While virtually all sex education books for teenagers focus on sexual health, Jo Langford's "The Sex EDcyclopedia" offers comprehensive and empowering information specifically for teen males about their sexuality and how it may be positively experienced. This review examines the strengths of "The Sex EDcyclopedia" as a sex education resource and…

Reviews two books on the influence of school desegregation on students, "The Other Boston Busing Story: What's Won and Lost across the Boundary Line" (Susan Eaton) and "Finding One's Place: Teaching Styles and Peer Relations in Diverse Classrooms" (Stephan Plank). Both books describe students' reactions to desegregated schooling and the role of…

Examines two books, "The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education" and "Black Social Capital: The Politics of School Reform in Baltimore," both of which apply urban regime theory to a new policy arena, reconsider the role of business in local school politics, bring politics into institutionalist analysis of…

Reviews David Reynolds'"There Goes the Neighborhood," which examined school consolidation and community based schooling and highlighted Delaware County, Iowa, around 1910-30. Reynolds characterizes school consolidation as expressing the enduring modern tension between what is good for a community and what is good for society. (Contains…

Reviews Herbert Kliebard's book, "Schooled to Work," which traces the evolution of the idea that public education should help train youth for jobs and assesses the impact of this idea on the organization of school curriculum. Kliebard's book discusses how the emphasis on increasing global competitiveness, reducing social waste and economic…

Reviews the book by John Aubrey Douglass, "The California Idea and American Higher Education," suggesting that it presents a masterful, highly informative, encyclopedic modern history of California's public higher education as it looks at the state government's work toward sponsorship of higher education over the years. (SM)

Reviews "History and Educational Policy Making," which includes several essays written over time by one author. The general theme is history informing policy decisions. The essays provide capsule histories of particular federal programs, demonstrating how politics have intervened to dictate policies inconsistent with history or research results.…

Lang's biography of William Heard Kilpatrick, based largely on Kilpatrick's own previously sealed diaries, provide the opportunity to explore the nature and purpose of biography, especially educational biography. Because the sources are Kilpatrick's own works and diaries, the biography lacks the context that would explain more about Kilpatrick's…

Discusses C. Milbrath's thesis that artistically talented and less talented children follow different developmental paths because they rely on different ways of responding to the world. Relates this thesis to studies of the childhood work of Paul Klee, Henri Toulouse Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso. (SLD)

The two studies reviewed attest to the distance southern educational history has traveled since the legal underpinnings of "separate but equal"809 schooling were demolished in 1954. Careful study of the learning atmosphere prior to desegregation should yield insights useful in today's schools. (SLD)

The overriding assumption of Lillian Weber's work as revealed in this collection of her speeches and writings is that the interface between teacher and child is the center of educational effectiveness, and that the success of education depends on the teacher's ability to draw the child's own meaning-making into classroom life. (SLD)

Presents a critical review of Paul Theobald's work, "Call School: Rural Education in the Middle West to 1918." The author discusses Theobald's observations on class formation and migration; his assessment of school boards, teachers, and teaching methods; and his revisionist reading of the Country Life Movement and rural education at the turn of…

Presents a critical review of Margaret J. Marshall's work, "Contesting Cultural Rhetorics: Public Discourse and Education, 1890-1900." The author discusses Marshall's comparison and examination of historical nineteenth-century texts about education. The analysis suggests the book does not adequately advance knowledge about public conceptions of…

Focusing on the middle of the 19th-century, William J. Reese tells how the public high school went from being an embattled institution with an antirepublican image to a dominant educational institution. Tracing the early development of high schools is an important contribution to the history of education. (SLD)

This compact and well-written book considers multiple language use, some of its quantitative aspects, how people feel about multiple languages, and what society should or might do about multiple language problems. A list of comments, criticisms, and suggestions for revision is included with this largely favorable review. (SLD)