A Dumbed-Down Textbook Is "A Textbook for All Students"
A Dumbed-Down Textbook Is
"A Textbook for All Students"
William J. Bennetta
James A. Michener is well known today as a prolific American novelist and essayist, but sixty years ago he spent some time working as a schoolbook editor. A short recollection of that experience appears in his book This Noble Land, which was issued in 1996 by Random House:
[I was working for] one of the premier New York publishing companies, Macmillan, where I helped produce textbooks in a variety of subjects for use in schools across the nation. While I was at Macmillan, a radical new discipline began to dominate the writing of schoolbooks. A highly regarded educator and psychologist, Edward Lee Thorndike, compiled a list of words and the frequencies with which they occurred in everyday American life: newspapers, popular books, advertisements, etc. From these basic data, he published a list, sharply restricted, which he said ought to determine whether a specific word should be used in writing for children. If, for example, the word take received his approval, use it in schoolbooks. If discredit did not appear on his list, don't use it, for to do so would make the books too difficult for children.
We editors worked under the tyranny of that list, and we even boasted in the promotional literature for our textbooks that they conformed to the Thorndike List. In my opinion, however, this was the beginning of the continuing process known as "dumbing down the curriculum." Before Thorndike I had helped publish a series of successful textbooks in which I had used a very wide vocabulary, but when I was restricted by Thorndike, what I had once helped write as a book suitable for students in the sixth grade gradually became a book intended for grades seven through eight. Texts originally for the middle grades began to be certified as being appropriate for high school students, and what used to be a high school text appeared as a college text. The entire educational process was watered down, level by level.
That endeavor has been continued, off and on, in the time since Michener toiled at Macmillan, and it recently has resurged with special virulence. Major schoolbook companies are making their books dumber than ever, because they perceive that there is a big, ready market for such products. The market is provided by schools where "education" consists chiefly of submerging students in feel-good pastimes, furnishing students with easy successes, and ensuring that even the laziest and the worst-prepared students will seem to be doing well.
Publishers usually avoid admitting to their complicity in such skulduggery, but a candid acknowledgment was offered last year by Glenn Gordon, a textbook salesman employed by Harcourt General Inc. (Harcourt General's textbook-publishing subsidiaries include Holt, Rinehart and Winston.) Speaking about today's schoolbooks, Gordon said this to a reporter for The Seattle Times:
Absolutely they've been dumbed down. I think what we've heard a lot of, throughout the country, is that there needed to be an image of American students doing well. In order for us to show them as being smarter, let's dummy down what we're teaching them. You'll appear to be smarter, even though you're not. [See "Textbooks Too Easy, Too Dull, Experts Say," by Nancy Montgomery, in The Seattle Times for 3 March 1996.]
In its heaviest and most pernicious form, the dumbing down of high-school books comprises four interlocking processes. The first is the elimination or dilapidation of concepts that may require a student to expend mental effort: Such concepts are excised entirely, or they are reduced to little heaps of factoids. Next comes the process that Michener saw sixty years ago and that is still going on -- the reduction and impoverishment of vocabulary. Then comes the ostensible simplification of style, effected partly through the suppression of compound or complex sentences. This process often requires that logical connections be destroyed for the sake of ensuring that sentences will be simple and short. Finally comes the replacement of written material by pictures -- pictures which, as often as not, are mere decorations.
Sometimes a dumbing-down operation is carried out gradually, over several successive versions of the book in question. Sometimes it is carried out abruptly, as in the recent case of Glencoe World Geography. (See the review in TTL for September-October 1996.) Either way, heavy dumbing down has the effect of turning high-school books into products which, if they have any value at all, may be appropriate for middle-school students.
Dumbing down is also obvious in some of the brand-new books that are being produced nowadays -- books that haven't existed in any earlier versions. A notable example here is Biology: A Community Context, a new, dumbed-down product issued by South-Western Educational Publishing (Cincinnati, Ohio). In my judgment, Biology: A Community Context has exceptional merit as a middle-school book and would be a fine choice for use in a middle-school life-science class. South-Western, however, is selling it as a high-school biology book. This strikes me as a sad joke.
