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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>very timely article...consider contacting the
author?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>_t</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net
href="mailto:bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net">bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A
title=bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net
href="mailto:bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net">bridging_the_divide@touchsmart.net</A>
</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, November 19, 2004 5:30
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Bridging_the_digital_divide]
incredible article!</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>[I have bolded one passage in particular, near the end, that is
critical and exactly what TouchSmart Publishing has been advocating with Open
Source Publishing.]<BR><BR>The Muddle Machine<BR>Confessions of a Texbook
Editor<BR><BR>by Tamim Ansary<BR><BR>SOME YEARS AGO, I signed on as an editor
at a major publisher of elementary and high school textbooks, filled with the
idealistic belief that I'd be working with equally idealistic authors to
create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big
Ideas.<BR><BR>Not so.<BR><BR>I got a hint of things to come when I overheard
my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I
must sign someone today!"<BR><BR>Every time a friend with kids in school tells
me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. "Who writes these
things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No
one." It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion
textbook business.<BR><BR>Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as
crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume
they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions
to advancing knowledge. In fact, most of these books fall far short of their
important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into
existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from
the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of
editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into
a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students
of all ages.<BR><BR>Welcome to the Machine<BR><BR>The first product I helped
create was a basal language arts program. The word basal refers to a
comprehensive package that includes students' textbooks for a sequence of
grades, plus associated teachers' manuals and endless workbooks, tests, answer
keys, transparencies, and other "ancillaries." My company had dominated this
market for years, but the brass felt that our flagship program was dated. They
wanted something new, built from scratch.<BR><BR>Sounds like a mandate for
innovation, right? It wasn't. We got all the language arts textbooks in use
and went through them carefully, jotting down every topic, subtopic, skill,
and subskill we could find at each grade level. We compiled these into a
master list, eliminated the redundancies, and came up with the core content of
our new textbook. Or, as I like to call it, the "chum." But wait. If every
publisher was going through this same process (and they were), how was ours to
stand out? Time to stir in a philosophy.<BR><BR>By philosophy, I mean a
pedagogical idea. These conceptual enthusiasms surge through the education
universe in waves. Textbook editors try to see the next one coming and shape
their program to embody it.<BR><BR>The new ideas are born at universities and
wash down to publishers through research papers and conferences. Textbook
editors swarm to events like the five-day International Reading Association
conference to pick up the buzz. They all run around wondering, What's the
coming thing? Is it critical thinking? Metacognition? Constructivism?
Project-based learning?<BR><BR>At those same conferences, senior editors look
for up-andcoming academics and influential educational consultants to sign as
"authors" of the textbooks that the worker bees are already putting together
back at the shop.<BR><BR>Content Lite<BR><BR>Once a philosophy has been fixed
on and added, we shape the pulp to fit key curriculum guidelines. Every state
has a prescribed compendium of what kids should learn -- tedious lists of
bulleted objectives consisting mostly of sentences like this:<BR><BR>The
student shall be provided content necessary to formulate, discuss, critique,
and review hypotheses, theories, laws, and principles and their strengths and
weaknesses.<BR><BR>If you should meet a textbook editor and he or she seems
eccentric (odd hair, facial tics, et cetera), it's because this is a person
who has spent hundreds of hours scrutinizing countless pages filled with such
action items, trying to determine if the textbook can arguably be said to
support each objective.<BR><BR>Of course, no one looks at all the state
frameworks. Arizona's guidelines? Frankly, my dear, we don't give a damn.
Rhode Island's? Pardon me while I die laughing. Some states are definitely
more important than others. More on this later.<BR><BR>Eventually, at each
grade level, the editors distill their notes into detailed outlines, a task
roughly comparable to what sixthcentury jurists in Byzantium must have faced
when they carved Justinian's Code out of the jungle of Roman law. Finally,
they divide the outline into theoretically manageable parts and assign these
to writers to flesh into sentences.<BR><BR>What comes back isn't even close to
being the book. The first project I worked on was at this stage when I
arrived. My assignment was to reduce a stack of pages 17 inches high, supplied
by 40 writers, to a 3-inch stack that would sound as if it had all come from
one source. The original text was just ore. A few of the original words
survived, I suppose, but no whole sentences.<BR><BR>To avoid the unwelcome
appearance of originality at this stage, editors send their writers voluminous
guidelines. I am one of these writers, and this summer I wrote a 10-page story
for a reading program. The guideline for the assignment, delivered to me in a
three-ring binder, was 300 pages long.<BR><BR>Bon Appétit<BR><BR>with so much
at stake, how did we get into this mess?<BR><BR>With so much at stake, how did
we get into this turgid mess? In the '80s and '90s, a feeding frenzy broke out
among publishing houses as they all fought to swallow their competitors.
