ABSTRACT
The well-founded and documented fact that the upcoming generations of students are not gaining an adequate level of knowledge and understanding of the people nation's history augments this concern. Although the actual role that textbooks play in the classroom has also been of some attention and dispute, most educational researchers and historians agree that textbooks establish a foundation for what is considered valuable, relevant, useful, or even official knowledge. Becoming an actor within the process permitted this researcher to better understand not only the public testimony process itself, but also the concerns, perceptions and motivations of other participants, especially the Latinos who participated or were present. Other assumptions concerned the role of teachers as gatekeepers of classroom knowledge and specifically that many would express having some conflict with adopted textbooks or with established curricula, standards, or high-stakes testing.
