評論
打印
What that means is not entirely clear, but the books do proceed from easy questions to hard ones, such as—in the sixth-grade book—"How was interaction between merchants and citizens different in the Athenian and Spartan social systems?” Virtually all the American-history texts for older children include discussions of "role," "status," and "culture." Some of them stage debates between eminent social scientists in roped-off sections of the text; some include essays on economics or sociology; some contain pictures and short biographies of social scientists of both sexes and of diverse races. Many books seem to accord social scientists a higher status than American Presidents.
該描述的確切含義尚不清晰，但該系列教材中討論的問題的確依照從易到難的順序排列，比如在六年級的書中有一問題為“雅典社會體系屮商人與城市居民間的關系與斯巴達社會體系中的有何不同？”事實上，所有年齡較大的孩子所使用的教材中都含存關于“角色”“地位”以及“文化”的討論。有些教材在書上單辟一塊區域展示知名社會學家之間的辯論；有些會收錄一些關于經濟學或社會學的文章；有些則包含不同性別和不同種族的社會學家的照片和生平介紹。很多教材中，社會學家的地位似乎要比美國總統還要高。
Quite as striking as these political and pedagogical alterations is the change in the physical appearance of the texts. The schoolbooks of the fifties showed some effort in the matter of design: They had maps, charts, cartoons, photography, and an occasional four-color picture to break up the columns of print. But beside the current texts they look as naive as Soviet fashion magazines. The print in the fifties books is heavy and far too black, the colors muddy. The photographs are conventional news shots—portraits of Presidents in three-quarter profile, posed "action" shots of soldiers. The other illustrations tend to be Socialist-realist-style drawings (there are a lot of hefty farmers with hoes in the Colonial-period chapters) or incredibly vulgar made-for-children paintings of patriotic events. One painting shows Columbus standing in full court dress on a beach in the New World from a perspective that could have belonged only to the Arawaks. By contrast, the current texts are paragons of sophisticated modern design. They look not like People or Family Circle but, rather, like Architectural Digest or Vogue…The amount of space given to illustrations is far greater than it was in the fifties; in fact, in certain "slow-learner" books the pictures far outweigh the text in importance. However, the illustrations have a much greater historical value.
與政治觀點和教學方式上的改變同樣令人吃驚的是教材在外觀上的變化。50年代的教科書在設計上頗費功夫：有地圖、圖表、漫畫和照片，偶爾還用四色圖來區分不同的欄日內容。但如果將它們與當下的教材并置，就顯得像蘇聯的時尚雜志一樣單調，字體過粗、字色偏黑、色彩模糊。照片總是一貫的新聞攝影風格——總統的臉部特寫要占照片四分之三篇幅，士兵永遠擺出打仗沖鋒的姿態。其他圖片則多是社會主義寫實風格(殖民地時期的章節中常常可見粗壯的農民扛著鋤頭）或是專為孩子畫的愛國主義圖片，模糊不清。有一幅圖畫的是哥倫布站在“新世界”的海灘上，身穿宮廷禮服，但其畫風非阿拉瓦人莫屬。相反，當前的教科書卻是現代精美設計的典范，不是《人物》雜志或《家庭雜志》風格，而是《建筑輯要》和《吋尚》雜志風格……當前教材中圖片所占的篇幅遠遠超過50年代的教材；事實上，一些為學習遲緩者設計的教材中圖片的重要性遠髙于文本。然而，說明性圖片的歷史價值絕不僅僅在于其精美程度。
