In the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly looked to the schools--and, in particular, to the nation's colleges and universities--as guardians of the cherished national ideal of equality of opportunity. With the best jobs increasingly monopolized by those with higher education, the opportunity to attend college has become an integral part of the American dream of upward mobility. The two-year college--which now enrolls more than four million students in over 900 institutions--is ...

In the early twentieth century, a group of women workers hired to apply luminous paint to watch faces and instrument dials found themselves among the first victims of radium poisoning. Claudia Clark’s book tells the compelling story of these women, who at first had no idea that the tedious task of dialpainting was any different from the other factory jobs available to them. But after repeated exposure to the radium-laced paint, they began to develop mysterious, often fatal illnesses that t...

How science in medieval Europe originated in Buddhist AsiaWarriors of the Cloisters tells how key cultural innovations from Central Asia revolutionized medieval Europe and gave rise to the culture of science in the West. Medieval scholars rarely performed scientific experiments, but instead contested issues in natural science, philosophy, and theology using the recursive argument method. This highly distinctive and unusual method of disputation was a core f...

Ann Szedlecki was a Hollywood-film-loving fourteen-year-old when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and she fled to the Soviet Union with her older brother, hoping to return for the rest of her family later. Instead, she ended up spending most of the next six and a half years alone in the Soviet Union, enduring the harsh conditions of northern Siberia under Stalin’s Communist regime. Szedlecki’s beautifully written story, which lovingly reconstructs her pre-war childhood in Lodz, is also com...

A young boy who loved soccer as much as he loved to write, John Freund describes how his joyful childhood is shattered by the German invasion of his homeland, Czechoslovakia. Hoping at first that the conflict and persecution would soon blow over, John’s Jewish family suffers through the systematic erosion of their rights only to be deported to Theresienstadt – en route to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. John’s loss of innocence and suffering are made all the more poignant as his vivid w...

The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara Tuchmann is a key work examining the question of what prompted the U.S. to enter World War I.This particular short analysis and criticism, which is part of our Continuing Education Series, hopes to provide readers with thoughtful consideration on Barbara Tuchmann's research on the matter of how Woodrow Wilson, despite his long held stand on non-intervention in Europe, managed a dramatic shift toward war. Instead of a dashed off "short review" one ...

A teacher's attempt to understand children's ability and desire to express themselves in their own natural ways; the story of an experimental school in New Zealand in the early 1960s.

Thoroughly revised and updated, this best selling book presents a logical, step-by-step methodology that will enable any company to conduct a cost-effective benchmarking effort. It presents an overview of the benchmarking process, a detailed form for surveying and "grading" maintenance management, and a database of the results of more than 100 companies that have used this survey.Provides a clear, concise benchmarking methodology.Clearly explains and interprets the ...

An eyewitness account of a prisoner in Jasenovac, a concentration camp in the former Yugoslavia during WW II. T**his book is an authorized translation of the original book that was written in Croatian in 1966. What follows was written by the original publisher.There is no stronger or more reliable material than the one that is born from one’s own experience.Eyewitnesses and direct participants provide us with not only the facts, but also that sublimely human spirit...

Education is in a constant state of change and development. Learning to Teach in the Primary School provides a pathway into Australian education for preservice primary teachers. This practical and engaging text includes strong links to the Australian Curriculum and frames teaching around understanding primary students, how they learn, and their contexts. The book includes numerous valuable teaching resources such as: • applied learning boxes, discussion questions, and research topics • spe...

The influence of John Dewey's undeniably pervasive ideas on the course of American education during the last half-century has been celebrated in some quarters and decried in others. But Dewey's writings themselves have not often been analyzed in a sustained way. In John Dewey and the Decline of American Education, Hank Edmondson takes up that task. He begins with an account of the startling authority with which Dewey's fundamental principles have been—and continue to be—received w...

This book discusses the way in which those born into the British empire were persuaded to accept it, often with enthusiasm. The study compares the perceptions of people at ‘home’, in the dominions and in the colonies. Across the diversity of imperial territories it explores themes such as the diverse nature of political socialisation, the various agents and agencies of persuasion, reaction to the ‘experience of dominance’ by dominant and dominated, the paradoxical impact of the missionary ...