Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Wed 12/10/2003 5:51 AM
1. Most textbooks, written years before they are pushed, are often obsolete by the time they hit the desks. They may have been up-to-date when they left the authors' hands, but so often they are out-of-date by the time they're in the student's hands and certainly are useless by the time the students graduate years later. Morever, the supposed up-dated new editions are still more often than not behind the information curve. 2. Yeah, I know the arguments about students needing a structured reference, although I thought that was one of our major tasks. So, I'm not sure who or what is ancillary to whom or what. Anyway, we're up on the material more than is the textbook. Most textbooks' cutting edge is as dull as the proverbial doornail. They come wrapped in a condom. Everything has to be safe. They have to be so politically correct, so up on the latest fads, so totally uncontroversial, so inoffensive, that it's hard to tell one from the other. Uniformity and conformity, not originality, is the order of the day for any hope of profitable book orders. That's why textbooks won't stand up! They're published to lay down. 3. Most authors are selected on the basis of their scholarship, not whether they are master teachers or master writers. Here is a replay of the the old adage, if you know it,you can teach it. In the publishing game, if you've got a long scholarly resume, you know the material. And, if you know the material, you can write it for students. The problem is that writing an article for a professional journal or writing a book for interested fellow-professionals is a far cry from writing a teaching textbook for a novice, uninterested or disinterested student. Readability is never a true requirement. In my field, most of the first year survey textbook writers haven't seen an undergraduate, much less a first year student, since they were one a millenium ago. 4. The textbook contributes to the illusion that we've met the requirement of having "covered the material" and having offered the students the opportunity to "master the material." After all, all we have to do is assign chapters 40 through 66 on the next to last day of class to pat ourselves on the back. 5. Contrary to righteous self-proclamations, the publishers are adopter-oriented, not reader-oriented. I haven't read a textbook that is written for the students who supposedly have to read it. I haven't read a textbook that isn't written for the professor who has to adopt it. The publishers will use every merchandizing trick in the book, even devious and bribing ones, to grab the professor and will devote very little time to grabing a student. Test banks, CDs, DVDs, instructor manuals, websites, powerpoint presentations may be tasty to professors. Nevertheless, the textbook remains tasteless to the students and hard to swallow much less digest. 6. So, I can't remember the last textbook I read, either as a student or professor, in any subject, that was readable. And, God forbid a textbook should be enjoyable. After all, getting an education is serious business. These textbooks aren't exactly attention holders, eye catchers, spell binders, cliff hangers, or heart throbbers. They're not exactly going to make the NY TIMES best-seller list. Hemmingway these authors are not however they may pride themselves and publishers tout them to be. The textbook is not a book students or most anyone else would read under the covers. The textbook isn't a "you gotta read it" book. The textbook isn't a book that will bring a tear to a student's eye and a pang in his or her heart and a heave in his or her chest and a sigh in his or her throat. The textbook is never a peak or memorable experience that will be life changing and stay with you throughout your life. In fact, in some educational circles readability is the antithesis of scholarship; readability is condemned as amateurishly "popular." No, the textbook is as an exciting read as the legalese of a warranty or a credit-card contract. 7. And finally, most of us use a textbook because it is the thing we academics have always done and had done to us. The students have figured out that while many professors require them to spend an outrageous amount of money either because it's the traditional thing to do or a department requirement (same difference), so many professors spend outrageously little time using or referring to it. Or, if they do, their lectures are virtual carbon copies of the textbook. How many students do you know who have aced a course without ever having buying the text? How many professors' lectures consist of reading from the textbook? To be honest, I know a bunch. 8. And finally, dare I talk about the financial investment collegiate institutions have in the survival and profitability of their bookstores? Administrators revile off-campus competition and do eveyrthing within their power to stifle if not eliminate it, some going so far as to forbid faculty from handing over reading lists to off-campus competitors. Publically they discount the internet, but privately they pull their hair out when students buy books on the internet at discount. So much for red, white, and blue American capitalistic free enterprise and free competition. They want to hold up the students by not having to hold down the prices. They sell the books at outrageous sums and then demand they be in pristine, unmarked, almost unread shape before they buy them back at outrageiously little sums. This selling and buying is such a money making business that it almost makes the business of football and basketball seem penny-ante.
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Make it a good day. --Louis-- Louis Schmier lschmier@valdosta.edu Department of History www.therandomthoughts.com Valdosta State University www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\ 912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\ / \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \ /\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\ -_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\ _ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____ |