Golden Rule Revisited: Introduction

In this article, the author provides an overview of the "Golden Rule" issue, including a summary of legislative and judicial activity aimed at extending the Golden Rule idea, the opposition of professional associations to such proposals, and activity at the Educational Testing Service to take differential item functioning into account in test construction.     

Whose text is it anyway?

This article was originally given as a talk at the Computers And The Humanities Conference (CATH) in December 1992, and is directed principally at academics in the humanities. It is prompted by anxieties about the stranglehold that copyright problems are having on new electronic opportunities.     

Integrity and the Feminist Teacher

Our popular conception of integrity brings to mind uncompromising figures like Socrates or Sir Thomas More whose steadfast stands on matters of principle we accept and admire. The paper considers the implications of this for two committed feminists, both of whom are teachers. Their pedagogical philosophies are sufficiently different to lead one to charge the other with selling out her feminist principles. But is this a fair assessment? Is there room for compromise within the complex notion of integrity? How might feminist teachers rework the concept to do justice to the complexities involved?     

Independence and obedience in the United States and Japan

Are some Americans and Japanese beginning to think more similarly about independence and obedience? Middle-class adult respondents from the suburbs of Chicago and Tokyo (U.S.: 43 males and 54 females: Japan: 71 males and 80 females) were surveyed about their sex-role values. This report focuses on two values which have been recognised as constituting fundamental differences between Japanese and Americans: personal independence and obedience. The survey used a metric multidimensional scaling technique called Galileo^®. Analyses of the data and results of other comparative studies suggest that any convergence taking place between the two societies is occurring primarily within American society. There is growing evidence, including the findings of this study, that Americans are moving away from their traditional stress on the importance of the individual in society. The Japanese respondents did show a more liberal conceptualization of the ideal woman with respect to obedience, however, there was no indication that this less traditional image of women extended to their other traditional roles in society.