Killing the Critical: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Moral Values in Government- sponsored Textbooks of Nepal

Textbooks have always been a major means of standardizing the curriculum and the activities of the students. The standardization happens through teaching the values. However, the values are transformed as discourse — the means through which the reality is known or made to be known. Informed by the insights basically founded in Critical Discourse Analysis, this paper tries to explore the values– beliefs about certain aspect such as family, society and nation, in school-level textbooks, especially of Nepali and Social Studies, of government schools of Nepal, and attempts to argue that the textbooks prescribed by the current curriculum are cultural production at large therefore textual. Specifically, it argues how the inculcation of critical attitude in the school children has been undermined giving rise to the pedagogy that largely emphasizes on mere knowing some values that mar the development of critical attitude in the students. As a qualitative inquiry, the article critically draws upon the ideological interpretation of the moral values, and concludes the total patterning of the content of the textbooks clearly keeps the essentialities of modern education such as critical engagement, linguistic and cognitive skills, the questioning attitude and critical thinking on the part of the students at bay. Keywords— Critical Pedagogy, Ideology, Education, Curriculum, Critical Discourse Analysis. I. SETTING THE SCENE: POLITICS OF

Education is taken for granted as a major facilitator of enhancing holistic development of a nation, in fact, the backbone of nation's national progress. As nation imagines its progress, it simultaneously imagines of citizens-what they should be like, because, one way or the other, the citizens are development "inputs" (Street, 2002;Bhandari and Abe, 2003). School education, more primarily, the textbooks, play a major role in streamlining the overall goals of education. Unfortunately, only few researches on education and pedagogical practices have been attempted regarding the nature and design of the school textbooks in Nepal, and a very few efforts have been made to critically analyze how the curriculum and its textbooks aim to construct the children for the future. In literature of the past, what kind of values and perceptions the school textbooks try to instill in the minds of students has rarely been a matter of exploration. Therefore, how textbooks of government schools of Nepal attempt to produce an ideologyan absence of attempt to instill creativity and criticality is the basic contention of this paper.
Education system can be swerved towards what kind of citizens it aims at producing. One of the most noticeable changes in its perspective tend to be a transformation from its humanist education to purposive one. The content and pedagogical practices can be used as means of cultivating desired patterns of values (Kohlberg, 1966). Previously, education was defined as a means to cultivate human consciousness. With the rise of neoliberal social praxis, education ceases to be completely so. Education now should address "questions that concern all the manifold details by which children are to be converted into desirable types of men and women" since it is executed by incorporating advertently selected values, mostly of moral nature (Dewey, 1909, p. 1). However, thoughtful educators and psychologists have become acutely aware of the inadequacies of dealing with moral issues under the cover of mental-health or groupadjustment labels. The critical perspectives in education argue that "these mental-health labels are not really scientific and value-neutral terms; they are ways of making value judgements about children in terms of social norms and acting accordingly (Veugelers, 2011). Therefore, ISSN: 2456-7620 https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.55. 18 1485 textbooks, the primary means of educating the children, need a critique for the possible ideological dimension.
Textbooks have always been a major medium of standardizing the curriculum, monitoring and guiding students' activities. The standardization happens through the valuesthe beliefs about certain aspects such family, society or nation. The textbooks contain diverse values, for example, related to good citizen, good boy and girl, and citizens and so on. The values are transformed as discourse (van Dijk, 2006 Like any cultural production cannot go without introspection, so does the education system in the societies informed by flows of post-discourses 12 . The postdiscourses take everything under scrutiny, try to revise, redefine and question everything that is considered as "authentic" and "absolute" existence of social reality, and define it as product of human/social construction. Following this postulation, discourse of education turns out to be a "textual" production. Regarding the textuality of the textbooks, Shor (1992) writes: As long as existing knowledge is not presented as facts and doctrines to be absorbed without question, as long as existing bodies of knowledge are critiqued and balanced from a multicultural perspective, and as long as the students' own themes and idioms are valued along with standard usage, existing canons are part of critical education. (p. 35) This study concerns with the typical moral values presented in the school-level textbooks of government 1 This article is adapted from of a chapter from author's own MPhil. dissertation entitled "What the Nation Imagines? An Analysis of Government School-level Textbooks of Nepal", submitted to Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University Campus, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal. The dissertation was funded by University Grants Commission, Nepal. 2 The post-discourses are the postmodernist discourses, which aim at redefining and redrawing the existence of almost everything. See, Angermuller, J. (2018). Truth after post-truth: for a Strong Programme in Discourse Studies. Palgrave Communications, 4 (1). schools of Nepal. The analysis concentrates on the explanation of the individual texts that endorse "moral" behavior: the acclaimed virtues of moral integrity such as honesty, truthfulness, hard work, sincerity and patient, on the parts of the learners. More importantly, it deals with how the values of morality are politicized to create ideological concept of citizenry. This paper reports on the results of an analysis of the moral values in the textbooks of government school of Nepal. More specifically, the two main objectives of this paper are: to explore moral values represented in the school-level textbooks and to analyze the treatment of moral valueshow they are directed to inculcate an ideology that prevents students to develop a critical attitude.

