The mass production of books dealing with hitherto taboo subjects for children, such as drug use, divorce, illegitimacy, and death, is a growing trend in children's literature. This paper attempts to demonstrate the inherent difficulties in judging such books critically through a discussion of the handling of death in current children's fiction.…

The author describes changes in the field of retardation over the last 30 years. Briefly addressed are shifts of care from institutions to communities, increased professionalism, greater emphasis on prevention, attention to emotional problems of mentally retarded persons, changes in terminology, and social changes (such as increased competition…

This paper recalls the issues that led in the late 1960s to the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) resolution and statement on the Students' Right to Their Own Language. The paper describes some of the main events in the production of the resolution, and then discusses the response to the resolution of the National Council…

Weiner (1987) theorized that sympathy and blame are a function of attributions of stability (lethality) and controllability of a disease. This research hypothesizes that all Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) patients will receive sympathy because the disease is lethal, and that those who could not control the contraction of AIDS…

This study sought to describe public awareness, perceptions, concern and response to the phenomenon of mistreatment of older adults. The setting for the study was the classic community context of Middletown, U.S.A., Muncie/Delaware County, Indiana. Adults (N=400), selected by random digit dialing, were interviewed in November 1989. Subjects were…

The paper examines communication between physically impaired and physically nonimpaired people. The paper begins with a definition of key terms (stigmatized and nonstigmatized are used to denote physically impaired and physically-nonimpaired people). It continues with a brief review of the literature in which the inattention to ways of humanizing…

A remarkable aspect of the present-day American linguistic and intellectual scene is the fact that public attitudes about language reflect neither scholarly efforts in the field of linguistics nor the intellectual spirit of the twentieth century in general. Prescriptive, absolutist linguistic attitudes on the part of intelligent, educated people…

History, tradition, culture, and superstition have played significant roles in influencing Chinese attitudes toward the mentally retarded. China's overwhelmingly rural, agricultural society has made it dependent upon a huge force of semi-skilled and unskilled labor, to which the retarded are capable of contribution. The stress on self-reliance,…

A three-part study has been conducted over the past several years to isolate and describe correlates of attitudes toward the elderly. The paper briefly summarizes the first two parts of the study and concentrates on its concluding portion. Data from the first part of the study indicated that younger and more well-educated subjects displayed more…

This paper reviews the current status of psychotherapy for women from a feminist perspective. It examines the sexist prejudices and biases of traditional psychotherapies and psychological approaches; notes the manners in which therapy has often tended to reinforce the traditional sex role stereotyping and the women's consequent negative self…

Sixty-two women religious were administered the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16-PF) and the Personal Orientation Inventory in 1969 and again in 1972. The Pearson product-moment correlations on the 16-PF ranged from .18 to .77; the mean correlation was .36. Statistical significance was reached on 14 to 16 factors. In a "t"…

This conference paper asserts that there are four faces to the stories of people's lives: (1) a personal face; (2) a political face; (3) a historical face; and (4) a sacred face. The study explains how each of these faces interacts in society and is used to analyze and to teach multicultural literary works as archetypal stories from the…

In the next century there will be a critical need for diverse groups of people to have positive social relationships and share diminishing resources. The movement toward equality involves more than passing laws that mandate equality; it involves the restructuring of primitive beliefs within individuals and whole communities. Experience-based…

This study sought to show that motivated biases can be shown for positive, as well as negative, behaviors. In the first study college students (N=151) estimated how often they and their fellow students engaged in various positive and negative health-related behaviors. Results indicated all negative behaviors yielded the predicted pattern: subjects…

In an attempt to understand differences and commonalities in international feminism, a typology is presented and discussed. The study deals with feminist theory in the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States. The typology is based on the concept of difference. Two groups are used in the classification…