Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen
from Touchstone
Winner of the American Book Award and the Oliver C. Cox
Anti-Racism Award of The American Sociological Association
Americans have lost touch with their history, and in Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past.
In this revised edition, packed with updated material, Loewen explores how historical myths continue to be perpetuated in today's climate and adds an eye-opening chapter on the lies surrounding 9/11 and the Iraq War. From the truth about Columbus's historic voyages to an honest evaluation of our national leaders, Loewen revives our history, restoring the vitality and relevance it truly possesses.
Thought provoking, nonpartisan, and often shocking, Loewen unveils the real America in this iconoclastic classic beloved by high school teachers, history buffs, and enlightened citizens across the country.
Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform since Sputnik
by Chester E. Finn Jr.
from Princeton University Press
Few people have been more involved in shaping postwar U.S. education reforms--or dissented from some of them more effectively--than Chester Finn. Assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan, and an aide to politicians as different as Richard Nixon and Daniel Moynihan, Finn has also been a high school teacher, an education professor, a prolific and best-selling writer, a think-tank analyst, a nonprofit foundation president, and both a Democrat and Republican. This remarkably varied career has given him an extraordinary insider's view of every significant school-reform movement of the past four decades, from racial integration to No Child Left Behind. In Troublemaker, Finn has written a vivid history of postwar education reform that is also the personal story of one of the foremost players--and mavericks--in American education.
Finn tells how his experiences have shaped his changing views of the three major strands of postwar school reform: standards-driven, choice-driven, and profession-driven. Of the three, Finn now believes that a combination of choice and standards has the greatest potential, but he favors this approach more on pragmatic than ideological grounds, arguing that parents should be given more options at the same time that schools are allowed more flexibility and held to higher performance norms. He also explains why education reforms of all kinds are so difficult to implement, and he draws valuable lessons from their frequent failure.
Clear-eyed yet optimistic, Finn ultimately gives grounds for hope that the best of today's bold initiatives--from charter schools to technology to makeovers of school-system governance--are finally beginning to make a difference.
Letting Go: A Parents' Guide to Understanding the College Years, Fourth Edition
by Karen Levin Coburn
from Harper Paperbacks
Letting Go is about what it feels like for parents when their kids go off to college. Karen Levin Coburn and Madge Lawrence Treeger provide a compassionate approach, practical information, and advice about the physical and emotional processes of letting go. They discuss the college-age child's search for identity, independence, and intimacy; give a succinct and accurate description of how college life has changed over the decades; and provide a year-by-year breakdown of what to expect. Plus, you can read about typical and not-so-typical problems including date rape, crime, eating disorders, drug and alcohol use, and sexual issues. Of special note is the focus on orientation and the freshman year, including the disorientation parents feel once the drop-off has been made.
This bestselling guide, read by hundreds of thousands of parents over the past decade, is now better than ever, newly revised and completely updated. Based on real-life experience and recommended by colleges and universities around the country, Letting Go offers compassionate, practical, and up-to-the-minute information to help parents with the emotional and social changes of the college years.
- When should parents encourage independence?
- When should they intervene?
- What issues of identity and intimacy await students?
- What are normal feelings of disorientation and loneliness for students—and for parents?
- What is different about today's college environment?
- What new concerns about safety, health and wellness, and stress will affect incoming classes?
These important issues and more are addressed with wise advice and time-tested counsel in Letting Go -- a realistic and reassuring source for meeting the challenges ahead, from the senior year in high school through college graduation.
The Story of the World: Activity Book Two: The Middle Ages
by Susan Wise Bauer
from Peace Hill Press
This comprehensive activity book and curriculum guide contains all you need to make history come alive for your child!
Don't just read about history—experience it! Colro a picture of a Viking warrior, make an edible oasis, create a Moorish ruler's turban and Aztec jewelry and more. Designed to turn the accompanying book The Story of the World: Volume 2: The Middle Ages into a complete history program, this Activity Book provides you with comprehension questions and answers, sample narrations, maps and geography activities, coloring pages, lists of additional readings in history and literature, and plenty of simple, hands-on activities&151;all designed for grades 1-4.
