In an article that originally appeared in Edutopia in November 2004, Tamim Asary writes about his experience as a textbook editor. As a teacher, I was very surprised to read about the process it takes to "write" a textbook that school districts buy.
I think what was even more jaw-dropping to me was that textbook products are written for the top three states (Texas, California and Florida) and then sale the same product to all the other states. So, if you're a teacher in Oklahma with curriculum that you are required to teach and your textbook publisher has told your district that their curriculum covers those standards, that may not be true. However, the old adage of not messing with Texas still holds true. It appears that Texas is the BIG state when it comes to textbook publishing because of the amount of money that is allocated to purchasing textbooks.
This is important to note because of an organization called Educational Research Alliance. That rather innocuous name is really an organization that is "Christian" based. Their purpose is to scrutinize curriculum for any material that is "liberal leaning." Then, in liberal leaning California, according to the author, citizen groups routinely complain about material that they find offensive. Textbook publishers seek to sell textbooks that won't offend anybody and in the process, produce rather bland books that nobody wants to read! What a glorious process, dontcha think?
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8 comments:
One of my favorite books about this concept is "Lies My Teacher Told Me."
I'm seriously considering writing a relevant social studies textbook, based upon the Arizona standards and contextualized to the barrio where I teach. It would be as localized as possible - my classroom and it would take a more revisionist, post-modern, tech-integrated approach.
One of the greatest things we can do for our children is teach them that they have to seek multiple viewpoints. All media is going to be biased and if you accept one source as the absolute authority you will only understand a portion of the story.
It explains a lot.
Just heard today on NPR's Science Friday about the Texas textbooks. Read the scuttlebutt here.
http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/04/scott-to-appear-science-friday-004721
Only half the address showed up but you can get there from the partial address.
How does exclusion of one theory (creationism or intelligent design) and inclusion of another (evolution) help the students to approach things objectively?
Since nobody has ever observed one species evolve directly from a different kind of species, nor has anyone ever observed a brand new species being formed from the dust of the earth, it seems to me that neither option has been disproved and really should be able to stay on the table.
Hey John, if you want a tech-integrated approach, why not create websites for your students, where you can integrate the text and have them comment directly on their own securre websites? Hopefully, we'll all be doing it this way soon. If you or anyone else here is interested in this approach, I hope you'll check out my blog. Great stuf, Ms. Teacher.
I've loved teaching history all over the U.S. and have had the opportunity to see what parts of history are more important in each area. As a native Kansan John Brown is proclaimed a hero, in Georgia he was taught as a total villian. My N.J. students found this facinating and it led to a project where they found parts of their local history that were stressed there but not in other parts of the U.S.
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