A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education

http://www.edutopia.org/muddle-machine

by jasonlbaptiste • 17 years ago

119 84 17 years ago

I submitted this article because it's A) interesting b) I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts here on what's wrong with the textbook industry + how to innovate or fix it.

tokenadult10• 17 years ago

Give families the power to shop by funding learners rather than schools. This is already done in the Netherlands, by per-capita enrollment payments to schools and a system of general funding to all schools, even those with religious affiliation or affiliation with a particular educational philosophy (e.g., Montessori or Waldorf). The Dutch school system gets better results for less money than the United States school system.

In the United States, some cities have tried experiments with voucher plans, which again allow families to shop for schools, and generally deliver better results at the same cost or the same results at less cost compared to the current system of local oligopoly school systems.

If learners can shop, textbooks don't have captive markets, and better textbooks will gain market share. (My basis for knowledge for this last statement is that as a homeschooling parent, I can and do buy textbooks that are MUCH superior to anything on offer in my friendly local public school system.)

dangoldin3• 17 years ago

I think it would be enlightening if you could provide the textbooks you buy. How big is the selection for textbooks for a certain subject/level. Are there a lot of smaller, independent publishers?

gustavo_duarte6• 17 years ago

Exactly.

Ultimately the problem here is extreme centralization. I don't think something as subtle, elusive, and personal as education can be done well via an enormous bureaucracy. The plague of blandness, lack of inspiration and least-common-denominator material extends well beyond textbooks. I think what you describe is the real solution, rather than a point fix for textbooks.

dhimes10• 17 years ago

per-capita enrollment payments to schools and a system of general funding to all schools

Isn't that what's done here in the states? I know the charter system caused huge political fights here in Massachusetts because, after being given a few years to get established, they began taking money from the "regular" public schools on a per-student-enrolled basis.

Many of those charter schools were consistently posting state test results that surpassed the "regular" public schools' by a wide margin. We later learned that at least some of those charter schools were exercising their freedom to kick out students for whom they felt the experiment wasn't working by return to the mainstream schools the ones who weren't doing well on their exam preparation.

So, at least here, there is an ugly side too. It is unfortunate, because the ability to experiment and determine what works the best is something we're capable of doing in the US (it's so huge). Within a reasonably short time we could probably come up with a pretty good system. I am still a fan of the charter experiment, by the way, I just have to be careful judging the evidence that I see.

Chocobean• 17 years ago

Tokenadult, I've noticed your comments with regards to education and homeschooling for a while. I don't have any children yet, but they will certainly be home-schooled to the best of my abilities.

Could I possibly correspond with you and ask you for some much appreciated advice? chocobean AT gmail.com

dhimes10• 17 years ago

I think the ultimate problem with the textbook industry is that the quality of teachers varies quite a lot and the screening process for ensuring teacher quality is, from the textbook publishers' point of view, unreliable. The textbooks are the teachers' tools and as such have to strive to be idiot-proof, because they will certainly be blamed for any shortcomings that arise[1]. Combine this with the fact that, if I read the author correctly, they are essentially in a winner-take-all game.

The solution as I see it is to work to ensure that all teachers have access to the best practices of education in their particular specialty. A huge obtacle exists, though: There is so much faddishness that it's preposterous, and these fads can attain the status of canon law among their followers (it happens in every field). They start as instruction designed by people who have the insight and talent to correct a bad classroom situation if things go wrong. But many of the people who use them do not.

[1]There is another way to look at this: Many teachers rely on the publishers' textbooks (and ancillary material) as much as the students. They are not subject experts.

dantheman• 17 years ago

Here's a classic by Feynman on textbooks: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

dangoldin3• 17 years ago

This was an interesting read - thanks for posting.

It seems the problem is rooted in the fact that some states determine the textbooks used for each district and that combined with the consolidation in the industry leads to fewer textbooks being published that all look like one another.

I think if districts had more control over the textbooks you'd see a lot more diversity in textbooks with districts choosing books based on what fit their needs most.

I think the author has some good ideas but I doubt the big publishing houses will allow the system to change as they have too much vested in it.

