Tamim Ansary's Textbook Publishing Controversy
I remember having to carry heavy textbooks, and it made little sense as teachers don't rely on the entire book. Instead, they picked certain chapters, and it would be nice if we had many publishing houses than oligarchic conglomerates. That way, teachers could use a small textbook or several focusing on exactly what they want to teach--everything could be read piecemeal without me having to lug home the meat as well as the fat.
Even last quarter, I bought a textbook called "Principles of Instrumental Analysis" and we only studied 12 chapters out of 34 in the book. Granted, the quarter system had only 10 weeks, but then the textbook should be personalizable to precisely that 10 weeks and what the subject entails. It may be narrower in scope than what a 16-week semester could cover, but that can get its own personal textbook as well.
The Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications textbook is from McGraw Hill, which makes me think of Texas, like Phil McGraw, a very Texan name. Only a fraction of the book were devoted to teaching the said subject in class. It is its own terrible waste of paper, especially in conjunction with needing to "update" textbooks with a new edition every year.
It is the idea to make a profit by updating a weighty tome with only minute changes and jiggling the end-of-chapter questions in order to prevent the teachers from being able to assign problem numbers based on a canonical set. To me, a large textbook should be fairly stable and because it attempts to be comprehensive, it can only be generic. Then there are small books that can be used instead.
(via PZ Mysers)
I remember having to carry heavy textbooks, and it made little sense as teachers don't rely on the entire book. Instead, they picked certain chapters, and it would be nice if we had many publishing houses than oligarchic conglomerates. That way, teachers could use a small textbook or several focusing on exactly what they want to teach--everything could be read piecemeal without me having to lug home the meat as well as the fat.
Even last quarter, I bought a textbook called "Principles of Instrumental Analysis" and we only studied 12 chapters out of 34 in the book. Granted, the quarter system had only 10 weeks, but then the textbook should be personalizable to precisely that 10 weeks and what the subject entails. It may be narrower in scope than what a 16-week semester could cover, but that can get its own personal textbook as well.
The Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications textbook is from McGraw Hill, which makes me think of Texas, like Phil McGraw, a very Texan name. Only a fraction of the book were devoted to teaching the said subject in class. It is its own terrible waste of paper, especially in conjunction with needing to "update" textbooks with a new edition every year.
It is the idea to make a profit by updating a weighty tome with only minute changes and jiggling the end-of-chapter questions in order to prevent the teachers from being able to assign problem numbers based on a canonical set. To me, a large textbook should be fairly stable and because it attempts to be comprehensive, it can only be generic. Then there are small books that can be used instead.
(via PZ Mysers)
posted by Alan at April 19, 2009
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