II. MORAL VALUES AND CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
Morality is generally understood broadly as the practice, manners or conduct of human beings in relation to each other. Moral education is thus concerned with standards of behavior justified by people as right and proper and is to be conducted willingly without the interference of law (Haidt & Kesebir 2010). Moral education has always been emphasized as one educational goal, even the most important goal. Study of moral education began to get importance with the attempts made first by Jean Piaget (1965) and more strongly by Lawrence Kohlberg (1971Kohlberg ( , 1976. It is an attempt to promote the development of children's and adolescents' moral cognitive structures (moral reasoning stages) in school settings.
The moral education is endorsed in modern education especially through teaching some values, deemed prominent by the existing cultural system at large. It is a way of teaching the students the process of "socialization" and "subjectification" of themselves in existing social order. After this, the students are the part of broader social structure, and begin defining themselves and their behavior accordingly. Therefore, civic learning is not always a linear and naive process. It is often political and cultural in nature and purpose (Biesta, 2009, 354). The merits and values first are taught with the purpose of developing moral integrity in individual life. Later on, they become the building blocks of national life or notion of national citizenry.
Modern social structure prioritizes one kind of social and socio-political order over other, for it embraces a set of values and rejects the other sets. Existing social order or the social system therefore cannot be value neutral and politically unbiased. Instead, it is contingent and often dominated by certain ideologies. Regarding civic learning, Biesta  which occurs in and through the processes and practices that make up the everyday lives of children, young people and adults and which is closely connected to their actual condition of citizenship. Then unlike what is assumed in much curricular thinking, we should not conceive of civic learning as a linear process moving from a situation of "not-yet-being-a-citizen" to a situation of "fully-fledged citizenship" (France, 1998 as cited in Biesta, 2009, p.7).
Some critical perspectives on education postulate civic learning contributes to the reproduction of the existing socio-political order and thus to the adaptation to or insertion of individuals into this order, and those forms of civic learning that contribute to political subjectivity and agency (Lindsay, 2003;Rogers, 2017). The reflection of existing social order of socio-political reality has been tried to reproduce through the deployment of acclaimed values of moral integrity and merits. As Biesta (2011) argues, civic learning should rather be understood as non-linear, and also as recursive, and cumulative (emphasis is original). Civic learning is a non-linear process because it is closely connected to ongoing positive and negative experiences with democracy and citizenship, and thus is likely to reflect fluctuations in these experiences (p. 86).
Given that textbooks are cultural production, the content of the text is heavily influenced by historical reality in which they are produced. In this case, civic learning takes at two forms: socialization and subjectification (Biesta 2014, p. 85-86). In terms of the aims of civic learning and citizenship education, the first would see the aims of civic learning in terms of the reproduction of an ideology that supports the existing socio-political order and thus of the adaptation of individuals to this order, while the second would focus on the emergence of political agency and thus sees the aims of civic learning first and foremost "in terms of the promotion of political subjectivity and agency" (Biesta, 2011, p. 88).

