The Politics of Production

I think I will like this part of the class...you know...seeing how people use power to decide what gets put into viewers hands and what does not. (Poli Sci majors tend to have this fascination with power and how different people use it.) So I was thinking about the politics of textbook production. I will be honest, I do not know a lot about this subject, but I have been pondering it so we'll see where my mind takes us. How did you get your high school text books? The way I understand the whole process, at least in my old district, is the teachers make recommendations to the school board as to which textbooks they would like to teach out of and the school board reviews it and makes the final decision to either accept or reject the teachers recommendations. In this scenario lets see who has the power-- 1. teachers and 2. to a greater extent the school board. Text book writers, in order to be successful, must sell to this audience. What does that mean? Well, text book writers must put information in that they think the school board members think is important. Lets do a hypothetical demographic break down of the school board... there are 2 white males (one Irish decent, one German); 1 African American female; 1 Hispanic male; 2 white females (one German, one Italian). Lets say they are reviewing an American history book. They all want to read about a group that they can identify with because each one believes their group's own history is most important. If the text book writers are writing to this audience who gets left out of American history??? Those who are native to the land maybe, maybe those of Asian decent...who knows who we aren't reading about because of the politics of production.