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich bought Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Houghton Mifflin
bought D.C. Heath and Co. McGraw-Hill bought Macmillan. Silver Burdett bought
Ginn -- or was it Ginn that bought Silver? It doesn't matter, because soon
enough both were devoured by Prentice Hall, which in turn was gobbled up by
Simon & Schuster.<BR><BR>Then, in the late '90s, even bigger corporations
began circling. Almost all the familiar textbook brands of yore vanished or
ended up in the bellies of just four big sharks: Pearson, a British company;
Vivendi Universal, a French firm; Reed Elsevier, a British-Dutch concern; and
McGraw-Hill, the lone American-owned textbook conglomerate.<BR><BR>This
concentration of money and power caused dramatic changes. In 1974, there were
22 major basal reading programs; now there are 5 or 6. As the number of basals
(in all subject areas) shrank, so did editorial staffs. Many downsized editors
floated off and started "development houses," private firms that contract with
educational publishers to deliver chunks of programs. They hire freelance
managers to manage freelance editors to manage teams of freelance writers to
produce text that skeleton crews of development-house executives sent on to
publishing-house executives, who then pass it on to various committees for
massaging.<BR><BR>A few years ago, I got an assignment from a development
house to write a lesson on a particular reading skill. The freelance editor
sent me the corresponding lessons from our client's three major competitors.
"Here's what the other companies are doing," she told me. "Cover everything
they do, only better." I had to laugh: I had written (for other development
houses) all three of the lessons I was competing with.<BR><BR>The Cruelest
Month<BR><BR>In textbook publishing, April is the cruelest month. That's when
certain states announce which textbooks they're adopting. When it comes to
setting the agenda for textbook publishing, only the 22 states that have a
formal adoption process count. The other 28 are irrelevant -- even though they
include populous giants like New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio -- because they
allow all publishers to come in and market programs directly to local school
districts.<BR><BR>Adoption states, by contrast, buy new textbooks on a regular
cycle, usually every six years, and they allow only certain programs to be
sold in their state. They draw up the list at the beginning of each cycle, and
woe to publishers that fail to make that list, because for the next 72 months
they will have zero sales in that state.<BR><BR>Among the adoption states,
Texas, California, and Florida have unrivaled clout. Yes, size does matter.
Together, these three have roughly 13 million students in K-12 public schools.
The next 18 adoption states put together have about 12.7 million. Though the
Big Three have different total numbers of students, they each spend about the
same amount of money on textbooks. For the current school year, they budgeted
more than $900 million for instructional materials, more than a quarter of all
the money that will be spent on textbooks in the nation.<BR><BR>Obviously,
publishers create products specifically for the adoptions in those three key
states. They then sell the same product to everybody else, because basals are
very expensive to produce -- a K-8 reading program can cost as much as $60
million. Publishers hope to recoup the costs of a big program from the sudden
gush of money in a big adoption state, then turn a profit on the subsequent
trickle from the "open territories." Those that fail to make the list in
Texas, California, or Florida are stuck recouping costs for the next six
years. Strapped for money to spend on projects for the next adoption period,
they're likely to fail again. As the cycle grows vicious, they turn into lunch
meat.<BR><BR>Don’t Mess with Texas<BR><BR>The big three adoption states are
not equal, however. In that elite trio, Texas rules. California has more
students (more than 6 million versus just over 4 million in Texas), but Texas
spends just as much money (approximately $42 billion) on its public schools.
More important, Texas allocates a dedicated chunk of funds specifically for
textbooks. That money can't be used for anything else, and all of it must be
spent in the adoption year. Furthermore, Texas has particular power when it
comes to high school textbooks, since California adopts statewide only for
textbooks from kindergarten though 8th grade, while the Lone Star State's
adoption process applies to textbooks from kindergarten through 12th
grade.<BR><BR>If you're creating a new textbook, therefore, you start by
scrutinizing Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). This document is
drawn up by a group of curriculum experts, teachers, and political insiders
appointed by the 15 members of the Texas Board of Education, currently 5
Democrats and 10 Republicans, about half of whom have a background in
education. TEKS describes what Texas wants and what the entire nation will
therefore get.<BR><BR>Texas is truly the tail that wags the dog. There is,
however, a tail that wags this mighty tail. Every adoption state allows
private citizens to review textbooks and raise objections. Publishers must
respond to these objections at open hearings.<BR><BR>In the late '60s a Texas
couple, Mel and Norma Gabler, figured out how to use their state's adoption
hearings to put pressure on textbook publishers. The Gablers had no academic
credentials or teaching background, but they knew what they wanted
taught--phonics, sexual abstinence, free enterprise, creationism, and the
primacy of Judeo-Christian values--and considered themselves in a battle
against a "politically correct degradation of academics." Expert organizers,
the Gablers possessed a flair for constructing arguments out of the language
of official curriculum guidelines. The Longview, Texas-based nonprofit
corporation they founded 43 years ago, Educational Research Analysts,
continues to review textbooks and lobby against liberal content in
textbooks.<BR><BR>The Gablers no longer appear in person at adoption hearings,
but through workshops, books, and how-to manuals, they trained a whole
generation of conservative Christian activists to carry on their
work.<BR><BR>Citizens also pressure textbook companies at California adoption
hearings. These objections come mostly from such liberal organizations as
Norman Lear's People for the American Way, or from individual citizens who
look at proposed textbooks when they are on display before adoption in 30
centers around the state. Concern in California is normally of the politically
correct sort -- objections, for example, to such perceived gaffes as using the
word Indian instead of Native American. To make the list in California, books
must be scrupulously stereotype free: No textbook can show African Americans
playing sports, Asians using computers, or women taking care of children.
