This paper describes the events leading to and the process by which the American Psychiatric Association decided that homosexuality is not itself a psychiatric disorder. This change was an amendment to the official Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The data come from the analysis of documents and unstructured interviews. The…

Mature adults who had such high hopes in the 1960s that the United States would live up to the promises of the American Creed have lived long enough to have those high hopes dampened from 1969 to 1978. What progress occurred for blacks in the 1960s was real at the time, but is not permanent. Retrogression has befallen blacks in the 1970s and is…

Over 100 listings comprise this general bibliography on politics and government. The bulk of the documents provide current information dating from 1974 through 1975 and are commercially published books, reports, bulletins, and papers on the role of the government, elections, local government, and political decision making of the government as an…

Consideration is given to making the discussion of issues provided by the American Issues Forum most meaningful for students and applicable to their decision making about issues outside of the classroom. The Bicentennial and the American Issues Forum provide an excellent opportunity to help students develop a better understanding of our society's…

In this position paper the author examines truth in government. Examination of recent political events, especially in areas of foreign policy, reveals that the government has assumed the right to decide what truths are to be told and when they are to be told. To return to the principles developed by the members of the Constitutional Convention of…

This study uses national survey data to compare newspapers and television for informativeness. Relationships are reported between media use and having reasons for liking or disliking candidates for the U.S. Senate, a variable used to measure level of information. Results demonstrate an informing role for newspapers but not for television. Analysis…

The political nature of educational governance has been established in other papers dealing with school board elections in states not having partisan election of school board members. The research reported in this paper was conducted in Pennsylvania, a state in which candidates for the school board must declare their party and run on a partisan…

This essay explores the group dynamics relating to the events surrounding the Watergate coverup and attempts to identify the factors that predispose of the parties involved to make inappropriate, foolish, and ineffective choices concerning a criminal case in which none of them initially was culpable. The initial Watergate breakin is briefly…

This study was part of a larger study examining the attitudes of various groups toward elections, campaigns, and a variety of issues. This portion of the study dealt with students, 336 of whom were interviewed. In addition, 40 questionnaires were randomly drawn from two groups of students--those who registered to vote and those who did not. The…

The Watergate scandal has profoundly shaken the confidence of the American people in their government. One aspect of Watergate which can be immediately corrected is that of secrecy. In the abolition of secrecy and the defense of intellectual freedom, librarians have a role to play. American librarianship has taken upon itself the task of providing…

This paper considers 5 positions on federal aid to higher education with particular reference to the groups which support or oppose these positions and the apparent political viability of each. The 5 positions are: (1) fuller funding of present programs, both for student aid and institutional support; (2) substantial new programs for student aid,…

The New York City teachers' strike in 1968 over the issue of the removal of some teachers in Ocean Hill-Brownsville created an opportunity for a study of the effect of the strike on children's political values and beliefs. Drawing upon a sample of Jewish boys and their parents from an almost exclusively Jewish community, two hypotheses were…

This paper asks whether all the current attention being given to educational evaluation and all the activity going on indicates real progress in the output of evaluation and its use in the policy process. The paper reviews the brief history of educational evaluation and gives a qualified "yes" as an answer to the question, noting: significant…

Excerpts are presented from comments made by the participants at a seminar held to discuss the Report of the Cabinet Committee on Cable Communications. The report was considered in the following three lights: 1) as a political document which seeks to strike a balance of interests to permit cable television (CATV) to survive in a system heavily…

This paper discusses ideologues, both of the far Left and the far Right, and their influences on the American political structure and our "traditional pluralistic politics," which is defined as the concept traditionally held in this country that politics function within a clash of interests, sectional and group, and that political…