III. MORAL VALUES AND IDEOLOGICAL SOCIALIZATION
School textbooks and teachers can be neutral only in circumscribed areas. The textbooks, along with their primary objective of teaching the studentsmaking them conscious, are designated with intention of teaching something more. The content of the textbooks brings diverse kind of topoi: community, morality, family, government, culture and so on. The commonplace topics embed values that tacitly tries to orient and influence the learners toward learning those values in particular direction or purpose. The values may differ in terms of the political and cultural changes the nation has undergone. However, they stand for the ideological socialization 3the way in which people acquire values and opinions that shape their political stance and ideology, however.
On how textbooks function and are functionalized, Apple (1992) argues that textbooks are the major ideological transmitter for conveying dominant beliefs and values of the society. Similarly, Cortazzi and Jin (1999) claim that a textbook potentially functions as a teacher, a map, a resource, a trainer, an authority, and an ideology. Like an ideology, a textbook reflects a worldview of a cultural system of which moral values are a sub-system. There are again different values and associations how a teacher should be perceived. This makes textbooks play a pivotal role in the success of language education's socially transformative agendawhat is to be transferred.
Regarding the politics of the official knowledge, Apple argues education is deeply implicated in the politics of culture. In his words, "the curriculum is never simply a neutral assemblage of knowledge, somehow appearing in the texts and classrooms of a nation. It is always part of a selective tradition, someone's selection, some group's vision of legitimate knowledge" (Apple 2000, p. 1). It is produced out of "the cultural, political, and economic conflicts, tensions, and compromises that organize and disorganize people" (p. 2). Apple's notion of developing curriculum suggests the design of texts of is already always influenced by the official [national] culture.
Moreover, Althusser's notion of education as state apparatus adds a credential delineation to this logic of Apple. In his book Lenin and Philosophy, he argues that education is the most important ideological state apparatus. He argues the education system teaches the students the dominant discourses, techniques, and the customs of the society from four to above years, from nursery to the university classes, for several hours a day. The students learn the ruling ideologies directly in the form of morals, religion, and philosophy. The schools and colleges teach both the vales and knowledge and necessary skills to support the existing political and economic system (144-146). If looked through the Marxist eyes, reproduction of middle-class propriety is the basic concern of the school texts. The standard content textbook materials should be subject to problematizing and critique though they can be used in the classroom.

IV. TEXTBOOKS AND CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
This paper basically engages case study method along with descriptive content analysis to gain an in-depth understanding of the topic under investigation. As a qualitative research practice, the case study method raises a question about something that perplexes and challenges themind (Merriam 1998, p. 57). However, more intervening stance is exerted through critical discourse analysis (Wodak& Meyer, 2015; Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999;van Dijk, 1997;Jager, 2015).
This research takes in the cases of three course books 4 , Nepali Subject of Class six, seven and eight (traditionally, the lower secondary level). This selection represents a "single unit" or "bounded system" (Duff 2008). The course of book of grade six, seven and eight consist of 20, 21, 22 units respectively, and each lesson is followed by almost same number and nature of exercises. As Creswell points out, data collection in a case study involves using multiple sources (Creswell 1998, p. 65). Accordingly, it included the pages/units of the coursebooks to figure out the moral values as well as learning activities to analyze the research objectives as stated previously.
Since the Critical Discourse Analysis regards any textbooks as the cultural artifacts-an object of analysis shaped by political and historical parameters, it is more appropriate to the purpose of examining the cultural values they carry. Moreover, this study also uses content analysis as it deploys "a set of procedures to make valid inferences from text" (Weber, 1990, p. 9). Content analysis can help to examine texts as carrier of cultural information-values and beliefs (Krippendorff 2008). However, this approach fails to delineate the conduit-how the content of textbooks potentially engages learners in the process of moral meaning making. Then critical discourse analysis comes into play and seems useful because it explains the trajectories the discourse produces in knowledge making (Jager, 2015). Moreover, how effective is the idea of encompassing moral values as learning sources is analyzed with scrutiny of learning activities. Therefore, content in this study is understood both as the texts and the accompanying learning tasks in the textbooks.
There are two possible approaches to starting a content analysis: by setting a number of categories that will be followed throughout the textbooks or by reading the textbook first and at the same time deriving a list of categories that seem most salient (Pingel, 2010). In this study, selecting the criteria for the analysis of the studies, second approach was adopted. First, without drawing upon any preconceived groupings, I went through all the course books under analysis to get the whole picture of moral values in the textbooks. Then in the next readings I created a list of moral values that were embedded in the examined course books and created a matrix of those values.
The process of data analysis first began with exploring the content-message of the moral values. Next, the learning activities/exercises were analyzed to check if they possibly engage learners to understand the socially constructed meaning of the values. The discussions of the finding were informed by critical discourse analysis, which stresses on "it focuses on how social relations, identity, knowledge and power are constructed through written and spoken texts in communities, schools and classrooms" (Luke, 1997, p. 51).

