The world’s largest education company, Pearson, has come under fire for publishing “racist stereotypes about minorities” in one of its nursing textbooks.
Under the heading of “Diversity and Culture”, the book claimed that Muslims “may not request pain medication but instead thank Allah for pain’ while Asian people who say they are in pain are “thought to have poor social skills”.
It also stated that Jewish people “may be vocal and demanding” if they are in pain while black people “report higher pain intensity than other cultures”.
The Pearson textbook listed dubious “facts” about Native Americans, Hispanics, and Chinese people, was published in 2015.
It has been criticised for perpetuating harmful ideas about how minorities supposedly react to pain differently.
The offensive content in the US textbook Nursing: A Concept-Based Approach to Learning Volume I will be removed from publication, Pearson announced.
Tim Bozik, president of global product development at Pearson, apologised in a video posted on YouTube.
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He said: “I want to apologise…In an attempt to help nursing students think through the many facets of caring for their patients we reinforced a number of stereotypes about ethnic and religious groups..It was wrong.
“We should have been more thoughtful about the information we put into our curriculum.”
Bozik said the company had removed the page from e-versions of the textbook and current and future editions.
He said the company was also looking at ways to recall the existing edition with the offensive material.
