbooks discussed environmental issues as a global problem
  • 9% of textbooks covered rights of people with disabilities
  • 10% of textbooks mentioned conflict prevention or resolution

The paper recommends that all governments should urgently revise the content of their textbooks in line with core values in the Sustainable Development Agenda. It calls for these core values to be built into national guidelines used during textbook review, and taught in workshops for textbook writers and illustrators.

Download the Policy Paper

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