Moral Content.
The results of the content analysis show that quite limited moral values are covered in the three examined course books, and those moral values are largely embedded in the reading texts (see Table 1). The most repeated themes and topics the selected units comprise are: Family, Social Relationship, Cultural Identity, Environmental Issues, Technology (rarely), Civic Education, Myths and Biography, are expanded throughout grades (6-8) but dealt with from different perspectives and at different levels cognitive complexities with an aim of catering for the students' intellectual and cognitive development. As shown in Table 1, topics in the reading texts cover a limited number of moral values: mutual help or cooperation, giving up the personal interests, wit is better than might/might cannot stand the wit, respectful to power and might, obedient to god, virtue of Bhakti (worshiping for some personal interests), patience, cheating, altruism and kindness, anger, importance and benefits of joint living, love and family ethics. These are not only Nepali traditional values, but also universal values. 2. The king, Mabohaang decides to go for a hunting. However, the deer, a prey of the King, is mysteriously lost despite being chased by preying dogs and soldiers from all side. This happens to be an ordeal for the king by a goddess, Yumadevi, to check if he possesses a good heart. By rejecting the ministers' proposal to marry the beautiful girl suddenly encountered in dense and sudden jungle, the king proves his respect for her, and instantly becomes the devotee of powerful goddess, Yumadevi. Though the king possesses might, he does succumb to the greater power. Yumadevi praises king's complete devotion and his respect of power. He is delighted to have seen the supernal being, and is determined to be a complete devotee of the goddess and continue the rule (p. 65-72).
Be respectful to power and might, be obedient to god.
Bhakti is an important virtue.

6/12
An adapted mythological story "Test of Yudhisthira" illustrates some famous "ethical" dictums of popularized by Hindu religion: "truth always wins; patience is the friend during danger; happiness is sure to come after sadness" (p. 86-89).
Patience is virtue, and obedience to superpower is religion.

7/2
The story "Nephew Who Corrected Maternal Uncle" tries to demonstrate the importance of being honest, not cheating other. In other words, it tells how you can teach a lesson to the person who is always a fraud and dishonest. Maternal uncle is lazy and believes in cheating for his survival, and Bhanajo does not like and makes preparation to teach a lesson to maternal uncle. Ironically, he takes the illogical means to teach him a lesson and make him realize his mistakes. First, he uses a horse, and sells it to the uncle promising him that the horse excretes pearls. But this does not happen, and Bhanjo blames uncle that uncle forgot to revolve around and make a sacred greeting to the horse. Second, he uses a rabbit, which can work an errand-runner, and is capable of understanding human language. But, the rabbit, when tested, fails to accomplish the task. Mama, so furious, asks the explanation. Bhanaja again blames Mama that Mama forgot to show his own home. Therefore, Cheating is False and is selfdestructive. The surrenders should be protected; one should not go against the propriety of clan.

Learning Activities
The moral content of the units is always followed by the learning activities, exercises. The chosen books: Nepali textbook of grade 6, 7 and 8, contain 20, 21 and 22 lessons respectively. Each unit contains 19 exercises on the average. Overall, there are 1, 197 numbers of major exercises (excluding the bullets and sub-points that may come under the major exercise). Major topics of exercise entail ditto-reading, reproducing the informationprocreating the information given in the content, answering the short questions, grammar-based questions termed as Functional Exercises and Creative Exercises.
Each lesson contains at maximum rate 2 exercises under the topic Creative Exercise. Following the calculations, only 126 exercises are there altogether in these three textbooks, which is just below the nine per cent. These facts conclude how little has been tried to empower creativity and criticality in students.
Greater portion of the exercises concentrates on the reproduction of the information given in the content. After that, focus has been given to the grammar learning.
And, least focus has been given to critiquing, evaluating, synthesizing, and creating. The exercises that come under the "Creative Exercise" are rarely creative in their spirit. Most of them are repeated. For example, wherever a story is a reading content, the creative exercise is writing a story, either by jotting down the given points or asking a folktale with parents or caretakers.

