In this speech, the author examines and traces past and present treatment of minorities in textbooks. The issue of whether textbooks should and do adequately represent the real world of minorities is emphasized. In the past, when publishers either omitted minorities from books or made misleading statements in textbooks about minorities, textbooks…

Based on data from a longitudinal study of preservice teacher education conducted at a large midwestern university, this paper describes and appraises what prospective elementary teachers in two different teacher preparation programs were taught about textbooks, what they learned, and what they did with these lessons during student teaching. It is…

Developing a curriculum is a task that is often discounted in many school corporations during the course of selecting new textbooks. Most school corporations simply adopt a publisher's text and design a curriculum around it. This paper describes some fundamental elements of an effective public-relations program and ways in which the elements can…

An analysis and critique of two elementary textbook series: "Discover Art" by Davis Publications and "World of Music" published by Silver Burdett & Ginn are presented. "Whose content, context, and culture?" is an ideological question that assumes that equitable social relations and diverse ways of knowing ought to…

China's opening to the world and economic reform in the late 1970s led to tremendous progress in Chinese education. Social science education, has traditionally assumed the most important task of cultivating responsible citizens. It has undergone remarkable changes in quantity and quality as a result of the change of the social and economic…

Presents a dream in which a student, a teacher, a curriculum specialist, a publisher, a scholar, an author, and a culture critic discuss the uses and abuses of a college rhetoric. (AEA)

Because textbooks are essential instructional tools, they should play a major role in educational reform for excellence. Despite improvements in response to ethnic and women's movements, deterioration in textbook quality has occurred through competition for markets. Former Secretary of Education Terrel Bell observed in 1984 that educators should…

An examination of the secondary social studies textbooks written by Allan O. Kownslar from 1967 to 1980 reflects several of the major themes that have shaped social studies education since the sixties. The paper briefly surveys the political and pedagogical events that stimulated the proliferation of social studies curriculum projects in the…

This paper discusses a project that was designed to explore Dutch student attitudes about World War II and how the War is portrayed in Dutch history textbooks. The project was undertaken as part of an effort to help teachers provide Dutch students with better insight into the causes, background, and aftermath of World War II; and to develop in the…

The paper examines the controversy over the use of Harold Rugg's textbooks in the social studies curriculum during the 1930s and 40s. The first section discusses the philosophy of social reconstruction maintaining that teachers and students should be in the forefront of social change. Rugg's major contribution to social reconstruction was a…

Recent criticisms of science education in the United States led to a unique experience in the Conroe Independent School District in Texas. An evaluation committee of local professional and eminent scientists was established by the local superintendent to review and evaluate the adequacy of (1) the scope and sequence of science courses; (2)…

This book consists of eleven papers presented at the 1975 Central States Conference. The principal objective of the conference was to examine the trend for human relations, ethnic studies, and bilingual-bicultural education in American education and the new interest in languages not usually taught in the past. The papers include: (1) "We're All…