Textbooks: The Muddle Machine
This article by a former textbook editor on how textbooks are made is very disconcerting. Textbooks are banal and voiceless because of the complicated process it takes to get them approved in large states. In a very real way, conservative Christian activists in Texas decide what is acceptable in our textbooks, tempered by multi-cultural activists in California. The result is a mushy paste that makes even the most exciting topics boring. I would say that the maxim about those who like sausage or the law would apply to textbooks as well, but no one really likes textbooks.
Sadly, I have no idea how this problem can be fixed.
posted by Luke Francl @ 6:03 PM |
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2 Comments:
How to fix it, from the linked article:
There's no quick, simple fix for the blanding of American textbooks, but several steps are key to reform.
# Revamp our funding mechanisms to let teachers assemble their own curricula from numerous individual sources instead of forcing them to rely on single comprehensive packages from national textbook factories. We can't have a different curriculum in every classroom, of course, but surely there's a way to achieve coherence without stultification.
# Reduce basals to reference books -- slim core texts that set forth as clearly as a dictionary the essential skills and information to be learned at each grade level in each subject. In content areas like history and science, the core texts would be like mini-encyclopedias, fact-checked by experts in the field and then reviewed by master teachers for scope and sequence.
Dull? No, because these cores would not be the actual instructional material students would use. They would be analogous to operating systems in the world of software. If there are only a few of these and they're pretty similar, it's OK. Local districts and classroom teachers would receive funds enabling them to assemble their own constellations of lessons and supporting materials around the core texts, purchased not from a few behemoths but from hundreds of smaller publishing houses such as those that currently supply the supplementarytextbook industry.
# Just as software developers create applications for particular operating systems, textbook developers should develop materials that plug into the core texts. Small companies and even individuals who see a niche could produce a module to fill it. None would need $60 million to break even. Imagine, for example, a world-history core. One publisher might produce a series of historical novellas by a writer and a historian working together to go with various places and periods in history. Another might create a map of the world, software that animates at the click of a mouse to show political boundaries swelling, shrinking, and shifting over hundreds of years. Another might produce a board game that dramatizes the connections between trade and cultural diffusion. Hundreds of publishers could compete to produce lessons that fulfill some aspect of the core text, the point of reference.
The intellect, dedication, and inventiveness of textbook editors, abundant throughout the industry but often stifled and underappreciated, would be unleashed with -- I predict -- extraordinary results for teachers and students.
Bundling selections from this forest of material to create curriculum packages might itself emerge as a job description in educational publishing.
The possibilities are endless. And shouldn't endless possibility be the point?
Enjoyed reading your posts.
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