A THREE-DIMENSIONAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE SPEECH, “I HAVE A DREAM” FROM STBB CLASS XII ENGLISH TEXTBOOK (2025): A FREIREAN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Textbooks serve as primary ideological vehicles in developing educational contexts, deeply mediating student epistemologies and socio-political worldviews. However, traditional curricular architectures frequently default to rote-centric paradigms that suppress critical student agency. Drawing upon Paulo Freire’s critique of the institutional "banking model" of education (Friere,1972), this study evaluates the newly implemented Sindh Textbook Board (STBB) Class XII English textbook (2025 edition). Specifically, it examines Chapter 2, which features Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s seminal speech, "I Have a Dream," to determine whether the curricular framing fosters critical consciousness (Freire & Macedo, 2017) or reproduces status quo compliance. Employing Norman Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework (Fairclough, N., 1995) alongside a systemic pedagogical audit of post-reading exercises, the study uncovers a profound structural contradiction. While the primary text offers rich emancipatory discourse regarding social hierarchy, systemic racism and institutional power, the post-reading exercises systematically downsize the potential spirit of critical pedagogy. Out of six exercises, five reduce the text to lower-order cognitive tasks (lexical decoding, literal recall and formalistic grammar drills). Hence, they neutralize the revolutionary impulse of the speech and its message. The study concludes that the textbook introduces an emancipatory discourse but imprisons it within a conservative curricular architecture. Consequently, systemic teacher intervention and a fundamental restructuring of STBB assessment designs are required to actualize problem-posing and problem solving education.