In this week's reading of D & Z, the authors wrote about the superficial nature of textbooks. Though the books are incredibly massive and contain insane amounts of pages, the books "just scratch the surface". The books "contain too much material." The authors then delve into how detailed the textbooks by looking at a history book.
I find this incredibly ironic that D & Z talk about how dependent US schools are on the textbooks and how the textbooks are superficial. Why are US schools dependent on the books? Could it be because they are trying to appease the standards? Could it be so that students have a "fair" shot at learning many of the standards? Nawwwww....
As an aside, I think the section on what we can do to combat the horrific textbook epidemic is spot on. Teachers also control how the book is used (if at all). So we have the capability to do serious damage to this problem. Unless we are required to follow modules and use textbook resources in order to better prepare our students to do well on county issued unit tests. Then we are back at square one.
WA
Wes, I really enjoyed your comment on how powerful the teacher can be on how effective the textbook can be in a classroom. We may be forced to have a certain textbook because of our school or district, but we can use it as we see fit. No one can stop a teacher from providing his students with supplementary materials, including additional articles or handmade worksheets/notes. Nice post!
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