In South Africa, the school textbook remains a powerful source of content knowledge to both teachers and learners. Such knowledge is often engaged uncritically by textbook users. As such, the worldviews and value systems in the knowledge selected for consumption remain embedded and are likely to do powerful ideological work. In this article, we present an account of the ideological orientations of knowledge in a corpus of school economics textbooks. We engage the tenets of critical discourse analysis to examine the representations of the construct “poverty” as a taught topic in the Further Education and Training Economics curriculum. Using Thompson’s legitimation as a strategy and form-function analysis as specific analytical tools, we unearth the subtext of curriculum content in a selection of Grade 12 Economics textbooks. The study reveals how power and domination are normalised through a strategy of economic legitimation, thereby offering a “legitimate” rationale for the existence of poverty in the world. The article concludes with implications for curriculum and a humanising pedagogy, and a call for embracing critical knowledge on poverty in the South African curriculum.

中文翻译：

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南非学校经济学教科书中的贫困合法化

在南非，学校教科书仍然是教师和学习者都可以获取的丰富内容知识的来源。教科书用户通常会不加批判地吸收此类知识。这样，被选择用于消费的知识中的世界观和价值体系仍然根深蒂固，并有可能从事强大的思想工作。在本文中，我们介绍了学校经济学教科书中知识的意识形态取向。我们运用批判性话语分析的宗旨，研究“贫困”这一构想在继续教育和培训经济学课程中作为教学主题的表现。通过使用汤普森的合法性作为策略并将形式功能分析作为特定的分析工具，我们在精选的12年级经济学教科书中挖掘了课程内容的潜台词。该研究揭示了如何通过经济合法化战略来规范权力和统治，从而为世界上贫困的存在提供“合法”理由。文章的结尾对课程和人性化教学法产生了影响，并呼吁在南非课程中纳入有关贫困的关键知识。