Description
Last year, a commission of experts found new history textbooks approved by the Board of Education in Texas were pushing a specific ideology. One of the experts says parts of the textbooks weren't just misleading; they were false. Has the Magna Carta's 800-year legacy been a snowball of misinterpretations? One scholar doesn't think its authors intended it to be the foundational text for common law that it became. In the 1970s, a series of laws ushered in a new "sunshine era" of unprecedented government transparency. Secrecy in the Sunshine Era investigates how, despite these reforms, government officials developed new workarounds, including overclassification, concealment, shredding, and burning. Jaquith is a pioneer in using the web to foster more open and accessible government. His projects include Ethics.gov for the White House, States Decoded, and a website that allows users to watch video of floor action in state capitols and even vote on what they'd like to see in a bill. Wikipedia has been viewed with skepticism or worse in the academic community. But one professor has his students edit Wikipedia pages to develop their critical thinking skills and media literacy.
