The odd reader (here in England "odd" means occasional) may be interested in how a book comes about. Members of the SIECUS Board of Directors were planning a Festschrift and dinner for Mary Calderone on the occasion of her 75th birthday. One planning idea was to have a booklet, filled with brief essays from prominent sex educators, distributed between the roast beef and the ice cream. My reaction was that such "souvenirs" find their burial place in the same dusty drawer as the program from the high school prom and ticket stubs from South Pacific. I suggested a more lasting, noticeable "monument," a "proper" (as the English say) book which would draw contributions from both SIECUS and non-SIECUS scholars. 1 was too clever to be trapped as editor (in a 1974 preface, I had written "I swore 1 wouldn't edit another book"). And so I seduced Lorna Brown (into being editor). I contacted a few potential con tributors, suggested a few others, convinced Leonard Pace at Plenum Press that this was a worthwhile venture, and left the country. To my amaze ment, six months after settling in Cambridge, England, the rough draft of the book arrived along with areminder from Lorna that during the se duction I had promised to write an Introduction.

As it "illuminates the crisis of liberal education and offers proposals for reform which deserve full debate" (Morton Halperin, American Civil Liberties Union), "Illiberal Education" "documents how the politics of race and gender in our universities are rapidly eating away traditions of scholarship and reward for individual achievement" (Robert H. Bork). (Education/Teaching)

In the first edition of this book published in 1988, Shirley Engle and I offered a broader and more democratic curriculum as an alternative to the persistent back-to-the-basics rhetoric of the ‘70s and ‘80s. This curriculum urged attention to democratic practices and curricula in the school if we wanted to improve the quality of citizen participation and strengthen this democracy. School practices during that period reflected a much lower priority for social studies. Fewer social studies offerings, fewer credits required for graduation and in many cases, the job descriptions of social studies curriculum coordinators were transformed by changing their roles to general curriculum consultants. The mentality that prevailed in the nation’s schools was “back to the basics” and the basics never included or even considered the importance of heightening the education of citizens. We certainly agree that citizens must be able to read, write and calculate but these abilities are not sufficient for effective citizenship in a democracy. This version of the original work appears at a time when young citizens, teachers and schools find themselves deluged by a proliferation of curriculum standards and concomitant mandatory testing. In the ‘90s, virtually all subject areas including United States history, geography, economic and civics developed curriculum standards, many funded by the federal government. Subsequently, the National Council for the Social Studies issued the Social Studies Curriculum Standards that received no federal support. Accountability, captured in the No Child Left Behind Act passed by Congress, has become a powerful, political imperative that has a substantial and disturbing influence on the curriculum, teaching and learning in the first decade of the 21st century.

This widely praised history of the controversies that have beset American schools and universities since World War II is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the condition of American education today.

This book provides a history of three decades of Australian education systems, programs and policies. Drawing on economic and sociological data, key texts and political events, it traces the shift from universal public provision to market systems and examines the implications of this change for the labour market and the economy. An important focus of the book is the discussion of the extension of citizenship through education.

Secondary Schools and Their Effects on Children.