Claims Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" and E.D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" lead readers to believe that young Americans are extraordinarily stupid and that in their ignorance we can read the decline and fall of the American way of life. Presents support which resists rather than foments such panic. (NH)

A review of 80 years of writing and research on stereotypes indicates that there is little agreement on a definition of stereotype; also that the major emphasis has been on definitions that emphasize the consensus of a group on the elements of a stereotype. This paper defines stereotypes in terms of characteristics ascribed by individuals, rather…

The news on Channel One, with its impression of vague anxiety, looks and sounds like regular television news, only more so. In either case, the news is just "filler"--its real function is not journalistic but commercial, meant to lead into advertisements (ads). Mass advertising tends to assume that its audience will not be studying it…

In England, vocational education and training (VET) does not exist as an institutionalized system as in Europe, where specialist institutions are tied to vocational qualifications, the labor market, and long-term objectives. Education has purposes other than to provide a skilled work force for the economy. However, the relationship between…

Psychological masks can become the accepted facade of people who struggle to camouflage their real selves. Sometimes parents label a child as "lazy" or "stupid"; teachers may follow suit by labeling a child "slow learner" or "uncooperative." Healthy self-esteem is based on three main concepts: "I am…

This study identified preservice teachers' knowledge about effective and ineffective classroom management strategies. A group of 108 preservice teachers at a southern rural public university generated classroom management strategies in response to hypothetical vignettes depicting shy and withdrawn student behavior. Researchers coded the extended…

Interest is invariably the source of successful learning. When people, of any age, want to learn, they learn. When they are preached at, lectured, put in settings where they fail and are made to feel stupid, they reject the whole system of education. To reverse that message, teachers of reading must use a variety of techniques such as providing…

Writing is a highly complex process requiring skills that are not possessed by all students. In some cases, students may have been taught writing skills before they were developmentally ready for them, thus diminishing their future ability to learn those skills. Some students may have specific learning disabilities, sometimes affecting only the…

This document reports on an empirical investigation of anti-women humor appearing in the Reader's Digest over three decades, revealing the operation of an unconscious sexist ideology. A systematic analysis was made of 1,069 jokes appearing in two featured columns of the Reader's Digest for the two-year periods 1947-48, 1957-58, and 1967-68.…

A study examined the role of audience in preservice mathematics education students' writing experiences. Subjects, students in two mathematics education classes taught by the same teacher, completed writing assignments explaining the principles of mathematics to elementary school pupils. Students in one class wrote to actual students, serving as…

An ethnographic study of a linguistics classroom produced insights into student perceptions of in-class speech that can contribute to the ongoing debate about the place of student participation in academic classrooms. The study was conducted in an elective undergraduate linguistics course at Michigan Technological University. Fifteen classroom…

A study examined how international students from North and West Africa fit in, cope, manage, and respond to their experiences in American Universities that are in many cases set up in the context of Americans who constitute the majority. Assuming that the lives of international students outside their home countries and cultures are…

This paper reports a research project designed to improve collaboration among Georgia's schools, colleges, and universities and raise educational standards for pre-K through college education. The researchers, who had developed a course in secondary-level classroom behavior management for preservice teachers, examined the opinions of secondary…

Specific social groups express themselves through their own particularized media. For example, "MS" magazine directs its communication to feminist readers, and as a part of this, regularly reprints advertisements and news clipping taken from mainstream media in its "No Comment" section. This section provides opportunities for…

The impact of Mardel Ogilvie's teaching of speech at Queens College (New York) during the 1950s and 1960s can be distilled into three areas: her personality, her impact on the lives of her students, and her contributions to the speech profession. Mardel's warmth was punctuated by her sense of humor, which always de-escalated crises. Her attitude…