In this lucid, disturbing, and provocative book, Joan Delfattore offers a behind-the-scenes view of the ways in which special-interest groups influence the content of textbooks used in public and private schools throughout the country. Efforts to censor elementary and high school textbooks have proliferated in the past decade. Most challenges have come from ultraconservative activists who oppose evolution, racial and ethnic equality, nontraditional gender roles, pacifism, and a host of other issues that contradict their religious, political, or social views. Other protests originate with ultraliberal activists whose goal is to eliminate all negative or traditional descriptions of racial, ethnic, religious, or gender groups, without regard for accuracy or historical context. DelFattore focuses on recent federal lawsuits involving attempts to censor or ban biology, geology, history, home economics, literature, psychology, reading, and social studies textbooks. She vividly re-creates the story behind each lawsuit, describing how politically sophisticated national organizations turn local controversies into nationally publicized court cases. She also discusses how both ultraliberal and ultraconservative groups in Texas and California pressure their state Boards of Education to demand that sections of textbooks be eliminated or rewritten as a condition of selling the books in those states. Because California and Texas are such important markets, says DelFattore, publishers almost always make the required changes in the books, which are then sold nationwide. As a result, the content of American textbooks is heavily influenced by political and economic forces as well as by educationalconsiderations. DelFattore's investigation has profound implications not only for education but also for freedom of thought in the larger society. Her book will be mandatory reading for parents, teachers, school administrators, lawy
Limited preview - 1994 - 220 pages - Education
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ReviewsEditorial Review - Kirkus Reviews Copyright (c) VNU Business Media, Inc.
A frightening look at the pressures brought to bear on textbook publishers to mollify special interests by modifying schoolbooks. DelFattore (English/Univ. of Delaware) addresses the assault on the content of textbooks--and of supplementary literature like Huckleberry Finn--from the right and the left. Particularly notable are the attacks from fundamentalist Christians, who not only continue to ...
More challenge evolution but who bring to court such arguments as the one that being nice to animals could bring about the end of the world--which certainly puts most of Disney's fairy tales on the condemned list. DelFattore reviews in illuminating detail court battles in Tennessee, Florida, and elsewhere aimed at eliminating or radically altering textbooks and classic literature used in schools. Among the offenders: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Emily Brontë, and William Faulkner. Although courts frequently rule against protesting parents who challenge educators' choice of textbooks, often the textbook publishers have already scurried back to the page proofs and begun cleaning up ""offensive"" entries. Texas and California are the two states with the financial muscle--because of the number of textbooks they buy--virtually to dictate the content and tone of some nationally distributed textbooks. And more liberal California isn't off the hook in this discussion--for instance, its practice of softening or eliminating discussions of past racist behavior and racist language distorts history, says the author. A disturbing report on who's actually influencing what children read in school, suggesting that parents, teachers, and administrators take a closer look at how schoolbooks are chosen--and tampered with.
Less References from web pagesMoreWhat Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America.
ED349550 - What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America. ... Title: What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America. ...
www.eric.ed.gov/ ERICWebPortal/ recordDetail?accno=ED349550 What Johnny Shouldn`t Read - delfattore, Joan - Yale University Press
SEARCH FOR A BOOK, FULL TEXT SEARCH VIA GOOGLE, BROWSE BY SUBJECT. By Keyword, By Title, By Author, By ISBN. Art and Architecture, Biography, Business ...
yalepress.yale.edu/ yupbooks/ book.asp?isbn=9780300060508 Fighting Censorship in Our Schools
According to Delfattore (What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America, 1992), "When student have spent twelve years reading books based more ...
mtprof.msun.edu/ Fall1995/ obrien.html New book debunks myths about religion in public schools
... is published by Yale University Press, which also published delfattore’s 1992 book “What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America. ...
www.udel.edu/ PR/ UDaily/ 2004/ delfattore032404.html Untitled Document
This is an original paragraph from Joan Delfattore's book, What Johnny Shouldn't Read—Textbook Censorship in America:. In the Dick and Jane readers some of ...
www.nyu.edu/ classes/ op/ writing/ CourseBuilder/ plagiarism/ delfatorre_f2.htm Book reviews
What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America, by Universi-. ty of Delaware English Professor Joan delfattore, discusses in detail six feder- ...
www.springerlink.com/ index/ N54X5W8856P6357M.pdf Thomas B. Fordham Institute - The Mad, Mad World of Textbook Adoption
Statewide textbook adoption, the process by which 21 states dictate the textbooks that schools and districts can use, is fundamentally flawed
www.edexcellence.net/ institute/ publication/ publication.cfm?id=335& pubsubid=1050 Misreading Reading
First I shall cite some examples from Joan delfattore's What Johnny Shouldn't Read: Textbook Censorship in America. delfattore recognizes the thorny ...
www.stevencscheer.com/ misreadingreading.htm Less References to this bookFrom Google ScholarBETTY MALEN - 2003 - Educational Policy DD Perlmutter - 1997 - The Journal of Communication Patrick Shannon - 2000 - Reading Research Quarterly Popular passagesthe Elephant Is very like a rope!" And so these men of Indostan Disputed loud and long, Each in his own opinion Exceeding stiff and strong, Though each was partly in the right, And all were in the wrong... Page 33 There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. Page 91 THE BODY of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer, (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding) lies here food for worms ; yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by THE AUTHOR. Page 47 That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. Page 91 Is uniformity attainable ? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. Page 1 It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man's frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place in the universe. Page 44 First, the statute must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. . . .; finally, the statute must not foster "an excessive government entanglement with religion. Page 98 ... like a girl for a change. You'd think my mother'd be grateful not to have to make me a white organdy dress with a big satin sash and buy me new white baby-doll shoes that can't be taken out of the box till the big day. You'd think she'd be glad her daughter ain't out there prancing around a May Pole getting the new clothes all dirty and sweaty and trying to act like a fairy or a flower or whatever you're supposed to be when you should be trying to be yourself, whatever that is, which is, as far... Page 42 To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers. Page 53 Less |