South-Western is also promoting a pair of newly created books titled Science Probe I and Science Probe II, which allegedly represent a two-year course in "coordinated science" for high-school students. These books have been so grossly dumbed down that, in most respects, they are indistinguishable from books that the major publishers have been selling, during the past ten years or so, as middle-school texts. The Science Probe books are not even suitable for use in middle schools, however, because the "biology" that they provide has been purged of the principle of organic evolution, the central organizing principle of the biology of the 20th century. South-Western is evidently pandering to the creationists, and these dumbed-down Science Probe books have also been dumbed back -- back to the 1500s. No honest teacher would consider using them.
In the past few years, the demand for dumbed-down books has increased because many schools have abandoned the strategy of grouping students according to their abilities. Instead, these schools indiscriminately mix together, in the same courses and the same classrooms, students who vary widely in their talents, intellectual capacities, goals, and states of preparation. As far as I am aware, no one has been able to suggest that this practice serves any educational purpose (by which I mean a purpose that can pass the straight-face test). As far as I know, this fad is based entirely on a political construct which -- in the name of social equality -- prescribes that all students must be reduced to the level of the least able students, and that the brightest and best-prepared students should be hobbled and handicapped.
Be that as it may, this much is certain: When students who have vastly different capacities are randomly mixed together in the same classroom, the teacher must choose textbooks and other instructional materials that even the slowest and worst-prepared students may be able to use. This is impelling schoolbook-publishers to perform new feats of dumbing down and to produce books that plainly have been designed for dimwits. The books are quite unfit for use by capable students, and capable students are very badly served when they are made to use such books -- but never mind that. All that matters is that everybody is using the same book, so everybody is equal to everybody else.
Of course, schoolbook companies can't promote these books by saying outright that the books are aimed at backward students and dullards, so some companies have taken to using a code-phrase. The phrase is all students , as in "This is a book for all students." Knowing that all students means the least capable and worst-prepared students can be useful when one is talking with a schoolbook salesman or reading a publisher's promotional claims.
William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes frequently about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.
"A Textbook for All Students"
William J. Bennetta
James A. Michener is well known today as a prolific American novelist and essayist, but sixty years ago he spent some time working as a schoolbook editor. A short recollection of that experience appears in his book This Noble Land, which was issued in 1996 by Random House:
[I was working for] one of the premier New York publishing companies, Macmillan, where I helped produce textbooks in a variety of subjects for use in schools across the nation. While I was at Macmillan, a radical new discipline began to dominate the writing of schoolbooks. A highly regarded educator and psychologist, Edward Lee Thorndike, compiled a list of words and the frequencies with which they occurred in everyday American life: newspapers, popular books, advertisements, etc. From these basic data, he published a list, sharply restricted, which he said ought to determine whether a specific word should be used in writing for children. If, for example, the word take received his approval, use it in schoolbooks. If discredit did not appear on his list, don't use it, for to do so would make the books too difficult for children.
We editors worked under the tyranny of that list, and we even boasted in the promotional literature for our textbooks that they conformed to the Thorndike List. In my opinion, however, this was the beginning of the continuing process known as "dumbing down the curriculum." Before Thorndike I had helped publish a series of successful textbooks in which I had used a very wide vocabulary, but when I was restricted by Thorndike, what I had once helped write as a book suitable for students in the sixth grade gradually became a book intended for grades seven through eight. Texts originally for the middle grades began to be certified as being appropriate for high school students, and what used to be a high school text appeared as a college text. The entire educational process was watered down, level by level.
That endeavor has been continued, off and on, in the time since Michener toiled at Macmillan, and it recently has resurged with special virulence. Major schoolbook companies are making their books dumber than ever, because they perceive that there is a big, ready market for such products. The market is provided by schools where "education" consists chiefly of submerging students in feel-good pastimes, furnishing students with easy successes, and ensuring that even the laziest and the worst-prepared students will seem to be doing well.
Publishers usually avoid admitting to their complicity in such skulduggery, but a candid acknowledgment was offered last year by Glenn Gordon, a textbook salesman employed by Harcourt General Inc. (Harcourt General's textbook-publishing subsidiaries include Holt, Rinehart and Winston.) Speaking about today's schoolbooks, Gordon said this to a reporter for The Seattle Times:
Absolutely they've been dumbed down. I think what we've heard a lot of, throughout the country, is that there needed to be an image of American students doing well. In order for us to show them as being smarter, let's dummy down what we're teaching them. You'll appear to be smarter, even though you're not. [See "Textbooks Too Easy, Too Dull, Experts Say," by Nancy Montgomery, in The Seattle Times for 3 March 1996.]
