From the Academy

Nowadays one encounters widespread lamentation (even among textbook editors, privately) that school textbooks aren’t what they ought to be. Too true! There is much less talk, however, about practical remedies for this fallen state. If you were a publisher or chief editor of a textbook series, just what reforms, practically, would you undertake?

That question confronts your servant, the author of this page. For two decades and more, I have been a mordant critic of the manuals used in our primary and secondary schools. Now greatness is thrust upon me: I have become director of the social-science program of the Educational Research Council of America—succeeding in that post the energetic and very able Raymond English. It is my responsibility to turn out an integrated social-science program— textbooks and various supplementary materials and aids—extending all the way from kindergarten through the 12th grade. Physician, heal thyself.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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American History

Russell Kirk

Nowadays one encounters widespread lamentation (even among textbook editors, privately) that school textbooks aren’t what they ought to be. Too true! There is much less talk, however, about practical remedies for this fallen state. If you were a publisher or chief editor of a textbook series, just what reforms, practically, would you undertake?

That question confronts your servant, the author of this page. For two decades and more, I have been a mordant critic of the manuals used in our primary and secondary schools. Now greatness is thrust upon me: I have become director of the social-science program of the Educational Research Council of America—succeeding in that post the energetic and very able Raymond English. It is my responsibility to turn out an integrated social-science program— textbooks and various supplementary materials and aids—extending all the way from kindergarten through the 12th grade. Physician, heal thyself.