This link has been bookmarked by 25 people . It was first bookmarked on 22 Apr 2008, by William Ferriter.
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10 Aug 09
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A Textbook Example of What's Wrong with Education
<!-- print authors -->A former schoolbook editor parses the politics of educational publishing.
by Tamim Ansary
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Some years ago, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary school and high school textbooks, filled with the idealistic belief that I'd be working with equally idealistic authors to create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big Ideas.
Not so.
I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!"
Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. "Who writes these things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No one." It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business.
Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge.
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10 May 09
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09 May 09
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08 May 09
Taryn .Definitely I wouldn't call these my "good old days".
education publishing_industry writing politics censorship reform like-i-said
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If you should meet a textbook editor and he or she seems eccentric (odd hair, facial tics, et cetera), it's because this is a person who has spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing countless pages filled with such action items, trying to determine if the textbook can arguably be said to support each objective.
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Many downsized editors floated off and started "development houses," private firms that contract with educational publishers to deliver chunks of programs. They hire freelance managers to manage freelance editors to manage teams of freelance writers to produce text that skeleton crews of development-house executives sent on to publishing-house executives, who then pass it on to various committees for massaging.
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surely there's a way to achieve coherence without stultification
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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.
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19 Mar 09
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24 Feb 09
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"Textbook editors swarm to events like the five-day International Reading Association conference to pick up the buzz. They all run around wondering, What's the coming thing? Is it critical thinking? Metacognition? Constructivism? Project-based learning?"
Such things indicate that the American educational machinery fallen into the hands of couple of perverted business men who followed the model of Balam for rewards (awards).
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This is one of the BIG reasons I decided to homeschool this year. Sometimes it wasn't what about what WAS in the textbooks, it was about what WASN'T in the textbooks. Students are being presented with a very sterilized, postmodern fantasy education.
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As a former textbook editor (really more writer) for a Texas-based published that has long since been gobbled up--multiple times--by bigger publishers, I can vouch for the accuracy of Ansary's comments.
One factor he failed to mention that I saw at work at the company where I worked was the disastrous effect the ascendancy of the bean-counters in the late 1970s and early 1980s had on textbook quality. Everything began to revolve around products that had to be conceived, planned, written and published within the calendar year. Long-range planning went out the window; finding competent authors went out the window; and the whole business frankly went to hell in a handbasket.
So I went free-lance and wrote for the developers and the few publishers who (then) still things themselves.
No more. I have an honest job now.
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31 Jul 08
Cherice MontgomeryArticle that describes the K-12 textbook publishing industry from an insider's perspective
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19 Jul 08
Scott KahlerThe Muddle Machine: Confessions of a Textbook Editor
An exposé of the politics of educational publishing. -
08 Jul 08
Kurt PaccioOne man's story behind the textbook publisher's curtain.
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20 May 08
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09 May 08
Mark SpahrInsight into the process of writing and publishing textbooks
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26 Apr 08
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15 Jan 08
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13 Dec 07
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William FerriterAn interesting look into how textbooks are assembled. And why do we use these things in our teaching?
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