Each day you awake, you learn something new. It may be as simple as learning how to use a table saw, or learning about what Theodore Roosevelt accomplished while in office, or as in depth as learning the Metric System. Something you learn are taught to you directly, and other things you learn indirectly. When I tell you about TR, you are learning directly. When you watch the teacher sharpen her pencil in kindergarten, you learned how to make your pencil sharper indirectly. In school system there are many values, behaviors, attitudes, and relationships, which are taught to students indirectly. In this essay I will discuss how values, attitudes, behaviors, and relationships are taught to students through texts books in three different countries.
In Russia, history teachers used to teach their students information that scholars knew to be false. The students learned about Marxist-Leninism, and ideology, which many people did not believe. So, rewards were given to students on exams for giving false information. Over time the students learned to be skeptical as well as passive, and to hold a grudge against people who lied to them repeatedly. (Vaillant 1994: 146) .
After the fall of the Soviet Union, another value that was leisurely introduced was critical thinking. To help change the curriculum, the Central Education Establishment decided to include more information in the courses about religion, cultural life, the role of the individual, and the role of choice in history. In the textbooks for the new curriculum they put material in the book that would cause students to be more active and independent. The texts would require students to discuss the matters at hand, so each student could defend their point of view on the subject. The idea of class participation was designed to strengthen the students" ability to think by themselves. The textbooks have multiple points of view, which requires the student to do so some critical thinking.