An out there idea may be to teach directly from Wikipedia (what the author calls the "core") and then have modules that build on top of that.

jasonlbaptiste4• 17 years ago

Well, my thought is that there's room for a new type of textbook publisher. I think the textbook industry is on the cusp of a true innovator's dilemma. LOTS of different ways to innovate here, but it would be insanely difficult. Anything worth disrupting is though.

dangoldin3• 17 years ago

I agree. The market is huge and if you can break into it it would be great. It's just insanely difficult as you said. My approach would be to target the smaller districts that can choose for themselves and focus on supplementary materials. After that I'd work my way up to the "core."

It just seems that when a state is making such a decision, it's difficult to compete as the little guy. The other publishers have a lot more money behind them and a probable lobbying effort.

You need parents to start reading the textbooks that kids have in order for changes to happen - otherwise the textbooks will just appeal to the "average."

anigbrowl3• 17 years ago

Do we need books, as such? Or, do we always need educational material to be in book form? I love books, they were my best friends in childhood. And I am a bit of a traditionalist about education - snooty about handwriting, spelling, grammar and numeracy (educated in Ireland, where the education system was design by priests).

But for learning, we are grossly underusing computers. Much educational software just looks stupid. And while India and other places are trying to focus on the idea of one laptop per child, the US is awash in expensive and bad textbooks. this points to a further slide in our future economic competitiveness.

dhimes10• 17 years ago

Fascinating and nauseating at the same time.

anigbrowl3• 17 years ago

I would have called it an educational example of what's wrong with textbooks :-) Good link though, this is a serious issue. As a european I'm horrified by most of what I see about the American school system; conservatives and liberals both seem intent on wrecking it in different ways. Examples like this make me wonder if the purpose of k-12 isn't so much to educate as to act as an obstacle course for the less fortunate. I also wonder about the price of textbooks here. I'm more familiar with college than k-12 books, but the prices here are a major scam. In Europe I can walk into a bookshop and pay about $30 for an (American) book that sells for >$100 here. Over there the academic books are almost always cheaper than the 'introduction to learning X in 24 hours for complete dummies'. In fact, I ended up owning a bunch of textbooks on subjects that interested because they were the affordable option. The first time I went looking for a CS book here in the US I nearly had a heart attack.

The problem is going to persist as long as education is a state matter but economics leads most states to play 'me-too' and go with whatever is selected in Texas. Kickbacks by academic publishers to selectors (which I hear sometimes takes place) should be prosecuted criminally. Textbooks should be certified by a panel of relevant academic associations, eg the AAAS or other well-established groups - not the 'Brand New Hisotrical Revisionism Society'. Those are just my superficial reactions, and not very good ones.

I was uncomfortably reminded of programming books by this article. There's a lot of junk out there...makes me think of how many programming books are built around things like administering a payroll system, which coincidentally involves nothing more complex than arithmetic and the most primitive kind of database. If you're a self-study sorta person like me, it's a real pain in the ass for find good tutorial material.

Remake• 17 years ago

IMHO Textbook based education is going to die. The next big thing - Game based education. Check out Quest 2 Learn School in NY

anigbrowl3• 17 years ago

The idea is good, and we all know games are a source of great UI innovation too. But the G-word is likely to be a problem for them. Most people think 'game theory' is what happens on ESPN at half time.

dasil003• 17 years ago

May I suggest http://ocw.mit.edu? I didn't go to MIT, but my computer science program was based on MIT's, and the reading list was excellent (starting with SICP of course!)

sethg• 17 years ago

I think this problem is connected to the "teacher-proof curriculum".