The New Meaning of Educational Change, Fourth Edition
by Michael Fullan
from Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University
When Michael Fullan published the first edition of this seminal work in 1982, he revolutionized the theory and practice of education reform. Now, a quarter of a century later, his new fourth edition promises to be equally influential for radical reform in the 21st century. Capturing the dilemmas and leading ideas for successful large-scale systemic reform, Fullan bases his text on practical and fundamental work with education systems in several countries. The New Meaning of Educational Change is your definitive compendium to all aspects of the management of educational change-a powerful resource for everyone involved in school reform.
History Lesson: A Race Odyssey
by Mary Lefkowitz
from Yale University Press
In the early 1990s, Classics professor Mary Lefkowitz discovered that one of her faculty colleagues at Wellesley College was teaching his students that Greek culture had been stolen from Africa and that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. This book tells the disturbing story of what happened when she spoke out.
Lefkowitz quickly learned that to investigate the origin and meaning of myths composed by people who have for centuries been dead and buried is one thing, but it is quite another to critique myths that living people take very seriously. She also found that many in academia were reluctant to challenge the fashionable idea that truth is merely a form of opinion. For her insistent defense of obvious truths about the Greeks and the Jews, Lefkowitz was embroiled in turmoil for a decade. She faced institutional indifference, angry colleagues, reverse racism, anti-Semitism, and even a lawsuit intended to silence her.
In History Lesson Lefkowitz describes what it was like to experience directly the power of both postmodernism and compensatory politics. She offers personal insights into important issues of academic values and political correctness, and she suggests practical solutions for the divisive and painful problems that arise when a political agenda takes precedence over objective scholarship. Her forthright tale uncovers surprising features in the landscape of higher education and an unexpected need for courage from those who venture there.
American Education
by Joel Spring
from McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Clear, concise, and authoritative—compact and affordable, too—with scholarship that is often cited as a primary source, American Education brings up-to-date information and challenging perspectives to teacher educators’ classrooms. Revised every two years, American Education provides a fresh, concise, and up-to-date introduction to the historical, political, social, and legal foundations of education and to the profession of teaching in the United States. This edition introduces a new chapter reference guide to the No Child Left Behind Act, provides a fresh look at multiculturalism and multilingualism, and presents a new discussion of the link between schooling and the growing gap between rich and poor.
Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality: A Brief History of the Education of Dominated Cultures in the United States
by Joel Spring
from McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
This text is a concise history of Anglo American racism and school policies affecting dominated groups in the United States. It focuses on the educational, legal, and social construction of race and racism, and on educational practices related to deculturalization, segregation, and the civil rights movement. Spring emphasizes issues of power and control in schools and shows how the dominant Anglo class has stripped away the culture of minority peoples in the U.S. and replaced it with the dominant culture. In the process, he gives voice to the often-overlooked perspectives of African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic/Latino Americans, and Native Americans. An understanding of these historical perspectives and how they impact current conditions and policies is critical to teachers’ success or failure in today’s diverse classrooms.
Very brief and affordable, Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality is an ideal supplement for Introduction/Foundations of Education, Multicultural Education, or any course that seeks to expand student notions of what U.S. education has been and can be.
Current Issues and Trends In Education (2nd Edition)
by Jerry Aldridge
from Allyn & Bacon
Critical Issues in Education: Dialogues and Dialectics
by Jack L Nelson
from McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Critical Issues in Education is designed to be used in courses that examine current, relevant pro-and-con disputes about schools and schooling. By exploring the major opposing viewpoints on these issues, the text encourages education students to think critically and develop their own viewpoints. The clear writing and dramatic dialectic approach are conducive to dynamic classroom discussions that help students grasp the many sides of these complex issues. Three integrating themes provide a solid framework for examining the nineteen topics covered. Each part begins with a chapter-length introduction that provides background material and organizing themes for the issues that follow. Each issue is then presented from two divergent viewpoints, each one written in advocate language to be as compelling as possible. The book's objective, in addition to informing the reader about the issues, is to develop critical thinking skills within the context of education. The fourth edition includes updated research and scholarship, updated bibliographic references, and three new chapters (“Beginning Reading – Is there one best approach to literacy?” “Gender – Should gender differences affect schools and schooling?” and “Mainstreaming and Inclusion – How should we provide for students with special needs?”).
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