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From: barb@oliveb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.books,net.sci
Subject: Re: school textbooks
Message-ID: <849@oliveb.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-May-86 19:54:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: oliveb.849
Posted: Thu May 15 19:54:07 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 18-May-86 14:37:40 EDT
References: <1811@mtgzz.UUCP> <244@uw-vlsi.ARPA> <181@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> <422@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
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Xref: linus net.books:3407 net.sci:557

On textbooks, and their perceived lower than lowest common denominator 
quality ...

An interesting read is a writer's point of view on the textbook process.  Go to
your library (or your bookshelves) and find the April 1986 edition of
WRITER'S DIGEST.  The last article is "A Perfect Day for Broccoli
Spears -or- Learning the Way Through the Never-Never Land of Textbook Taboos"
by Pat Zettner.  On the one hand it's hilarious.  On the other it's highly
disturbing.  To quote a disremembered person:  "Vanilla is fine -- if you
haven't tasted chocolate, or strawberry..."  The problem here, they are
so afraid of offending someone, you're lucky if you get vanilla.  [Oh,
sorry, I'm not supposed to mention ice cream at all -- unapproved junk food,
you know.]

Solutions?  Encourage your children to read at home.  Don't limit them
to the textbook environment.  I would say that most of my education came
from extracurricular inhaling of the printed word.  The classroom is not
the only realm of learning -- indeed, it SHOULD be a minor realm.

There _is_ room for improvement.  But the current situation is cataclysmic
only if we let it be.  [And this from a BA with Honors, UCD -- who had
an eigth-grade math class with so _few_ textbooks we weren't allowed to
take them home!  It didn't help -- but, with the support of my _high
school_ educated parents, I didn't _let_ it hinder.]

Barb