Every teacher knows that textbooks shape how students think. And we discussed earlier how this can go wrong with psychology textbooks. That’s why we tried to write a better one. But this is not only happening in psychology. A new global review by Marek Vydra and Jozef Kováčik of 93 studies analysing 1083 biology textbooks shows that textbooks can also shape something subtler: the misconceptions, blind spots and cultural assumptions students carry with them long after school.

Across continents, levels of schooling and publishing traditions, the same issues keep appearing. It’s almost uncanny: whether a student learns biology in Sweden, India, the USA or Brazil, they encounter remarkably similar misunderstandings. And once you see the pattern, it becomes difficult to unsee it.

So what do biology textbooks consistently get wrong?

1. They teach beautifully wrong explanations

The review documents how textbooks repeatedly use intuitive but incorrect narratives:

• Evolution as organisms “changing because they need to.”

• The nucleus as a kind of cellular CEO issuing instructions.

• Osmosis diagrams that confuse pressure and concentration.

• Glucose as the sole and universal metabolic fuel.

These ideas sound neat. They are also scientifically misleading. And because textbooks present them with authority, students often carry these misconceptions into higher education, where they are remarkably resistant to change.

2. They frame human biology through a narrow lens

Across North America, Europe and India, chapters on reproduction and sexuality remain:

• strongly heteronormative,

• gender-stereotyped,

• biologically reductive,

• and culturally limited.

Women appear passive; men, active. Queer identities are barely mentioned. Social dimensions of sexuality are nearly absent. Here, textbooks “get things wrong” not through factual errors but through omissions. By doing this, they signal what counts as normal, natural or important.

3. They quietly erase botany

Perhaps the most surprising finding: among all 93 studies, not a single one analysed botanical content in depth.

Plants appear everywhere in textbooks as illustrations and background, yet nowhere as intellectual protagonists. In a global discipline supposedly rooted in biodiversity, botany is treated as an afterthought. What’s left is an unspoken message: real biology is about animals and humans.

4. They leave major public health concepts underdeveloped

The review highlights serious gaps in microbiology and nutrition:

• Fewer than 30% of textbooks clearly state that antibiotics don’t work against viruses.

• Many books offer minimal coverage of obesity, food labelling or nutritional needs.

• Viruses are poorly explained or visually misrepresented.

In an era defined by infectious disease and misinformation, these omissions matter.

5. They treat climate change as a data story, not a human one

Textbooks devote far more pages to climate change than they did two decades ago. But the focus is overwhelmingly descriptive: CO₂, graphs, melting ice, temperature curves.
What’s missing is agency — the behavioural, societal and political levers that students might one day use.

Students learn what is happening, but not what can be done.

6. Their visuals rarely help learning as much as we think

Biology textbooks are full of images, yet less than 8% of those visuals are graphs or tables. Arrows are used inconsistently; diagrams mix realistic and symbolic elements without explanation. Students often look at the pictures but don’t learn from them.

7. They gesture at the nature of science, but only partially

Mentions of the nature of science (NOS) have increased, but crucial ideas remain rare:

• Scientific knowledge is tentative,

• Science is culturally and socially embedded.

Without these, science is presented as a fixed, apolitical collection of facts — not a human practice grounded in evidence, disagreement and evolving ideas.

The deeper issue: the silent curriculum we don’t talk about

When you place all these findings side by side, the pattern becomes obvious: textbooks don’t just transmit knowledge — they transmit a worldview.

And the worldview is shaped as much by silences as by explanations.

• What is emphasised becomes important.

• What is simplified becomes “how things work.”

• What is absent becomes invisible.

• What is normalised becomes natural.

This is the silent curriculum: the layer of assumptions beneath the content. It explains why textbooks from different countries make remarkably similar mistakes. It explains why misconceptions persist across generations. And it explains why certain ideas barely register, like agency in climate action, cultural perspectives on sexuality, or the role of plants.

Textbooks are not neutral. They are cultural artefacts. And without intentional design, they reproduce the patterns of the past more reliably than the knowledge of the present.

What to take away

If anything, this global review reminds us that teaching is never just about correcting errors in the official curriculum. It’s also about making the silent curriculum visible. Helping students notice what isn’t shown. Explaining why some ideas are messier than the diagrams suggest. Opening space for debate where the textbook closes it.

The problem isn’t only what textbooks get wrong.
The bigger problem is what they quietly teach without saying a word.

Image made by AI.