Kyle Stevens, Trafford Publishing
2004
There are lies, damn lies, and then there are literature textbooks, which teacher Kyle Stevens here charges with gross malfeasance for filling the heads of students with error and misinformation. The monograph is not long enough to be a sustained examination along the lines of Diane Ravitch's recent Fordham report on history textbooks (see http://www.edexcellence.net/detail/news.cfm?news_id=329). But it does note specific instances in which interpretative or contextual remarks in major literature textbooks are simply wrong - wrong in their assessment of how historical or cultural events affected great works of literature, wrong in how they lay out the development of literary trends and movements, and often just plain wrong about facts. Stevens calls on teachers and students to throw out their textbooks and engage the great works themselves, free of the interpretative miasma of error-riddled textbooks. And while he occasionally veers into pedantry - is it so wrong to call the statesman and theologian Thomas More "a churchman," for example? - Stevens certainly impresses with his passionate defense of great literature as essential to the education of the young. You can buy the book at http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=4353&66235740-22714aaa#goto2