Textbooks are often one of the first sources used in a classroom. The use of the book My first book. Reading – writing – counting – education – instruction: a beginners’ manual in Quebec classrooms for nearly 40 years bears witness to this. However, this book contains racist and sexist lessons within it.

To talk about this book, and how it has been used in classrooms, we spoke to historian Catherine Larochelle, author of the book The School of Racism: The Construction of Otherness in Quebec Schools.