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Free Market Closed to
Education |
 September
24, 2004 - Much of the debate about educational reform
is centered on school choice. However, there is another important issue
which desperately needs to be addressed; how classroom textbooks are chosen.
In the United States, 90% of classroom instruction revolves around
textbooks. Most people perceive the material in textbooks as authoritative,
accurate, and necessary. Many teachers rely on them to organize lessons and
structure subject matter. But by relying solely on a textbook, weak teachers
bestow on this one resource the greatest influence over the curriculum.
Textbook "selection” or "adoption,” is decided by the individual states. In
an open state, individual school districts are free to choose the textbooks
they want to use. In a closed state, a state textbook committee chooses its
textbooks and if a textbook is not approved, then state funds cannot be used
to make a purchase. This creates a powerful competition among publishers to
produce a "politically correct”, "adoptable” book which ends up dull, devoid
of the context for most content, and low in quality.
Although there are only 22 states with the closed model for text selection,
it is these states which ultimately influence the types of books offered by
the publishers and produced for sale to schools everywhere in our country.
This is because it is closed state adoption guidelines which get taken into
consideration by the largest textbook publishers when deciding which
textbooks will be published and sold in this great land of ours. As a matter
of fact, the needs of the largest closed states, CA, FL and TX, exert undo
influence over these publishers.
Some of the basic criteria considered in textbook adoption include whether
there are minority authors listed and readability formulas to keep the
writing at an appropriate level of difficulty. The bottom line is the
publishers need to make a profit on the sale of their textbooks. To assure a
sale, heavily edited textbooks end up written by committees, not the
contributing scholars.
How did the textbook industry get to this point? There are many reasons.
Ethnic groups fought their negative portrayal by publishers of textbooks.
Southern states eliminated local school board control of textbook purchases
so that any ideas which threatened Southern culture or their own view of
history couldn’t be taught in the schools. Some states passed laws
prohibiting textbooks that didn’t portray our nation’s history positively.
Civil rights organizations forced school boards to withdraw racially biased
texts. Hispanics, homosexuals, and other groups petitioned to be represented
fairly in texts.
Today, many educators, policymakers, and parents advocate more traditional
teaching approaches that emphasize teaching specific content over
exploratory learning. Critics object to the lowering of academic standards
resulting from politically correct texts. Texts used in subjects such as
social studies and language arts are at the center of debate over which body
of facts should be transmitted through them. The National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) results show that "closed” states rank amongst
the lowest performing states, whereas "open” states are the NAEP’s top
performers.
There is an obvious need for publishers to diversify and find new ways to
meet varied demands. Technology could allow schools to customize their own
books. Educators could select from a menu of chapters or sections to satisfy
their particular curricular needs. A free text book market, not constrained
by political agendas or bureaucracy would harness the creativity of
independent scholars to produce cutting edge curriculum.
My own experience as an independent trying to create a curriculum for use by
the schools has been less than encouraging and quite frankly, very
difficult. There are significant roadblocks to trying to "buck the system”.
Unexpected adversity stems from the difficulty in getting a grant if you are
not a PhD affiliated with an institution of higher learning. But I continue
to forge ahead with my Constitutional Literacy curriculum because like many
others in light of 9/11, I have grown concerned that, "without a common
history or national identity, the very essence of the United States and its
credo, E pluribus Unum--out of many, one--will be lost.”1
A "textbook solution” to curing our country’s
education woes
http://www.educationnews.org/a.htm
1Book Smarts
http://www.edweek.org/ew/vol-18/36text.h18
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