The Stories Schools Tell and Do Not Tell: Curriculum Representation and the Child Who Cannot Find Themselves in the Textbook

The Stories Schools Tell and Don’t: What Curriculum Representation Actually Does for Learning

A contributing voice from educational research | Specialist in education equity, school improvement, and teacher professional development

A curriculum is a set of choices about whose knowledge, history, and culture appear in a textbook — and every choice to include is also a choice to leave something out. The educational-theory term for this is “windows and mirrors”: children need curriculum content that reflects their own identity back to them (a mirror) and content that opens onto lives different from their own (a window). When one group of children only ever gets windows and never mirrors, the research on belonging and engagement says that has consequences — and India’s own curriculum-reform process has, at points, explicitly named this as a gap it is trying to close.

Key facts

• The “windows and mirrors” framework was articulated by educator Emily Style in her 1988 essay “Curriculum as Window and Mirror,” and independently by literacy scholar Rudine Sims Bishop in 1990 — both arguing curriculum needs to let children see themselves and see beyond themselves.
• India’s Scheduled Tribe population numbers more than 80 million people, living predominantly in forested, hilly, and mountainous regions — a scale at which curriculum representation is not a marginal concern but one touching a substantial share of the country’s schoolchildren.
• In Chhattisgarh, where over 30% of the population is tribal per the 2011 Census, state curriculum officials have explicitly named the mismatch between textbook terminology and Adivasi students’ lived context as a specific barrier — not a general engagement problem, but a documented content gap.
• Research on Adivasi communities’ educational experience (Dixit, 2022, Contemporary Education Dialogue) documents how curriculum content that does not reflect a community’s own history and collective memory contributes to alienation from schooling, not just lower engagement scores.
• Following NEP 2020, NCERT’s National Curriculum Framework process was explicitly tasked by a parliamentary committee with improving representation for North-East states and ensuring balanced gender perspective — a live, ongoing reform process rather than a settled question. Separately, NCERT’s textbook content and periodic revisions remain a subject of continuing public debate in India about how much space different communities and historical narratives receive; that debate is active and contested, and this piece does not take a side in it.

Representation is a specific, documented mechanism — not a general sentiment

A student who never once encounters their own community’s history in a textbook is not experiencing a minor omission. They are receiving a specific, repeated message about whose knowledge counts — and the research on belonging says children read that message accurately.

The Chhattisgarh example is worth sitting with because it is concrete rather than abstract. State officials there did not describe a vague “engagement problem.” They described a specific mechanism: Adivasi students bring genuine intelligence and close ecological knowledge from their own lives, and curriculum terminology built around a different set of reference points fails to connect with what those students already know — producing struggle that looks like a learning gap but is actually a translation gap. That is a diagnosable, fixable mismatch, not an intractable one.

Five principles for closing the representation gap at the school level

1. Diagnose which specific communities are missing from your specific curriculum, not “marginalised groups” in the abstract. Chhattisgarh’s approach — naming Adivasi students and Adivasi terminology specifically — is more actionable than a general commitment to diversity, because it identifies exactly which mismatch to fix.
2. Treat representation as a relationship-building mechanism, not a content checklist. The windows-and-mirrors research frames representation as what allows a child to trust that the school sees them — which is a relationship outcome, achieved through content, not a content outcome achieved for its own sake.
3. Make it an ongoing curriculum practice, not a one-off cultural day. A single festival celebration or heritage-month unit functions differently from content genuinely integrated across the year — the research on sustained versus episodic school-improvement efforts applies here as much as anywhere else.
4. Bring in community knowledge-holders directly. Local elders, community members, and organisations already documenting a community’s own history and knowledge systems are a resource a school does not have to build from scratch — NCF’s own post-2020 process leaned on state-level community input for exactly this reason.
5. Start with what a teacher can supplement now, without waiting for the next national textbook cycle. National curriculum frameworks revise on a multi-year timeline; a teacher can bring in local stories, local knowledge-holders, and supplementary material into an existing lesson well before that cycle completes.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the “windows and mirrors” idea actually come from? Educator Emily Style’s 1988 essay “Curriculum as Window and Mirror,” developed independently alongside literacy scholar Rudine Sims Bishop’s related 1990 work — both argue curriculum needs to do two different jobs: reflect a child’s own identity back to them, and open a window onto lives different from their own.

Is curriculum representation actually changing in India, or just being discussed? Both are happening, and it depends where you look. NCERT’s National Curriculum Framework process, following NEP 2020, has been formally tasked with improving representation for North-East states and other underrepresented groups — a real, ongoing process. Separately, specific textbook content changes have been the subject of continuing public and political debate about whose historical narratives receive space; that debate is unresolved and this piece takes no position on it.

Is this a politically contested topic in India right now? Yes — genuinely and actively. Curriculum content decisions, particularly around historical narrative, have been debated publicly by people with strongly differing views. A school-level, evidence-based approach to representation — grounded in the specific mismatch a specific community faces, as in the Chhattisgarh example — is a different question from the broader political debate over textbook content nationally, and this piece focuses on the former.

What can an individual teacher realistically do without waiting for a national curriculum revision? Bring in local knowledge-holders, local stories, and supplementary material that reflects your specific students’ communities — a school-level supplement operates on a much faster timeline than a national textbook cycle, and does not require waiting for that process to complete.

What to do:

1. Identify which specific communities represented in your own classroom are least reflected in your current textbooks and teaching materials — not “marginalised groups” generally, but the actual children in front of you.
2. Speak with one colleague, elder, or community member who could contribute local knowledge or history your current curriculum doesn’t cover, and ask what they would want included.
3. Read Dixit (2022) or NCERT’s own published National Curriculum Framework materials on representation, and share one specific finding with your staff this week.
4. Propose one concrete supplement — a local story, a guest knowledge-holder, a locally relevant example in an existing lesson — within your current teaching, rather than waiting for a textbook revision.
5. Set a review date four weeks out to check whether students responded differently to the supplemented material, and write it down today.

Sources: Style, E. (1988), “Curriculum as Window and Mirror,” National SEED Project; Bishop, R. S. (1990), “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors”; Dixit, S. (2022), “Obliterating Collective Memories and Learning About the Nation,” Contemporary Education Dialogue; Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity, on India’s Scheduled Tribe population; Careers360 reporting on NCERT/NCF representation commitments following NEP 2020, including Chhattisgarh SCERT curriculum development.