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That story is mentioned in http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm, but the gist of it is that the textbook authors don't fully understand what they are talking about.

"In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools."

It's an interesting read.

#1 is an *excellent* suggestion.

However, just be sure to take the time to choose the "good ones" before committing the money.

Feynman's experience with textbooks is particularly illuminating.

> Education is as much a racket as anything else these days.

Indeed. Nothing has changed from when Feynman wrote about it:

Judging Books by Their Covers

Greed is a cancer that destroys everything.

The fact that teachers and parents are too stupid to do anything about corrupt politicss and having OPEN, FREE, STANDARDIZED, textbooks is precisely the problem -- NOT the greey publishers who want to change a few here and there then slap on a $150 sticker on "new" version.

--
~2017 - ~2023 Trump nukes North Korea
~2024 First Contact

It's a bit like the "Emperor's nose fallacy." By averaging people's opinion when they have no clue, you don't get any closer to what the best solution might be. But you drown out the experts. See Feynman's chapter on "Judging a book by it's cover"(http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)

Having no personal experience in choosing textbooks (just buying many of the assigned texts in college - not much choice there), my view on the process is heavily influenced by Richard Feynmann's recounting the time he served on the California Curriculum Commission in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmann. For those who haven't read it before, here's his chapter on Judging Books by Their Covers.

Here's what one former university professor had to say about his experience with the textbook industry.

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

nothing more was available.

This apparently isn't something new, Richard Feynman wrote an account if his dealing with the review of science and math text books from 1964 where only one of a series was available. At least with books "ordinary people" should be equipped with the skills to review them - but they didn't. With computers you've got the reviewer's apathy AND their lack of expertise to overcome.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

But I really missed one opportunity. If I had only thought fast enough, I could have had a very good time on that commission. I got to the hotel in San Francisco in the evening to attend my very first meeting the next day, and I decided to go out to wander in the town and eat something. I came out of the elevator, and sitting on a bench in the hotel lobby were two guys who jumped up and said, "Good evening, Mr. Feynman. Where are you going? Is there something we can show you in San Francisco?" They were from a publishing company, and I didn't want to have anything to do with them.

"I'm going out to eat."

"We can take you out to dinner."

"No, I want to be alone."

"Well, whatever you want, we can help you."

I couldn't resist. I said, "Well, I'm going out to get myself in trouble."

"I think we can help you in that, too."

"No, I think I'll take care of that myself." Then I thought, "What an error! I should have let all that stuff operate and [kept] a diary, so the people of the state of California could find out how far the publishers will go!". . . .

Pretty much it's always been that way.

For an example of how corrupt the public school system is, just take Richard Feynman's experience in reviewing school textbooks:

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Richard Feynman's story on textbooks was eye-opening: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
(Thanks BobTree)

The single biggest hurdle is getting past the corruption in the education system. Richard P. Feynman wrote about his experience with being on the State of California's Curriculum Commission. http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Flat World does college textbooks, not K-12 textbooks. At the college level, textbook selection is done by the individual professor or by several profs who all teach the same course at that school. There is no textbook bureaucracy as there is for K-12.

The single biggest hurdle is getting past the corruption in the education system. Richard P. Feynman wrote about his experience with being on the State of California's Curriculum Commission. http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Richard Feynman is probably the most famous person to complain about textbooks, but he wasn't complaining about closed source, he was complaining because they weren't any good.

So the question remains, is this textbook any good?

Lobbyists and budgets that are poorly spent.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

The article says it's ok because in the 60s science education was even worse, and we still did things like the Space Program and Silicon Valley, besides China has even worse science literacy (among adults), so that's why we don't need to worry.

Personally I think our biggest problem is that the natural incentives are wrong, from the top to the bottom. Thus you have teachers who are really good being pushed out, whereas crappy teachers can get tenure after two years and are very hard to fire (note this makes it hard to mentor teachers who could otherwise be good, since it is high risk). You have students who are being taught garbage, no wonder they're bored. Superintendents are stuck as paper-work monkeys, since they have to navigate all the red tape, and legislatures are trying to score political points by starting arguments about evolution.

I would guess if you let parents choose the schools, maybe use a voucher system or something, then it would start to improve. Schools that showed good outcomes would become more popular, and schools that showed worse outcomes would cease to exist. This would be based on real world outcomes, not on synthetic, standardized tests. This is something I'd like to see implemented on a small scale, maybe in a few states, and if it works, could be expanded. If it doesn't then we can try something else. That is the advantage of the federal system, after all.

Everybody should read this before commenting on whether school text books are any good...

Just like the green and violet stars. Unfortunately, the problem has been widespread for a long time.