Anyone who stays in textbook publishing long enough develops radar for what
will and won't get past the blanding process of both the conservative and
liberal watchdogs.<BR><BR>Responding to citizens' objections in adoption
hearings is a delicate art. Publishers learn never to confront the assumptions
behind an objection. That just causes deeper criticism. For example, a health
textbook I worked on had a picture of a girl on a windy beach. One concerned
citizen believed he could detect the outlines of the girl's underwear through
her dress. Our response: She's at the beach, so that's her bathing suit. It
worked.<BR><BR>A social studies textbook was attacked because a full-page
photograph showed a large family gathered around a dinner table. The
objection? They looked like Arabs. Did we rise up indignantly at this
un-American display of bias? We did not. Instead, we said that the family was
Armenian. It worked.<BR><BR>Of course, publishers prefer to face no objections
at all. That's why going through a major adoption, especially a Texas
adoption, is like earning a professional certificate in textbook editing.
Survivors just know things.<BR><BR>What do they know?<BR><BR>Mainly, they know
how to censor themselves. Once, I remember, an editorial group was discussing
literary selections to include in a reading anthology. We were about to agree
on one selection when someone mentioned that the author of this piece had
drawn a protest at a Texas adoption because he had allegedly belonged to an
organization called One World Council, rumored to be a "Communist
front."<BR><BR>At that moment, someone pointed out another story that fit our
criteria. Without further conversation, we chose that one and moved on. Only
in retrospect did I realize we had censored the first story based on rumors of
allegations. Our unspoken thinking seemed to be, If even the most unlikely
taint existed, the Gablers would find it, so why take a
chance?<BR><BR>Self-censorship like this goes unreported because we the
censors hardly notice ourselves doing it. In that room, none of us said no to
any story. We just converged around a different story. The dangerous author,
incidentally, was celebrated bestselling science fiction writer Isaac
Asimov.<BR><BR>Turn the Page<BR><BR>There's no quick, simple fix for the
blanding of American textbooks, but several steps are key to reform.<BR><BR>#
Revamp our funding mechanisms to <B>let teachers assemble their own curricula
from numerous individual sources instead of forcing them to rely on single
comprehensive packages from national textbook factories. </B>We can't have a
different curriculum in every classroom, of course, but surely there's a way
to achieve coherence without stultification.<BR><BR>with so much at stake, how
did we get into this mess?<BR><BR># Reduce basals to reference books -- slim
core texts that set forth as clearly as a dictionary the essential skills and
information to be learned at each grade level in each subject. In content
areas like history and science, the core texts would be like
mini-encyclopedias, fact-checked by experts in the field and then reviewed by
master teachers for scope and sequence.<BR><BR>Dull? No, because these cores
would not be the actual instructional material students would use. They would
be analogous to operating systems in the world of software. If there are only
a few of these and they're pretty similar, it's OK. Local districts and
classroom teachers would receive funds enabling them to assemble their own
constellations of lessons and supporting materials around the core texts,
purchased not from a few behemoths but from hundreds of smaller publishing
houses such as those that currently supply the supplementarytextbook
industry.<BR><BR># Just as software developers create applications for
particular operating systems, textbook developers should develop materials
that plug into the core texts. Small companies and even individuals who see a
niche could produce a module to fill it. None would need $60 million to break
even. Imagine, for example, a world-history core. One publisher might produce
a series of historical novellas by a writer and a historian working together
to go with various places and periods in history. Another might create a map
of the world, software that animates at the click of a mouse to show political
boundaries swelling, shrinking, and shifting over hundreds of years. Another
might produce a board game that dramatizes the connections between trade and
cultural diffusion. Hundreds of publishers could compete to produce lessons
that fulfill some aspect of the core text, the point of reference.<BR><BR>The
intellect, dedication, and inventiveness of textbook editors, abundant
throughout the industry but often stifled and underappreciated, would be
unleashed with -- I predict -- extraordinary results for teachers and
students.<BR><BR>Bundling selections from this forest of material to create
curriculum packages might itself emerge as a job description in educational
publishing.<BR><BR>The possibilities are endless. And shouldn't endless
possibility be the point?<BR><BR>Tamim Ansary, a columnist for Encarta.com and
author of West of Kabul and East of New York, has written 38 nonfiction books
for children. He was an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich for nine years and
has written for Houghton Mifflin, McDougall Littell, Prentice Hall, and many
other textbook publishers. Write to
edit@edutopia.com.<BR><BR>http://www.edutopia.org/magazine/ed1article.php?id=art_1195&issue=nov_04<BR><BR><?fontfamily><?param Helvetica><?smaller>---<BR><BR>Jason
Barkeloo<BR>President<BR>TouchSmart Publishing<BR>6522 Waldorf
Place<BR>Cincinnati, OH 45230<BR>http://www.touchsmart.net<BR>t:
513.225.8765<BR>f: 206.666.4856<BR><BR>This electronic mail (email)
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<P></P>_______________________________________________<BR>Bridging_the_divide
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