School administrators don't trust teachers to actually make judgements based on their professional training and what's going on in their own classrooms, so they just hand them these kits that were chosen based on the buzzwords and slick marketing brochures. Of course this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the teachers who are best able to endure this kind of spoon-feeding are the ones who do not, in fact, have good judgement.

tokenadult10• 17 years ago

That's one reason why the excellent Primary Mathematics Series developed in Singapore

http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Math_s/21.htm

is not used in more United States schools. Even though there is a United States version of that series, most school districts that have considered adopting it have rejected it, as not having built-in scripted lessons for the teachers to present. I personally find it EXTREMELY easy and intuitive to teach lessons out of that series, to very good effect, but I'm not the kind of person who goes into elementary school teaching in a government-operated school in the United States. I do teach elementary-age pupils mathematics--that is my current occupation--but I teach them subjects that would be deemed "prealgebra" and "algebra" in terms of the United States curriculum.

dhimes10• 17 years ago

I understand that home-schoolers love it, though.

ars2• 17 years ago

MCP math is better IMO. And there is no one singapore math, there are many versions of it, some better than others.

ckinnan• 17 years ago

Interesting fact that Texas, despite having lower taxes, spends more per child on public education than California.

tc2• 17 years ago

Interesting fact that, despite spending more money on public schools every year, we get steadily declining results.

jauco• 17 years ago

Do we? Who are we? And declining since when? And how much?

(honest questions, though a tad sceptical)

lnguyen• 17 years ago

Texas makes up for the lack of income tax with fairly sizable property taxes. School funding is based off that which led to the "Robin Hood" approach in equalization (aka districts in wealthier/larger tax-base areas help finance tax-poor districts).

__2• 17 years ago

Yeah, and Wyoming spends more per capita on healthcare than New York. That doesn't necessarily mean it's better.

Higher-population states can better take advantage of economies of scale. Overhead costs can be spread across a larger number of taxpayers, and for this reason alone, higher-population states will often have lower per-capita costs.

ellyagg• 17 years ago

Texas has fewer students than California, but spends the same absolute amount, so your argument doesn't apply.

davidmathers2• 17 years ago

I don't know what taxes are in Texas but I doubt they're lower than California. Because of Prop 13 California has extremely low taxes. Warren Buffett for instance pays more taxes on his $500,000 home in Nebraska than he does on his $4,000,000 home in California.

jibiki• 17 years ago

California is notorious for its high income tax: "9.3 percent on taxable income of $47,056 and above".

(From http://www.bankrate.com/brm/itax/edit/state/profiles/state_t... )

I think the relevant statistic would be tax burden per capita:

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/eco_tot_tax_bur-total-tax-b...

Texas is around half of CA.

msluyter• 17 years ago

Like a lot of other folks here, I was vastly underchallenged in jr/high school. I always figured that if I ever had kids I'd do my best to home school them, and this article reinforces that desire.

dhimes10• 17 years ago

I've observed that homeschooling is an excellent option, especially for kids in either tail of the "bell curve."

jasonlbaptiste4• 17 years ago

Btw, if anyone's interested and passionate about this sector. Well, moreso the disruption of it, feel free to drop me an email: j@jasonlbaptiste.com . Would love to continue the conversation.

gustavo_duarte6• 17 years ago

I have been spending my free time lately building what I hope will become a platform for collaboration on books and lengthier material. My immediate goal is to put out a free x86 internals / Linux kernel book, the embryo of which started as some blog posts.

I'm very interested in the sector and disruption thereof. I'm dropping you a line, but if others are interested I'm at gustavo@duartes.org.

kalid• 17 years ago

I'm also really interested in improving the state of education (I blog at http://betterexplained.com). I'm dropping you both a line [Gustavo, I think our paths have crossed before :)], but anyone can ping me at kalid@instacalc.com.

asciilifeform3• 17 years ago

> x86 internals / Linux

Why are you planning to inflict these two epic abominations on children? What have they done to you?

gregking• 17 years ago

I've designed my solution from a student's financial perspective. If you can build ideas with software and are passionate about this subject drop me a line. Rails only thanks.

builderwanted@gmail.com

dinkumthinkum• 17 years ago

I'd like to see more Great Books based curricula.But there is an argument to be made that it would not work well in mass education. However, that's the road I prefer.

edw519• 17 years ago

So what's the problem? Sounds just like how enterprise software is written.

mahmud2• 17 years ago

Children are not automated business processes.

Textbooks should have character. We all have so many cherished technical, or otherwise, textbooks as adults that we refer to them by nicknames. College-level math students often refer to "baby Rudin", and it's a rite of passage for many a mathematician. Same with GH Hardy's "Pure Course", it's just "Hardy." Why can't all other subjects have authoritative texts written by experts of the field who have excellent exposition AND .. style? taste? personality?

