ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the writers of textbooks have influenced the political socialization of learners, how changes in American foreign policy have impact on the focus of secondary level history and geography textbooks, and how content of elementary school readers transmits cultural values and attitudes. The research on teaching and learning that took place from the 1950s through most of 1970s included classroom studies of teaching and alternative approaches to instruction in the basic subject areas and school-based studies of innovation and change in the curriculum. Thus, discussions of readability often refer to school district selection policy issues as, for example, whether readability formulas should be used as a way of judging the suitability of textbooks for particular schools and students. Similarly, a discussion of State adoption of textbooks inevitably involves topics such as problem of “mentioning”, pressures from special interest groups concerning controversial content, or development of “national” textbooks that reflect some sort of “market consensus” on curriculum.
