The authors review "White middle class identities and urban schooling," by D. Reay, G. Crozier and D. James. This book focuses on the perspectives of white middle-class parents who make "against"-the-grain school choices for their children in urban England. It provides key insights into the dynamics of class practising that are…

Describes reference works that are devoted to the content, background, criticism, history, and scheduling of U.S. television and radio programs from the beginnings of broadcasting through 1960. Works are divided into six categories: general encyclopedias, specific genres, chronology, catalogs and archives, criticism, and "TV Guide." (42…

Review of the 44th yearbook of the Council on Technology Teacher Education finds that it largely neglects many current controversies and studies, social and philosophical foundations, feminist critiques, and science and society issues. Its cultural limits are not made explicit, and multicultural and multidisciplinary studies are not examined in…

Three books, published 1999-2000, map out a vision of education as a vehicle for human emancipation and global transformation. Their approaches to presenting the "big picture" differ, focusing on case studies of learning through local social action; the impact of Che Guevara and Paulo Freire on liberation discourse worldwide; and comprehensive…

Reviews 11 books that consider the politics of school reform. (MLF)

Reviews five books on school reform. At least two authors reinforce the philosophy that "every child can learn" with strong evidence in favor of heterogeneous classrooms. Another theme in the books is that education reform should encompass kindergarten through doctoral degrees. (MLF)

Reviews the best and worst in databases on disk, CD-ROM, and online, and offers judgments and observations on database characteristics. Two databases are praised and three are criticized. (Author/JMV)

Presents a critical review of Margaret J. Marshall's work, "Contesting Cultural Rhetorics: Public Discourse and Education, 1890-1900." The author discusses Marshall's comparison and examination of historical nineteenth-century texts about education. The analysis suggests the book does not adequately advance knowledge about public…

Barbie is presented as the perfect cultural site for interrogating margins, borders, and contradictions in females' lives. This article illuminates such issues by interrogating the "cumulative cultural text of Barbie." Texts criticized are: Barbie collector cards; "Barbie" and "Barbie Fashion" comic books;…

Presents a critical review of Paul Theobald's work, "Call School: Rural Education in the Middle West to 1918." The author discusses Theobald's observations on class formation and migration; his assessment of school boards, teachers, and teaching methods; and his revisionist reading of the Country Life Movement and rural education at the…

Maintains that America's lowered expectations about education are not a loss of previous American virtues but neither are they a "culture of indulgence" as Damon suggests; they are simply adaptations by the populace to the difficult job of getting along in a highly competitive world. (MDM)

Reviews "Quality Work with Young People" (John Huskins, 1996) and other writings of the 1990s concerned with outdoor adventure education, youth work, "risk," and risk management. Compares these works with those of the 1970s. Criticizes deterministic trends in adventure education "interventions" and the present-day…

Features comments from Robert L. Hampel, William R. Johnson, Diane Ravitch, and David N. Plank on David Tyack and Larry Cuban's book, "Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform." The book argues that educational reformers in the 20th century have attempted large-scale systemic reforms instituted from the top down. (MJP)

These books are, in many ways, companion volumes addressed to educators working on curricular issues and educational reform. Both consider how postmodernism, feminism, and cultural studies contribute to contemporary educational theory and social criticism. The authors make a convincing case for critical "border pedagogy" that examines…

Writers across time have valued the use of fiction as a means of truth-telling. Fiction that portrays sexual minorities can lay claim to a place in the school curriculum for many of the same reasons that people include Shakespeare or Twain: they speak to the human experience in all its variety. But for those same reasons, fiction that speaks to…