Ardit20• 17 years ago

Comparing college level with children seems bit much. Perhaps some children have nicknames for literature books, they are children they like tales. How exciting can maths be in grade 7!

gustavo_duarte6• 17 years ago

This was beautiful.

I'd mention the Feynman Lectures on Physics too.

davidmathers2• 17 years ago

Children are not automated business processes.

I think he was joking. Enterprise software is notorious for its awfulness.

asciilifeform3• 17 years ago

Remember Paul Graham's "Things You Can't Say?"

A lot of you here probably suspect what the real problem with education is. Everything else (such as the textbook issue) is merely a symptom of it. Hint: consider what country it appears to be almost entirely confined to, and exactly when it began. I'll leave it at that.

eru2• 17 years ago

Not so fast. We also have (some) problems with education in Germany.

asciilifeform3• 17 years ago

There are some problems with education (and anything else) everywhere. But has your country arrived at anything like the American situation, where high school is worthless as a credential (e.g. does not guarantee basic literacy) and college is the new high school?

sown• 17 years ago

B-b-but it's a free market!!

gustavo_duarte6• 17 years ago

It's not. It's grossly distorted by government interference, as explained in detail by the article.

dan_the_welder3• 17 years ago

More like lobbyist interference codified into law.

You got corporate lobbyists, you got religious lobbyists, you got idealistic lobbyists. You got lots of laws.

Could you start a text book company today? Grab the smartest grads from your local University to build a start up. Sell to the local district and grow from there?

No you can't. Too may barriers to entry. Same problem in many other industries. Intellectual property laws and copyright are mainly benefiting the existing players.

Why does everyone want to do internet startups? Because the barriers to entry are not fully locked down yet.

nl• 17 years ago

Note that this isn't _necessarily_ a bad thing. Lowest common denominator textbooks are bad if you would have got a better text book, but good if you would have got a worse one. For example, this process does protect against creation science making it into widely distributed textbooks.

I understand that supporting a system like this means students are unlikely to get the best possible text books, but I think there is a fair argument that a risk-avoidance strategy may be better in this area than to aim for the optimum (and end up with a much broader range of results).

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

mass education is, by its nature, about teaching kids with IQ's of 100. There are many better ways to teach kids with IQ's of 85- and better ways to teach kids with IQ's of 115+. But because we're more concerned with the ideal of equality than concrete results we've made many avenues illegal.

joetrumpet• 17 years ago

Do you have examples that follow this model and perform higher? I believe East Asian countries, and Finland at the least in Europe, are very rigid and have success. I'm curious to see the opposite approach too.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

it depends on how you define success. you can achieve great results with a strict system if that system is oriented towards selecting the high performing students. This is what the tiered college system in the european socialist countries is according to what I've read.

I think In america we're trying to have our cake and eat it too. We spend our time trying to make every student above average rather than orienting ourselves to the reality of education.

dhimes10• 17 years ago

I don't know where your kids are in school, but in my kids' public school this is just not the case. There are special teachers for kids with low IQs (or whatever their performance metric is), and special classes for high achievers.

nazgulnarsil3• 17 years ago

there are special classes for kids with IQ's of 70 and AP classes for kids that show a bare minimum of ability. not much of a spectrum.

christopherolah• 17 years ago

I'm working on writing an open-source math textbook. You can find it at http://christopherolah.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/math1.pdf . I'd love any feedback. It is very much a work in progress, though development will be rather slow until June...

rfreytag• 17 years ago

I think textbooks might be like software. You don't build from scratch because you are throwing out the hard won debugging that has gone into it. Here is Joel Spolsky on this topic: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

The problem is that a lot of the 'bugs' are artifacts of the political sensitivities of various target market. The textbook business is only a reflection of the nauseating educational system and the disservice it does to our children.

v4us• 17 years ago

I think, that textbooks are "junk" knowlege products. It's good when you start to study something, but not when you have a big knowlege backpack.

Think again.

A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education

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