The link is to Feynman's account of the various problems with math and science textbooks (and the text selection process). There certainly isn't any more competition or higher standards among textbook publishers today - indeed, the anti-patterns of the Texas schoolbooks are often even foisted upon states with far superior science and math (and history and English) standards.

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members!

Richard Feynman complained about math books in 1964 seems nothing is really better. http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

This has been the status quo for many decades, unfortunately. Feynman was dealing with that problem in the 60s, and it drove him crazy and he had to stop participating. For what it's worth, my daughter's math materials for elementary school, coming from a big academic publisher, have substantial deficiencies and flat out lies. The section on probability (spanning a couple years) was done by someone who had no effing clue, heck, that person didn't even bother doing the simple experiments they were proposing!

Feynman on textbooks: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

This.

And this

Does this remind anyone of the saga recounted in Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - reproduced here

Things don't change.

Feynman wrote about the problems with textbooks and textbook selection in the 60s. Sadly, I don't think much has changed. It might have gotten worse. I do hope that open source textbooks and book readers might help, eventually, if we can prevent the systems from perpetuating textbooks as revenue generation first and teaching aids second.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

It's not just a good idea, it's inevitable. The immediate drive, always a convincing one in politics, is money. the interesting Q is HOW to do it, but whether to start, and to do it with public money is a no-brainer. You might otherwise as well question whether public-financed education is relevant. That ship has sailed, and this is just one part of that critical project. Feynman's essay on textbook adoption is timeless: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Current textbooks are overweight, expensive, and boring. Many schools including ours have been reduced into getting students two copies because they were to heavy to take to school and back (really). Now the kids rarely even open the things.

...the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for "sets") which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous -- they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by "rigor." They were faking it.

FWIW I think the actual timeline of ice-age scare went like this:

1950s - Vast numbers of new weather thermometers, scientists start taking an interest in global temperature trends.
1960s - Scientists notice that the earth is in a cooling trend, start worrying about ice ages. This starts getting put into textbooks.
1970s - Temperature stops dropping so much, scientists aren't so worried about cooling anymore. Popular press didn't catch on and goes crazy about cooling. Some scientists are really interested in the greenhouse effect, though.
1980s - Popular press finally catches up with scientists.

Throwing money at a system run by the same politicians and bureaucrats who created the problem is not going to fix anything. It just allows pointy haired bureaucrats to continue business as usual adopting one lame education fad after another. The problem isn't new and isn't something that will be fixed by pouring money into the same broken system. That system will remain entrenched until external forces such as parental demands (e.g. Hispanic parents boycotting the schools in California over bilingual education) or competition from voucher funded private schools force the broken system to change. Here's some further reading: Richard Feynman's adventure into reviewing school textbooks in the early sixties. http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm and the Wikipedia entry on New Math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math

There are no standards and no safety compliance labs that examine those devices. As far as I'm concerned, those devices are safety critical and should undergo testing similar to safety critical medical devices.

The way it is, it's pretty much a free-for-all. The peddlers, um, vendors of those devices are in the same league as school textbook publishers. They do absolutely shittiest job that'll pass the scrutiny of a bunch of incompetents. And no, increasing the number of incompetents so as to get more ratings to average from doesn't increase the quality of the average. It's still shitty.

I'm all for such devices, but what you claim is par for the course, and unless there is strict regulation, and obligatory regulatory compliance, things won't change. Same applies to breathalyzers and their crapload of code. Oh, and voting machines too.

This one's sat at the back of my mind ever since I read Feynmans account of reviewing math books.

I was curious about this so i googled around and came across a copy here. It seems that not a day goes by in which I fail to see more evidence reinforcing my decision to home-school.

CA certainly did in the sixties when Feynman was on the textbook committee.

It appears that the state board of education still has that authority.

For people who are too lazy to read through the whole chapter (a worthwhile read!), I'll give one of my favourite examples of human decision making in practice:

My rating was often different from theirs, and they would ask, "Why did you rate that book low?" I would say the trouble with that book was this and this on page so-and-so -- I had my notes.

I would ask them why they had rated this book so high, and they would say, "Let us hear what you thought about such and such a book." I would never find out why they rated anything the way they did. Instead, they kept asking me what I thought...

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

Ref: Richie Feynman

No slashdot discussion of the stupidity of textbooks would be complete without a reference to Richard Feynman's little thing on the horribleness of how textbooks get approved. Spoilers: it involves sex, lies, bribery, political cronyism, plagiarism, and other delicious things.

Well the state gets one big strike: Feynman helping California pick textbooks
I'm sure many here are familiar with this story- if you haven't seen it yet it is a good read.

No. Creationists who disguise themselves as scientists call themselves "intelligent design proponents", IDers are just dishonest creationists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Pandas_and_.22cdesign_proponentsists.22

The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".

