Studied Ignorance: How Curricular Censorship and Textbook Selection Are Dumbing Down American Education

Despite concerted efforts from our educators administrators and government American education continues to struggle. The author of this work argues that the decline can be traced to censored curricula inaccurate textbooks test-driven evaluations and increasing poverty among the student population.Under the definition of failure specified in the No Child Left Behind Act more than 80 percent of American schools could currently be labeled as failing while the quality of American education overall and our students performance continue to rank unfavorably against international competition. This book examines the crisis in American education and identifies how weaknesses in textbooks teaching and testing have created the crisis facing American education―a topic that dramatically affects students teachers and parents.Author Herbert N. Foerstel exposes the textbook wars that began a century ago and rage on with even more venom today. His book traces the legal basis for curricular censorship that dates back 75 years; identifies the bizarre process by which shoddy textbooks have been written published and come to be widely accepted; and documents the disastrous effect that reliance on these materials has had on the curriculum. Foerstel also supplies a careful assessment of the current political debate over education reform and of the proposed solutions to these problems.