ABSTRACT

In the United States’ system of governance of education, political power has enabled some Americans to decide what is taught in schools; the system, however, promises other Americans that they have the right to petition and complain-and they have. Throughout us history, all Americans-those with power and those who petition-have acted in the belief that what children are taught in school and, more specifically, that what children read in school, is what they will believe and therefore is worth arguing over. Controversies over curriculum and over textbooks, where the curriculum is made visible, have been the focus of many of those arguments. In this chapter, controversies over curriculum in New York and over textbooks in California illustrate that Americans are finding it harder and harder to agree, and that new political pressure on the process is coming from groups in the culture with newfound power and pride.