In its heaviest and most pernicious form, the dumbing down of high-school books comprises four interlocking processes. The first is the elimination or dilapidation of concepts that may require a student to expend mental effort: Such concepts are excised entirely, or they are reduced to little heaps of factoids. Next comes the process that Michener saw sixty years ago and that is still going on -- the reduction and impoverishment of vocabulary. Then comes the ostensible simplification of style, effected partly through the suppression of compound or complex sentences. This process often requires that logical connections be destroyed for the sake of ensuring that sentences will be simple and short. Finally comes the replacement of written material by pictures -- pictures which, as often as not, are mere decorations.
Sometimes a dumbing-down operation is carried out gradually, over several successive versions of the book in question. Sometimes it is carried out abruptly, as in the recent case of Glencoe World Geography. (See the review in TTL for September-October 1996.) Either way, heavy dumbing down has the effect of turning high-school books into products which, if they have any value at all, may be appropriate for middle-school students.
Dumbing down is also obvious in some of the brand-new books that are being produced nowadays -- books that haven't existed in any earlier versions. A notable example here is Biology: A Community Context, a new, dumbed-down product issued by South-Western Educational Publishing (Cincinnati, Ohio). In my judgment, Biology: A Community Context has exceptional merit as a middle-school book and would be a fine choice for use in a middle-school life-science class. South-Western, however, is selling it as a high-school biology book. This strikes me as a sad joke.
South-Western is also promoting a pair of newly created books titled Science Probe I and Science Probe II, which allegedly represent a two-year course in "coordinated science" for high-school students. These books have been so grossly dumbed down that, in most respects, they are indistinguishable from books that the major publishers have been selling, during the past ten years or so, as middle-school texts. The Science Probe books are not even suitable for use in middle schools, however, because the "biology" that they provide has been purged of the principle of organic evolution, the central organizing principle of the biology of the 20th century. South-Western is evidently pandering to the creationists, and these dumbed-down Science Probe books have also been dumbed back -- back to the 1500s. No honest teacher would consider using them.
In the past few years, the demand for dumbed-down books has increased because many schools have abandoned the strategy of grouping students according to their abilities. Instead, these schools indiscriminately mix together, in the same courses and the same classrooms, students who vary widely in their talents, intellectual capacities, goals, and states of preparation. As far as I am aware, no one has been able to suggest that this practice serves any educational purpose (by which I mean a purpose that can pass the straight-face test). As far as I know, this fad is based entirely on a political construct which -- in the name of social equality -- prescribes that all students must be reduced to the level of the least able students, and that the brightest and best-prepared students should be hobbled and handicapped.
Be that as it may, this much is certain: When students who have vastly different capacities are randomly mixed together in the same classroom, the teacher must choose textbooks and other instructional materials that even the slowest and worst-prepared students may be able to use. This is impelling schoolbook-publishers to perform new feats of dumbing down and to produce books that plainly have been designed for dimwits. The books are quite unfit for use by capable students, and capable students are very badly served when they are made to use such books -- but never mind that. All that matters is that everybody is using the same book, so everybody is equal to everybody else.
Of course, schoolbook companies can't promote these books by saying outright that the books are aimed at backward students and dullards, so some companies have taken to using a code-phrase. The phrase is all students , as in "This is a book for all students." Knowing that all students means the least capable and worst-prepared students can be useful when one is talking with a schoolbook salesman or reading a publisher's promotional claims.
William J. Bennetta is a professional editor, a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, the president of The Textbook League, and the editor of The Textbook Letter. He writes frequently about the propagation of quackery, false "science" and false "history" in schoolbooks.
posted by Rev. Dr. Eric Z. Willman at 6:02 PM
4 Comments:
You know Eric, back before the internet became popular, I would have agreed with this idea that education was being purposely downgraded to fit an agenda. In fact, I was quite sure of it. However, the internet has completely changed my perspective. The reason is because it has given me a very large sampling of how a great many people think and process information, and through that I have seen that the problem with the educational system is not any sinister plot, but rather the natural result of the flawed idea of trying to educate everyone.
