This link has been bookmarked by 76 people . It was first bookmarked on 22 Apr 2008, by William Ferriter.
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Mr MaherA must-read article for anyone considering the purchase of a textbook. Unlike Bismarck's observation regarding legislation, you should know how this stuff is made.
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Cassy TurnerRT @K12NN: RT @CPCEducation Time for a Major Overall of Textbook Publishing: Too Much Corporate & Political Influence http://bit.ly/CAHu ...
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turgid
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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.
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Gustavo LacerdaAbout writing K-12 textbooks in the USA:
<< 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!"
Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks -
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03 Dec 09
Brian YearlingJust a great article about the politics of educational publishing.
edutopia publishing teaching learning textbook education textbooks
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A Textbook Example of What's Wrong with Education
<!-- print authors -->A former schoolbook editor parses the politics of educational publishing.
by Tamim Ansary
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Comments(38) 
Comment RSS Some years ago, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary school 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.
Not so.
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!"
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.
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.
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A SThousands of articles, videos, slide shows, expert interviews, blog entries, and other resources highlight success stories in K-12 education. Core concepts include integrated studies, project learning,technology integration, teacher development, social an
imported Bookmarks_Menu education textbooks publishing books learning censorship
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24 Feb 09
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"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?"
Such things indicate that the American educational machinery fallen into the hands of couple of perverted business men who followed the model of Balam for rewards (awards).
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This is one of the BIG reasons I decided to homeschool this year. Sometimes it wasn't what about what WAS in the textbooks, it was about what WASN'T in the textbooks. Students are being presented with a very sterilized, postmodern fantasy education.
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As a former textbook editor (really more writer) for a Texas-based published that has long since been gobbled up--multiple times--by bigger publishers, I can vouch for the accuracy of Ansary's comments.
One factor he failed to mention that I saw at work at the company where I worked was the disastrous effect the ascendancy of the bean-counters in the late 1970s and early 1980s had on textbook quality. Everything began to revolve around products that had to be conceived, planned, written and published within the calendar year. Long-range planning went out the window; finding competent authors went out the window; and the whole business frankly went to hell in a handbasket.
So I went free-lance and wrote for the developers and the few publishers who (then) still things themselves.
No more. I have an honest job now.
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31 Jul 08
Cherice MontgomeryArticle that describes the K-12 textbook publishing industry from an insider's perspective
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19 Jul 08
Scott KahlerThe Muddle Machine: Confessions of a Textbook Editor
An exposé of the politics of educational publishing. -
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endolith -An exposé of the politics of educational publishing. by Tamim Ansary
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Mark GearyI signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary school 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 Id
books publishing libm205 literacy freetextbooks Free Textbooks
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09 May 08
Mark SpahrInsight into the process of writing and publishing textbooks
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26 Apr 08
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Colleen WainwrightA fascinating--and horrifying, if you care at all about education--look at how the books schools use to teach your kids get made. Corporate greed, pandering to special interest groups, lowest-common-denominator thinking: all your favorite characters on p
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15 Jan 08
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William FerriterAn interesting look into how textbooks are assembled. And why do we use these things in our teaching?
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