92 Kidder, Among Schoolchildren, 52; Kirst, Who Controls Our Schools?
135; Linda Levstik, “The Research Base for Curriculum Choice: A Response,”
Social Education, no. 54 (11/1990): 443.
93 See, inter alia, Gallup poll, 10/ 1987, reported in Stamford, CT, Advocate,
12/26/1987, 1.
94 Jean Fair, ed., National Assessment and Social Studies Evaluation
(Washington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1975), 35.
95 John Williamson quoted in Cole and Sticht, eds., The Textbook in American
Society , 39.
96 Raymond English, “Can Social Studies Textbooks Have Scholarly
Integrity?” Social Education 50, no. 1 (1/1986): 46-48.
97 Donald Barr, Who Pushed Humpty Dumpty? Dilemmas in American
Education Today (New York: Atheneum, 1972), 316- 17, tells how publishers
have even tamed the story of the three little pigs, so now piggies number one
and number two don’t die but somehow run faster than the wolf from their
smashed houses to the third piggie’s suburban brick ranch.
98 Sissela Bok, Lying (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 24. Bok admits, however,
that while people weigh the advantages of lying in a “nuanced way” when they
imagine “themselves in the position of choosing whether or not to deceive,”
everyone wants “to avoid being deceived by others as much as possible.” The
Boston Children’s Museum took a different and more honest tack in an exhibit
on death; see “Children Learn That ‘Dying Isn’t a Vacation,’ ” New York Times,
8/26/1984. For other discussions of presenting controversial material to
children, see Black, The American Schoolbook, 91-95; Kirsten Lundberg,
“Addressing a Child’s Fears about Life in the Nuclear Age,” Boston Globe,
3/9/1986; and Betty Reardan, John Anthony Scott, and Sam Totten, “Nuclear
Weapons: Concepts, Issues and Controversies,” Social Education 47
(11/1983): 473-522.
99 See Natalie Gittelson, “The Fear That Haunts Our Children,” McCall’s,
5/1982, 77 et passim, and David S. Greenwald and Steven J. Zeitlin, No
Reason to Talk About It: Families Confront the Nuclear Taboo (New York:
Norton, 1986).
100 See Edward A. Wynne, “The Case for Censorship to Protect the Young,”
in Issues in Education (Winter 1985).