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Identifies and discusses some recurring characteristics of the wise/witch woman (one of the most interesting stock figures in recent fantasy writing for preadolescent readers) in three recent books. Finds a richly varied portrayal of these powerful women. (SR)

Blacksmiths and their craft have changed with the times, and as times change for teachers, they too should be forgers of links. Teacher-to-teacher links should extend beyond the faculty lounge to support systems and active groups of individuals concerned about each other. Another personal link can be made by developing a grade level, system-wide swap of ideas and materials and by encouraging teachers to write for other teachers. Parental links must be forged at the system-wide and the individual teacher levels. The simple device of communicating in writing about a program can make the program more effective. To forge professional links, those involved in professional groups need to reach out to others in related groups and to teachers now uninvolved with a professional organization. They must also help elementary teachers see themselves as specialists. To forge promotional links, teachers need to be more active in telling their stories to others through articles and media presentations, and in monitoring state legislative activity. As teachers seek to disseminate knowledge affecting classroom practice, they forge a practitioner link. It is clearly incumbent on researchers to design studies that reflect classroom realities, and to report results in ways that make their research more accessible to teachers. Conversely, teachers must be more aggressive consumers of research. (HTH)

Visual literacy--seeing with insight--enables child viewers of pictures to examine elements such as color, line, shape, form, depth, and detail to see what relations exist both among these components and between what is in the picture and their previous visual experience. The viewer can extract meaning and respond to it, either by talking or writing about the pictures. Picture books in elementary classrooms can be used effectively (for example, "The Three Little Pigs") if planned around a sequence of stages that children can move through, namely (1) describing what they see, (2) comparing it with other visuals, and (3) valuing one of the pictures they are studying. In order to build a rationale for including visual literacy experiences in the curriculum, baseline data about what students can do in this area and developmental data showing the effects of planning and teaching a sequence of lessons are needed. Initial data gathering suggests that a curriculum which includes studying pictures analytically should easily lead to a deeper response to pictures. This in turn should make experiences with picture books far richer than is currently the case, when most instructional emphasis is on the story line. In the process, children will develop the skill of looking at visuals, which should be transferable to other contexts. (NKA)

By understanding the educational policies of the past, we can avoid the aimless, ephemeral quality of educational programs which are directed to the problems of the moment. The current debate over returning to the basics is blinding us to the need to plan for the future and the computer age. (IS)