What that means is not entirely clear, but the books do proceed from easy questions to hard ones, such as—in the sixth-grade book—"How was interaction between merchants and citizens different in the Athenian and Spartan social systems?” Virtually all the American-history texts for older children include discussions of "role," "status," and "culture." Some of them stage debates between eminent social scientists in roped-off sections of the text; some include essays on economics or sociology; some contain pictures and short biographies of social scientists of both sexes and of diverse races. Many books seem to accord social scientists a higher status than American Presidents.
该描述的确切含义尚不清晰，但该系列教材中讨论的问题的确依照从易到难的顺序排列，比如在六年级的书中有一问题为“雅典社会体系屮商人与城市居民间的关系与斯巴达社会体系中的有何不同？”事实上，所有年龄较大的孩子所使用的教材中都含存关于“角色”“地位”以及“文化”的讨论。有些教材在书上单辟一块区域展示知名社会学家之间的辩论；有些会收录一些关于经济学或社会学的文章；有些则包含不同性別和不同种族的社会学家的照片和生平介绍。很多教材中，社会学家的地位似乎要比美国总统还要高。
Quite as striking as these political and pedagogical alterations is the change in the physical appearance of the texts. The schoolbooks of the fifties showed some effort in the matter of design: They had maps, charts, cartoons, photography, and an occasional four-color picture to break up the columns of print. But beside the current texts they look as naive as Soviet fashion magazines. The print in the fifties books is heavy and far too black, the colors muddy. The photographs are conventional news shots—portraits of Presidents in three-quarter profile, posed "action" shots of soldiers. The other illustrations tend to be Socialist-realist-style drawings (there are a lot of hefty farmers with hoes in the Colonial-period chapters) or incredibly vulgar made-for-children paintings of patriotic events. One painting shows Columbus standing in full court dress on a beach in the New World from a perspective that could have belonged only to the Arawaks. By contrast, the current texts are paragons of sophisticated modern design. They look not like People or Family Circle but, rather, like Architectural Digest or Vogue…The amount of space given to illustrations is far greater than it was in the fifties; in fact, in certain "slow-learner" books the pictures far outweigh the text in importance. However, the illustrations have a much greater historical value.
与政治观点和教学方式上的改变同样令人吃惊的是教材在外观上的变化。50年代的教科书在设计上颇费功夫：有地图、图表、漫画和照片，偶尔还用四色图来区分不同的栏日内容。但如果将它们与当下的教材并置，就显得像苏联的时尚杂志一样单调，字体过粗、字色偏黑、色彩模糊。照片总是一贯的新闻摄影风格——总统的脸部特写要占照片四分之三篇幅，士兵永远摆出打仗冲锋的姿态。其他图片则多是社会主义写实风格(殖民地时期的章节中常常可见粗壮的农民扛着锄头）或是专为孩子画的爱国主义图片，模糊不清。有一幅图画的是哥伦布站在“新世界”的海滩上，身穿宫廷礼服，但其画风非阿拉瓦人莫属。相反，当前的教科书却是现代精美设计的典范，不是《人物》杂志或《家庭杂志》风格，而是《建筑辑要》和《吋尚》杂志风格……当前教材中图片所占的篇幅远远超过50年代的教材；事实上，一些为学习迟缓者设计的教材中图片的重要性远髙于文本。然而，说明性图片的历史价值绝不仅仅在于其精美程度。