In Losing Our Language, Stotsky shows how basal readers have been systematically "dumbed down" in an effort to raise minority students' "self-esteem." While elementary readers of the past featured excerpts from classic stories such as Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe, with a complex vocabulary and sentence structure able to challenge the imagination and build reading skills, today's basal readers present students with politically and ethnically correct stories whose language is virtually foreign and unable to engage them. Drawing words from Swahili, Spanglish and other trendy dialects to reach students with a shrinking English vocabularly is a symptom of this intellectual and cultural disorder.