VI. PRODUCTION OF DISCOURSE AND ITS MATERIALIZATION
The findings of the content analysis indicate that a certain number of moral values are embedded in the reading texts of the textbooks for school students. These values are largely part of moral values system so far taught in Nepali social system. Beside these, there are universal moral values such as honesty, peace-loving, and cultural tolerance. It can be inferred from these results that morality was considered while the texts were selected. The textual construction of moral values takes two dominant dimensions: the values are endorsed to produce middle class ideology, and students are not given a space to think critically, judge them and give a response. As prefaced in all the three books, the general objective of these textbooks is to make education goal- oriented, practical, contextual and employment-oriented. The preface clearly delineates that promotion of the social and characteristic virtues and virtues related to character like honesty, self-esteem, independence, morality and discipline is one of the specific objectives of the course books. 6 However, the content selected for teaching these "virtues" and values are designed in a such a way that give rise to cultivation of leniency and obedience on the part of the learners.

Reproduction of Middle-class Values
The moral values delineated in the reading content of the text get through because of the felicity conditions-criteria that must be satisfied for an expression to achieve its purpose. The conditions in this context could be described as "[. . .] educational discourses hold that a child's body is a passive textual surface on which moral values should be inscribed by teachers and senior kin, who are expected to guarantee a child's successful "socialization" (Rydstriim, 2001, p. 395). Moreover, the educational discourses already enjoy greater level of humanistic eulogy-education as a means of liberating from the obscurantism. Therefore, the preaching of the moral values and cultural agendas become easier.
The results of the content analysis show that the ethics of propriety is pinned down to the ethos of middleclass values 7 and their cultural consciousnesscautiousness about moral propriety not to cross the limit, not to go beyond the given space of social and cultural freedom. The culture of propriety urges people to seek for the freedom within permitted sphere of socially given. The individuals are asked to act use their freedom only the given space of consumption, fashion, celebration and other various forms of cultural practices. Such values [of middle class] are "tied down" by the restraint of social order, so to legitimize its own predicament; they constitute moral stories of "proper" and "acceptable" limits between two different class positions: the high class and the low class (Liechty, 2008, p. 67).
In such cultural practices, the individual subjects are not supposed, in fact, suggested not to take the risk of questioning the anomalies, gaps, incongruities, irregularities and discrepancies that lie underneath such cultural maneuverings. It does not mean that the textbooks totally lack the texts that promote curiosity and questions but the point is: despite inclusion, they appear to be controlled by the other power lessons that suggest students not to go beyond. Moreover, the patterning of the learning sources never allows the space of/for the critical thinking.
This logic is the effort to secure the unique cultural space through negotiation between the high and the low class in the Nepali society . Such designation echoes the propriety in consumption or the middle path for the cultural reproduction of the middleclass people. This sense of propriety is based on the tendency of confirmation to the existing culture and the social order rather than on the critical questions the people should ask. The designation of textbooks is in commensurate with the existing cultural practices proper, which are necessitated fundamental virtue to be a national citizen, it supports. Any divergent or any kind of going beyond the set limit is construed culturally bad and improper. This kind of fixation demanded on the part of learners shuns any kind of resistance, criticism, or questioning even if at the time of need.
Looked from the critical approaches, apart from fulfilling the basic need for learners to develop enough language to transmit messages, these content textbooks offer little space in which learners are encouraged learners (and teachers too) to think critically. Similarly, there is no sufficient amount of reasoning to support why we are teaching and what society we are teaching for.
When examined from the critical pedagogy, the text content presents another problem-the state of complacency. The text content depicts life/social reality as too beautiful, peaceful and perfect without any problems or concerns and people leading a care-free life, everyone being nice to everyone else. The dark side of the life (Rinvolucri, 1999) has completely been ignored. Many moral issues of the Nepali contemporary society such as gender discrimination, untouchability, casteism, drug addiction and selfishness, class conflict, gender inequality and so on are largely absent in the textbooks. The inclusion of those themes in the coursebook would help to invoke students' critical discussion and analysis because they are derived from the students' real-life situations, needs, and interests. While the coverage of the moral values was relatively comprehensive, the learning activities fall short in encouraging the learners when they are looked from the critical pedagogy perspective. As revealed in the examples of learning activities presented above, the textbooks emphasize the acquisition of rules related to linguistic knowledge such as grammar and vocabulary rather than development critical attitude and creative faculty. Even the acquisition of linguistic and communicative competence focuses on reproduction of the same information and the rules explicitly stated in the reading content.

