July 2010 Newsletter |
VIEW MORE OF THE CURRICULUM Teacher's editions include everything in student texts plus supplemental materials and additional instructional suggestions that may confirm or reinforce flaws implied in student texts but not conclusively provable without more evidence.
PREVENT ABUSES OF POWER As part of official bid submissions along with the student texts, teacher's editions must meet the same high standards as the student texts because they too monopolize captive student populations and public funds purchase them.
FIX CORRUPTED ACADEMICS Politically-correct editorial staffs and writing teams may debauch teacher's as well as student editions into virtual stealth catechisms, programmed ideological drills, rhetorical-arts demos – low-hanging fruit ripe for knowledgeable purging.
STIGMATIZE BAD PEDAGOGY Petitioners should demand revision or rejection of teacher's editions whose "enrichment" activities, review exercises, and answers to student text questions reinforce half-truths, selective disinformation, and/or false editorial stereotypes.
INSURE COVERAGE OF STANDARDS Even more important than what textbook content standards say is what they mean. Citizen inspection of teacher's as well as student editions democratically checks and balances faculty textbook selection committee interpretations.
DISMISS PHONY SCENARIOS Publishers sometimes oppose displaying teacher's editions online during the approval process lest students copy off and circulate their answers to student text questions. Yet they post some teacher's editions in Texas now, and that has not occurred.
HOLD GHOSTWRITERS ACCOUNTABLE Student text authors of record do not write teacher's edition wraparounds, whose creators sometimes misinterpret the student text they supposedly supplement. Faculty textbook selection committees seldom note these discrepancies.
ECLIPSE PROFESSIONALS' JUDGMENT Teacher's editions are thus rich lodes of 2+2=5-type factual errors, most of which faculty textbook review panels also miss. Citizens who find them verify the superiority of their analyses, thereby upstaging less-credible foes:
School district: The faculty textbook selection committee says it meets course standards.
Parents: Our study was more definitive.
School district: Prove it.
Parents: We found all these 2+2=5-type factual errors which the committee overlooked. Had it checked the book as thoroughly as we, it would have caught them too.