Selective Description in Educational Curricula and the Filtering of Knowledge

Knowledge is always a product of selection. To teach something is also not to teach something else.

In Japan's compulsory education system, the content children learn is governed by the Course of Study (学習指導要領) established by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (文部科学省). The choice of what to teach is simultaneously the choice of what not to teach.

This is not a matter of conspiracy theory. Selection is an unavoidable accompaniment to all education. The question is under what dynamics those selections are made, and what forms of ignorance they produce.

Political conflict over history textbooks has been rendered visible in Japan on repeated occasions. The controversy known as the history textbook controversies (歴史教科書問題) demonstrates that curricular selection is a product not only of "educational judgment" but of political and social dynamics.

The Textbook Screening System as an Institution of Selection

Japan's textbooks operate under a textbook screening system (教科書検定制度). Textbook inspectors at the Ministry of Education examine draft manuscripts submitted by publishers and attach "screening comments." Publishers cannot pass the screening without revising their manuscripts in line with those comments.

Within this system, the state reviews "what is written." Not through direct prohibition, but through the form of "evidence is needed for this description" or "this expression is inappropriate," pressure accumulates that makes certain content difficult to write. Screening comments are published, but publishers also engage in proactive behavior — voluntarily avoiding descriptions likely to "become a problem." This is precisely the same pattern as the mechanism of silence-structuring. A structure is institutionally created in which "not writing" becomes the rational choice.

The Politicization of Historical Description

From the 1990s onward in Japan, political disputes over history textbook descriptions recurred repeatedly. Many of the descriptions that became focal points involve evaluations of historical facts in which twentieth-century Japan was involved.

What the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (自由主義史観研究会) criticized under the label of "masochistic view of history" (自虐史観) was descriptions concerning Japan's war responsibility. This criticism took the form of "restoring balance," but its substance was a demand for the reduction and deletion of specific descriptions.

As a result, some descriptions that appeared in textbooks in the late 1990s were reduced in subsequent textbook revisions from the 2000s onward. The fact of what was "deleted" remains, but for the generation that did not learn it in school, it becomes equivalent to "not existing." This is the production of ignorance through education.

The Course of Study as a Framework for Knowledge

The history textbook controversy is a highly visible case, but the more fundamental problem lies at the level of the Course of Study itself.

The structure of what is taught to which grade level for how many hours defines which knowledge counts as "important." Knowledge that falls outside this definition becomes difficult to cover in class. Even when an individual teacher judges something to be important, it is difficult to address content not explicitly specified in the Course of Study in depth within class time.

Labour law, the workings of the tax system, the structure of social security — these are areas of knowledge directly tied to civic life, yet their weight in school education has long been limited. What is missing only becomes apparent not while still enrolled, but after entering society.

The Three-Tier Structure of Ignorance

The ignorance produced by educational curricula has three layers.

First tier (ignorance through absence): Ignorance concerning content that is simply not taught. Knowledge that does not appear in the curriculum leaves students who graduate without knowing "that they do not know."

Second tier (ignorance through reduction): Ignorance in which formal contact is made but insufficient time and depth prevent genuine understanding from forming. Only the memory of "having studied it" remains; the content is not retained.

Third tier (ignorance through framework): Ignorance arising because the "framework" of knowledge that has been taught presupposes a particular perspective. The very existence of alternative frameworks remains invisible.

Fricker (2007) discussed in Epistemic Injustice the state of lacking the conceptual resources to explain one's own experience — what she calls "hermeneutical injustice." The third tier of ignorance produced by curricular frameworks connects directly to this hermeneutical injustice. Not having the language to analyze the situation in which one finds oneself connects directly to not having the power to change that situation.

Agnotological Classification

As this table shows, ignorance production in education does not operate through a single method — multiple mechanisms overlap and function together.

"What Was Not Taught" Rather Than "What Was Taught"

A key point that agnotological research reveals is how difficult it is for people to become aware of "what they do not know." Content not taught in a textbook does not even form the recognition that "knowledge exists that should be known." The state that Proctor and others discuss as "unknown unknowns" — not knowing that one does not know — is organizationally produced through schooling. For an individual to escape ignorance, a trigger to step outside the curriculum is needed; but that trigger itself is also subject to social and economic conditions.

The right to education is also the right to determine "what one learns." As long as curricular selection remains a product of political and social dynamics, the question becomes: "Whose ignorance is being produced, for whose benefit?"

Related: What Is Silence-Structuring? | Strategic Ignorance in Evidence-Based Policymaking | The Monthly Labour Statistics Scandal and the Reproduction of State Ignorance