In each era of curriculum reform the prevailing perceptions of what the school curriculum must accomplish define the standard of cultural literacy for our society. E. D. Hirsch believes that contemporary youth lack cultural literacy and that without this knowledge of the fundamental facts of U.S. culture they cannot effectively read or…

To test whether elementary social studies texts have changed in response to the back-to-basics movement, a content analysis was made of selected basal texts series published between 1969-1972 and reissued between 1979-1982. Quantitative data, anecdotal data, and educational criticism were used to compare eight matched text series for knowledge…