Discusses the failure of filmmaker Spike Lee to grapple with the real politics of Malcolm X before and after he left the Nation of Islam. Acknowledging the complexity of the man and his context would avoid creating a mythical figure similar to Oliver Stone's movie "JFK." (SLD)

Provides biographical sketches of two Revolutionary War soldiers from New England, Joseph Plumb Martin and Seth Bullard. Emphasizes methods that explain how the war was fought and make the struggles real rather than mythical. Recommends using local sources and records and discusses recreated Revolutionary War units. Includes excerpts from Martin's…

Examines the use of life histories as a method for explaining successful aging patterns. Describes a life-history research project in which undergraduates personalize material learned in social gerontology courses, integrating the life experience and theories. Sensitizes students to the impact of social forces on successful aging. Argues this…

Uses the biography and work of M. C. Escher to introduce a unit on art history. Tells about Escher's influence not only on artists, but also on mathematicians and physicists. Outlines a student project in which students employed one of these themes: impossible geometry, rotating symmetry, or geometry. (DSK)

The article explores the complexities of educational scale-making. "Educational scales" are defined as the spatial and temporal orders generated as pupils and teachers move and are moved through educational systems; scales are "envelopes of spacetime" into which certain schoolbased identities (and not others) can be folded.…

Bella Stavisky was born in New York City on July 24, 1920. She was born to activism: her father's butcher shop was called the Live and Let Live Meat Market, in protest of WWI. Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants, and when her father died there was no son to say Kaddish for him, so 13-year-old Bella marched into Temple each day for a year to…

The academic study of Education (as a social, historical, and theoretical phenomenon) is complicated by the fact of our immersion in it. This paper combines Said's idea of "contrapuntal reading" with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity to explore what happens when students on an Education course directly confront the fact of their everyday…

This article discusses a teaching and research initiative in which 12 third-year undergraduate students and a lecturer worked as volunteers at a local drop-in centre for homeless men and women, and subsequently conducted 49 life history interviews there. Students were asked to keep a diary, recording field observations and reflections on stories…

This article outlines the design of a new service-learning component central to a graduate course on teaching elementary and middle school writing. The service-learning involves course participants acting as mentors to middle school students as they write personal histories of local African American, Cape Verdean, and Puerto Rican senior citizens.…

This autobiographical narrative describes the early life of Luis J. Rodriguez, a journalist and poet who was immersed in the youth gang culture of Los Angeles (California). Framed by the story of the pull of the gang life for the poet's son, it recounts his experiences from his childhood on the United States-Mexico border through his family's…

Serving as a resource for students, teachers, librarians, and parents, this seventh edition of the National Council of Teachers of English's bestselling booklist for adolescent readers contains over 300 concise annotations. A group of teachers looking specifically for high interest books chose the titles from hundreds published in 1993 and 1994.…

This paper discusses the use of General Horace Porter, President Ulysses S. Grant's personal friend and closest adviser through the latter stages of the U.S. Civil War and into Grant's presidency. During the Civil War, Porter made field observations, suggested strategy, and relayed orders among commanders. As adviser to the president, Porter wrote…

Selected resources of the New York State Library that document the achievements of African Americans in the arts, as well as the historical and cultural contexts of these achievement, are listed. In addition to primary sources and significant historical and critical works, the bibliography contains references to other bibliographies and research…

This book aims to set forth the convergence of institutional and sociological circumstances with intellectual and personal aspirations at the University of Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s under the direction of its fifth president, Robert Maynard Hutchins. Based in part on the author's personal experiences as a student and young faculty member…

This unit profiles nine women of La Raza who have contributed to the betterment of humanity and Hispanic culture. It encourages students to learn about them and other Raza women as models of people involved in the Chicano community. The unit, offered in both Spanish and English, also teaches that these representative Raza women had to overcome…