ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critical reading of the curricular texts which shows that despite the postmodern idea that "image is everything". It demonstrates that unless criticism of basais is tied directly to specific political projects, publishers, like capitalists in general, can absorb it in order to subvert progressive social goals. The chapter starts with analyses of the teachers' manuals of the most recent editions of basais, venture into basal advertising to see how it represents the teaching of reading in the 1990s. Traditionally, basal materials were packages for teaching reading according to associationist psychological principles: teachers' manuals for a scope and sequence of skills, student anthologies, workbooks and worksheets to practice those skills, and two forms of tests to assure their mastery. Teachers' manuals were purported to contain everything that any teacher needed in order to plan and deliver reading instruction to any set of elementary school students anywhere in the English-speaking world.
