Quote:
Originally Posted by Toughy
I wish folks would get as pissed off and upset about the 'new and improved' curriculum that is resulting in new textbooks being written courtesy of the Texas State School Board. The effects of these new textbooks will be felt across the nation. And in my mind is far more important.
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Ah! Indeed. I've worked in textbook publishing for more than 20 years. At a major house, such as Houghton Mifflin, Harcourt, Silver Burdett, the process with Texas is this:
They deliver late the info we need to get started, having lost time that could go into fact-checking and proofreading, because they've argued and argued over mundane points. It is completely political. Every bit of pedagogy is deliberated based on who it will make angry.
We start developing a textbook series, usually K-6 for me, which to give an idea of scope can have a budget of several million dollars. Several meaning, like, 20,000,000.
We race through prototyping and development, sending each stage to Texas for them to review. If one person says, gosh, I think this should be more neutral, or more "determined," or the sun on that page should "look sunnier," we run through the books again and check that the point doesn't influence anything else. Then they send it back, after the deadline we say we needed it to assure QA. (every deadline to us is missed, no question)
Then they say, No, not sunnier
that way.
Okay, I've really gone on here, but the point is that the basic problems in the process reside with the political nature of state curriculum and instruction being overseen by people who need to meet political expectations.
And besides that (!!!), every frigging book ever printed has mistakes in it. These are books that have to be broken into multiple volumes, they're so long. Page counts reach over a thousand. Yes, big errors will be found.
Sheesh, I didn't even hit Toughy's point about how TX is determining what students in NY learn, and most other places, too. TX and California are all that count in the market. You don't want to know some of the "philosophies" they wish to push forward. As TX goes, so goes the nation, in textbooks.