You see, the reason we used to have one of the best educational systems in the world, was because education was available to everyone, but it was not mandatory. If you wanted to drop out of school to work on a farm, or go to work in a factory, you were free to do that. If you ended up sticking through all the way to go to college, it wasn't because it was societal requirement in order to get work, it was because you had a desire to learn. It was because you had the necessary mental capacity and inclination to seek more knowledge.
The process of being educated, is the process of constantly admitting how ignorant you really are. Unfortunately, most people would rather think they know something, than actually learn how ignorant they really are, which is the problem with trying to educate them. Don't believe me? Pick any subject at all. It really doesn't matter which subject it is, just pick one. Now, go get some books, and really research it for about a month. Make sure you know your research material backwards and forwards, and have a good grounding in the subject matter, and understand what you are talking about. Now, go on the internet, and check out some sites and forums devoted to that subject matter.
The first thing you will invariably notice, is that there are a bunch of people discussing the subject matter. They are all obviously capable of reading and writing, and all have access to the largest information net on the planet, and all have an expressed interest in that subject. However, the second thing you will notice is that they are all significantly less informed about the subject than you are after your paltry month of research, while simultaneously being far more certain of their mastery of the subject matter In fact, it will probably be pretty apparent that they are not even fully versed in just the information presented on the very site where they are posting. The third thing you will notice is a distinct hostility towards anyone entering this forum with any new information that calls into question any of the accepted conclusions of the group. These conclusions will usually be defended by a Byzantine system of poorly thought out rationalizations, and misremebered half truths from dubious sources, mixed with emotional appeals and attacks.
You see, the problem is that your average person, prole, peasant, drone, whatever you prefer to call them, is capable of learning skills, like reading and writing, but is not capable of synthesizing conclusions from multiple sources. They can only parrot back the information they have read, not being able to critically compare and contrast it with other sources. As such, they just pick the story that the like best for whatever emotional or aesthetic reason, and decide that one is "right." so, what you get is just an imperfectly remembered shadow of one person's thesis being parroted back again, with no critical evaluation applied, and no possibility of further evaluation, because now they have been educated, so they are positive they can't be ignorant on the subject. As such, you either agree with them, or you are wrong, as far as they see it. The more information you bring to bear to defend your position, the more desperate you appear to them, because to their mind you are just flailing around trying to support your incorrect conclusion.
This is why, quite frankly, these people never should have been taught to read and write to begin with. They are incapable of being truly educated, because they are incapable of actually learning. More to the point, they are perfectly capable of continuing through life without ever being educated, so why waste the resources on trying to force them to do something they are not ever going to be able to do?
And that is where we get back to our educational system. You see, there are very few, if any, subjects where there is clearly one correct 'answer.' Most courses of study lead to a morass of conflicting information and competing theories, where you must ultimately admit that there is no absolute way to know the answer, so you must admit to a certain level of ignorance, and just form the best theory you can from the available information. This is, unfortunately, anathema to the cognitive expectations of the common man. From their perspective, if you are going to spend 16 years going to school, you had better come out being an expert who knows some shit, not come out even less sure than you were going in.
As we, as a society, have decided to take an egalitarian approach to education, and try to rid it of any tinges of elitism, we have had to tailor our educational system to accommodate the mindset of the average man, which means rather than arming them with the tools to evaluate information, as was originally the purpose of education, we instead have to move towards predigesting the information for them, and providing them with ready-made facts, for them to learn, so that they can now feel they know something. What is worse, is that as you push more people through the system, you need more teachers, which means you push more and more toward the median intelligence even among educators, and thus start getting teachers who, just like their students, are more concerned with being right than being educated. The end result is an ever deepening vortex of stupidity, not out of malice, or born of some agenda, but out of sheer necessity to keep the system running.
At least that I my theory.
Oh, by the way, I should also say that I do not mean to imply that there isn't also a governmental plot to indoctrinate children! I am just saying that the indoctrination is not the cause of the poor quality of education. The two are not hand in hand. You could just as well give people a decent education while indoctrinating them, just look at China.
