Four elementary social studies textbook series are reviewed and compared with particular attention paid to the extent to which the textbooks are globally oriented. The trend of emphasizing global education in the social studies also is discussed. As used in this paper, "global education" includes the study of world geography, world…

In 1866, Alexander Bain proposed that by evaluating unity, coherence, and emphasis (which he brought together under the acronym "CUE"), students could judge the effectiveness of their written paragraphs. One hundred twenty-five years later, the proposition is still central to composition instruction. A review of modern writing textbooks…

The purpose of this study was to quantitatively analyze the Latin American content of contemporary world geography textbooks published for United States secondary schools. A preliminary review of the literature indicated that Latin America was generally omitted from world geography texts, Central America was given minimal attention, and…

Reviews the literature criticizing school textbooks for sexism and suggests new series deleting sexist stereotypes should be developed. (RB)

Using selected lessons from the textbooks "Learning English" (Klett) and "English for Today" (Schrodel-Lensing) for the beginner's level, it is shown that modern-oriented texts, critical of content and having an emancipated outlook, are not presented at all, or only in the beginning. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Reviews four approaches to selecting language textbooks and outlines points to be considered before selecting. (CK)

A study was conducted to answer the question, "What are the basic words in a list of words kindergarten through sixth grade students will frequently encounter in their reading?" The study was limited to the words the students would encounter in their textbooks (including basals). A corpus of 7,230 words was then analyzed by two raters to…

Textbooks have come under a barrage of criticism ranging from overall textbook quality to changing costs. Litigation in the federal courts has challenged textbook content. New York State school boards need to examine the issues in the textbook problem. This paper explains New York State's textbook selection process, which is based on local…

Most freshman composition textbooks are inadequate in giving information to students on how to interpret dictionaries: instead of presenting them as aids in exploring word usage, textbooks foster a naive trust in dictionaries as arbiters of all usage questions. Rather than treating words as discrete items to be mastered without knowledge of…

An explanation for the general disdain for the practice of public relations may lie in textbooks that attempt to communicate methodology, while insinuating philosophy. In 10 surveyed public relations textbooks, the authors have tried to explain the contempt for public relations, but their common failing has been to blame outside forces, contending…

The relationship of contextual background to comprehension of written texts is discussed with reference to instruction in English as a second language (ESL). A theory advanced by Kerry Stewart Robichaux proposes six possible relationships between a text and its cultural "frame." Applications of the six text-frame relationships to foreign…

In many classrooms, the textbook becomes the main source used to determine objectives, procedures, opinions, questions, thoughts, and other items used in teaching U.S. history. This study was done to determine how the Reconstruction Era was presented in a selected group of junior high school U.S. history textbooks. The books were classified…

In 1984, parents of a Minneapolis, Minnesota, ninth grader came before the school district's "Students' Right to Learn Committee" to object to what they described as a bowdlerized version of "Romeo and Juliet" in the Scott, Foresman text, and the publisher's failure to acknowledge in the text that the play was abridged. The…

A 1981 survey of public relations teachers revealed two primary ethical concerns of their students: relationships with employers or clients and deliberate distortion of information. A study analyzed nine textbooks and three books of selected readings to determine the extent to which they exposed students to the concept of the public relations…