Provides background information and excerpts from an interview with Josef Krofta, highly acclaimed director for the East Bohemian Puppet Theatre in Drak, Czechoslovakia--a company internationally recognized for its innovative style in which the puppet and the live performer are integrated. Highlights Krofta's personal philosophies and theater for…

Governor George C. Wallace's role in creating two-year colleges in Alabama in 1963 is detailed. It is argued that the legislation resulted from political activity, not concerns of professional educators. Wallace broke a 107-hour filibuster in the Alabama Senate primarily because of his desire for popularity. (Author/MSE)

Elucidates the historical inquiry into Anglo-American mass communication studies. Argues that they can be reduced to three versions: mass communication research, the New Left, and the cultural version. Shows how the field's history writing has been caught in complex ways in its inner developments and paradigmatic struggles. (SR)

Uses international examples of the ways in which political learning takes place--indoctrination, political socialization, and political education--to suggest that open and democratic political education is not common, even in democracies. (SK)

Describes the work of Bogdan Maglich with helium-based fusion and barriers to its development resulting from lack of government support, competition for funding, and political pet projects. Compares tritium-based to helium-based fusion and the potential for nonradioactive nuclear power to supply the world's energy requirements with no negative…

In community education theory and practice, there is a large gap between rhetoric and reality and a problem in relating the micro to the macro. Community education praxis for the nineties involves acting appropriately in maintaining a value base and exploring the politics of practice. (SK)

Describes the rationale for "tech prep" programs--programs that offer a 2+2 plan for linking the last two years of high school with the curriculum of a two-year community or technical college to produce students with high-level skills. (SR)

Focuses on the teaching of undergraduates as being the primary function of college literature teachers. Critiques the current emphases of literary studies. Proposes a humanistic, student-centered approach to literature instruction for undergraduates which helps connect literary works to students' lives. (HB)

Provides the reactions of Louise M. Rosenblatt, a key figure in the field of reader response criticism, to the developments in reading, writing, and critical theory in the 1980s. Gives a brief personal history of Rosenblatt and the field. Describes her transactional theory and interpretations of it by other critics. (HB)

Reviews the cultural and academic-ideological forces that keep first-year English as the only universally required course in the American academy. Reflects on the author's work with the Wyoming Resolution. Suggests an institutional alteration to first-year English that could disrupt some of the ideological work now being done by the course. (RS)

Discusses the history of the writing center at the California University of Pennsylvania. Concludes that writing centers are subject to the same social and political forces that affect all educational issues and decisions. Argues that writing centers must prepare to live politically if they are to continue to grow as progressive resources within…

Australian higher education has an elitist disregard for the needs, interests, and concerns of the rest of society, and operates under a system that is inherently unaccountable in any democratic sense. Dawkinism does little to change this, and the academic community appears unable or unwilling to question the status quo. (MSE)

Teacher education reform as advocated by John Goodlad in this same "Kappan" issue is possible, even in less than ideal circumstances. However, Goodlad's simplistic conceptions of democracy, his disregard for state regulatory structures, and his unrealistic enrollment objectives are disturbing. Dogmatic adherence to Goodlad's 19…

Describes some developments in the academic field of communication since 1983 (including accelerating fragmentation and departmental specialization). Suggests what these changes may imply for the prospects of the field in the years just ahead. (SR)

Offers thoughts about some of the problems facing mass communication as a cultural practice by mapping briefly its historical constitutiveness (and the problems therein). Discusses the dimensions of communication research as site. Offers a diagnosis of how to view the avowed "fragmentation" of the field. (SR)