If you are interested, learn more from this site. Sadly there are intermixed articles by tiresome anti-communists who believe that some of our educational institutions are following a soviet educational program, which may or may not be true but I for one am truly tired of the red scare since russia collapsed and basically disregard that stuff. There's also the occasional religious individual with their possibly irational fears about the erosion of traditional values, however, a scan of the brief introductory text to the articles will quickly reveal which are of interest to you and many here are of excellent informational quality. Please educate yourself as you see fit:
http://www.americandeception.com/index.php?page=usercat&catid=9
~Eric
See, here is my problem with all of this. Time and time again, articles, books, and web sites like this focus on the methodology, intent, and motivation behind the educational system. Now that is a perfectly valid area of criticism, but it doesn’t touch on why people are so ignorant. Sure, there is plenty of room to question why they teach what they teach, and where the methods come from. Sure, it is important to question the purpose of the educational system. Yeah, if they are going to teach moral lessons, then you have to ask who decides which morals are going to be taught, but in my opinion all of that is secondary to the bigger issue of actual educational content.
What I mean by that is that while I understand the concern about the more subtle agendas of how they are teaching students, I think that pales in comparison to the fact that they are just plain teaching them incorrect information. For example, just about everything you ever learned in a school history class, is just plain wrong. Name any major historical event, and if you do any research at all, you will quickly find out that the version of the event presented in a textbook is just fundamentally inaccurate. Absolutely everything ever taught in a civics or government class is a complete fabrication. I don’t know if our government ever functioned the way it is taught in school, but I am quite sure it doesn’t function even remotely like that today. Most of the science you they teach is just incorrect. For the most part, it is based on 20 -100 year-old theories that weren’t even universally accepted back when they were popular, and are considered quaint remnants of the past today.
Sure, you can argue that these inaccuracies are the result of the aforementioned agendas, but even then, you are fighting the wrong thing. Which do you think is easier to combat, a factual content inaccuracy, or a sinister cabal reaching to the very highest levels of government and involving multinational interests? Seriously, whether or not you think it is all the result of some big conspiracy, you would be better served focusing on the content. No matter what the reason for the content error, whether deliberate or simply the result of incompetence, it can be easily shown to be in error through simple research. If people spent less time worrying about why their children were being taught something, and more time worrying about what it was they were actually being taught, then it would be much less of an issue. For example, look at the rather straightforward issue of whether the civil war was about slavery. Now, you could question the motivation of teaching that, and go on about how all the textbooks are written in New York, and talk about Federalist agendas, and northern revisionism, and generally make yourself sound like a paranoid crazy person, or you could simply point out that the cessionist movement predated the Emancipation Proclamation, and that the Lee family had been attempting to outlaw slavery in the Virginia colony back before the US was even a country, while the Grant family owned slaves up until the day of the Emancipation Proclamation. Which do you really think is going to get more traction?
By the same token, it cracks me up when I see both sides of idiots trying to argue the motivations behind teaching Darwinism as a fact, where one side tries to say that the Bible is just as valid a theory as Darwinism, since it is just a theory, and the other side tries to say that Darwinism is a completely indisputably theory. The truth of the matter, of course, is that one of the biggest scientific debates of 20th century, was the war between Darwinian evolution and Lamarckian evolution. The joke in all this being that modern genetics research is showing us that perhaps Lamarckian evolution, as ridiculed as it was, may in fact have been closer to the truth than Darwin’s model. Of course, neither of the theories really has much relevance in light of what we now know about the complex bidirectional relationship between genetics and environment. But never mind that, because what everybody is so sure is the important part is the motivation of science vs. religion.
I often wonder if both sides of these sorts of debates aren’t really in it together? Waste everyone’s time and attention on useless sideshows about moral values and political agendas, all the while continuing to just ram our kids through school teaching them easy to remember and regurgitate fairy tales, so that they can get their degree and get in the workforce without ever having to be challenged or actually learn anything. It strikes me as I write this, that perhaps no one actually wants to fix the system, because they realize at some gut level that if we had a real educational system, then someone would have to deal with being told their child was just plain stupid. Better to keep the bar low, so everyone is special at something, while continuing irresolvable arguments about vague values and agendas. Of course there I’ve gotten sucked into the trap, and am postulating my own theories about motivation.
Seriously though, instead of putting all this effort into fighting theories and methodologies, why don’t these people instead devote their time to just making sure the damned classes are factually correct? No matter what spin or dogma you attach to the material, as long as it is factually correct, any smart person will come to their own conclusions. The stupid ones? Well, they are going to end up following someone, and unquestioningly believing some load of crap no matter what you do, that is their job as stupid people. Really you are just arguing over which slaughterhouse gets the sheep. That is why I say you shouldn’t even bother educating them. You are just wasting your time.
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