The major article in today’s New York Times Magazine is about how Texas dictates what students study in America’s public schools.
The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. . . . while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online — are still the backbone of education.
The Magazine article is themed around whether or not textbooks should teach that the Founders of the American Republic were Christians. Images of Jesus are Photoshopped into famous paintings. He is placed in the boat as George Washington crosses the Delaware and hovers above the Signers of the Declaration of Independence.
The article pretty much assumes — as most people still do — that what gets printed in textbooks is what our kids will be taught and learn. The question raised here is whether Jesus is in or out of the boat and Independence Hall. But as we move into the second decade of the 21st century, textbook substance has long since lost its rigor. A quick browse of the internet could inform as to what the Founders thought about faith, unaffected by what gets approved in Texas.
There is nothing new about the inadequacy and corruption of textbooks. When I taught World History in El Paso, Texas in 1961, I forbid my students to use the textbook issued to them because it was not history. It was chapters on world social issues not in chronological order. I provided a world timeline and lessons from Will Durant’s The Story of Civilization. The year I taught, a handsome textbook salesman came to town and wined and dined select, influential math teachers (all women) to seek their vote to accept his company’s textbooks for state approval. I heard gossip from ladies in El Paso math circles. Five years later, when I was working in Austin in a political campaign, I got to know a member of the Education Commission. I asked him if textbook approval was done on a “casting couch” and he said, “sure, that plays a big part.”
The section on findability in this website is devoted to describing the emergence of knowledge as it intertwingles in the online commons. There the crowd, not the couch or the zealot, determines quality and truth. The best knowledge is selected by network laws themselves. Mobiles will put this knowledge in the hands of students. As the Times article says, “technology is changing things.” Textbook arguments — and the mishmash of textbook selection history — are now moot because the online commons delivers superior knowledge.