Excising Exercises: No Space for Criticality and Creativity
Regarding the learning activities promoted in the textbooks, they appear to accentuate students' mechanical practice of the target linguistic structure, rather than the empowerment of the students by encouraging them to raise their voice about the topic in question through critical discussion. All the reading texts are followed by the same question-answer format to check the students' comprehension of the in-text factual information only. For example, in Unit 10 (Grade 8), a story "One Evening" is followed by 8 exercises that topically ask student to reproduce the information that is (questions requiring short answers) already presented in simple language in the reading content; following this, 11 exercises are related to grammar that include dictation, antonyms and synonyms, and multiple-choice questions on wordmeaning and spellings. The labeling and nature of the questions is mechanical and is often repeated.
Rarely are there learning activities that engage students in reading, writing, observing, debating, role play, simulations, and the use of statistical data to develop skills in critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving. Put differently, most of the learning activities in the textbooks are only targeted at the exchange of messages at the expense of issues of students' voice and identity. What is lacking in content textbooks is rigorous and profound understanding of critical pedagogy. In short, the resources lack vigor of learning and teaching for social justice, in ways that support the development of active, engaged citizens who will, as circumstances permit, critically inquire into why the lives of so many human beings, perhaps including their own, are materially, psychologically, socially, and spiritually inadequate-citizens who will be prepared to seek out solutions to the problems they define and encounter, and act accordingly (Crookes, 2013, p.8).
Active learning prepares the learners to know about the existing problems of the society and culture, and asks them to develop themselves to prepare for the real-life problems. Mullins (1990) recommends active learning as ideal for teaching topics like civic and moral education. He opines that in active learning "the passive transmission of facts is rejected as an inappropriate method of teaching that should be modified in favor of active approaches to learning" (p.4). Students are to engage in reading, writing, observing, debating, role play, simulations, and the use of statistical data to develop skills in critical thinking, decision making, and problem solving (Bean, 2011). Cooperative and collaborative types of learning should also be emphasized.

VII. CONCLUSION
While moral education is not explicitly articulated in the syllabus document, it is implied in reading content. Moral values imbibe an ideology that attempt to make the learners passive, less defiant and critical. The purpose of the content designed in the textbooks, as observed, is to teach students about the values, attitudes, and standards of appropriate behavior prevailing in their immediate social environment. The textbooks rarely consider about developing students' capacity to critically judge those values.
Nepal as nation grappling to ensure quality education puts much emphasis on learning the content (Mathema 2007;Graner, 2006, p.168-69). Hence, the textbook's knowledge is considered to be authoritatively valid. The absence of activities that encourage critical awareness in the course book is likely to lead students to accept passively their places in society rather than to take a more active role in determining their experiences and their positions within society in order to transform the society.
To address the limitations regarding the learning activities in textbooks of government schools, I suggest a critical pedagogy which "prepare[s] learners to be both global and local speakers and to feel at home in both international and national cultures" (Kramsch and Sullivan 1996, p. 211). Such an approach does not see critical thinking, rationality, and moral education as an automatic and natural byproduct of foreign language learning. Instead, it focuses on developing students' linguistic proficiency, critical thinking, moral education, and rationality so that language acquisition, language use and the worldviews, ideologies, and other kinds of knowledge are inculcated in activities along with language. Following this approach, textbooks should provide learning activities that "generate discussions and arguments which are essential for the development of critical thinking skills as well as positive character traits (Shaaban 2005, p. 204)."