This textbook is designed to help [the reader] master the skills required for the effective use of standard English. Beginning with the basics in grammar, usage, and mechanics ... each chapter provides [the reader] with instruction and practice in specific skills. The numerous exercises throughout the book enable[s the reader] to check [his] understanding of important concepts, rules, and guidelines. In addition, various writing exercises and activities offer [the reader] opportunities to apply what [he has] learned.-To the student.
"Mental hygiene" films developed for classroom use touted vigilance, correct behavior, morality, and model citizenship. They also became powerful tools for teaching literacy skills and literacy-based behaviors to young people following the Second World War. In this study, Kelly Ritter offers an extensive theoretical analysis of the alliance of the value systems inherent in mental hygiene films (class-based ideals, democracy, patriotism) with writing education—an alliance that continues today by way of the mass digital technologies used in teaching online. She further details the larger material and cultural forces at work in the production of these films behind the scenes and their effects on education trends. Through her examination of literacy theory, instructional films, policy documents, and textbooks of the late 1940s to mid-1950s, Ritter demonstrates a reliance on pedagogies that emphasize institutional ideologies and correctness over epistemic complexity and de-emphasize the role of the student in his or her own learning process. To Ritter, these practices are sustained in today's pedagogies and media that create a false promise of social uplift through formalized education, instead often resulting in negative material consequences.
Designed for middle school teachers and students in California. Offer teachers and students a method to focus on the written and oral language convention required by the standards--to provide an effective way to teach and learn grammar, usage, and mechanics skills.