You've only proved that some hack job managed to take a failed book, conduct a sloppy cut-and-paste job to make it "acceptable", and passed it off as ID. hat doesn't really prove anything about the ID movement itself; it just means that someone took advantage of it to gain acceptance. What else is new? In fact, you just gave me a grand idea. Maybe someone should produce a version of "Of Pandas and People" and replace "creationists" with "cevolutionists". Would that prove anything? No.

It is a pretty hilarious example though. And sad.

I'll just give you a chance to educate yourself, rather than let you wallow in your own willful ignorance: http://www.textbookleague.org/id-hx-1.htm

After "creation-science" was thoroughly discredited by scientists and was barred from public schools by federal judges, the creationists modified it, disguised it by wrapping it in some new pseudoscientific double-talk, and presented it under the name "intelligent design." Since then, "intelligent design" has figured prominently in many of the creationists' campaigns to undermine science education

You are confusing what a small minority (Creationists) did to exploit ID to justify their means, not necessarily what all IDers believe.

You are BEING FOOLED BY A HOAX. The people who made up the euphemism "intelligent design" are the very same creationists who were told that they couldn't push their "creation science" bullshit as real science, so they just rebrandedÂtheir tripe.

Intelligent design === creationism. It's just a mask. A disguise to get the ignorant and the foolish to believe it's not religious fundamentalism.

read this http://www.textbookleague.org/id-hx-1.htm

In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California's Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California's public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled "Judging Books by Their Covers," Feynman analyzed the Commission's idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

I like the idea of open source textbooks. I really do. But I think that it's a solution that would need to be started 3-4 years ahead of when you want to actually put it into place.

CA, though, is in dire straits now. I think it highly unlikely that the time scale available is actually going to work.

Perhaps, though, you could give us some more information about elementary/highschool book procurement: In your experience...

How far in advance (weeks, months?) do you have to order dead tree books currently, to have them available?

Are online copies of the same editions available? (Thinking of this as a method of gaining "inexpensive" replacements for wear-and-tear, vs getting an entirely new set of books.)

You still subject to the same lobbying efforts that Richard Feynman complained about some 40 years ago?

Hmmm... You all seem to be under the impression that the high cost of textbooks has something to do with the production cost of the media. If that were the case, then eBooks and MP3s of audiobooks would be much cheaper than their hardcover comrades. A quick review of Amazon.com shows that to not be the case. Textbooks are a racket. Read Feynman for some anecdotes about this: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Producing soft-cover books (I've never made a hard cover) is trivial. The cost of these books isn't the printing cost, it's the copyright. Use Open Source textbooks.

Textbooks are a big business. And a dirty one: just see Richard Feynman's experience

Your comment needs a link to Feyman's own words.

See the seventh chapter of part 5 of Richard P. Feynman's book _"Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"_, which is titled "Judging Books by Their Covers" for a descripton of the process as of the year he let himself be dragged into it.

If you're not able to get a copy easily, it is online here

Richard Feynman had a bit to say about textbook selection.

I hope you have read Richard Feynman on Cargo Cult Science and his experience in the textbook selection process.

It takes lots of work to come to real answers, which seems to be too much effort for most people.

Sounds like you're talking about what's known as "a chilling effect" and if it is, then you'll LOVE schoolbook adoptions. Just about all textbooks in American schools come from a handful of publishers and those publishers won't publish any textbook that has been rejected by what are called "textbook adoption committees", which are committees in a handful of states, most notably Texas and California, whose decisions determine all public school purchases for their state's public schools. These committees, btw, always have representatives of the hardcore religious right and one or two "political correctness" a**wads on them, which lets them veto anything like, say, discussion of evolution.

If you ever wondered why textbooks are so reliably foul, well, this is a large part of why. These adoption techniques can be counted on to weed out anything interesting and to reward bland, endless crrrrap. And just as you suspected, publishers remove anything from their textbooks that might not appeal to those committees even before submitting them.

Yet another reason that Americans can't think their way out of a paper bag (or in a voting booth).

I remember reading a truly mind-boggling article about the textbook development and selection process, but I can't find it now. If somebody else knows about this, please post a link.

You are probably referring to Feynman's essay about his experience in participating in a school book review committee.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Maybe if the books weren't http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm?? utter crap. I came to love math and science on my own; the teachers I had were an actual impediment to the process so I am probably not the best one to speak on this. The problem is the lack of teachers able to engage people's minds combined with people who have no interest in learning these subjects; throw in a dash of ridicule for enjoying those subjects from your oh so clever "peers" and you have a problem that is not going to be solved with a simple new teaching technique. You cannot force people to enjoy math or science, so to me it is better to find those who excel in this field and give them the most in depth and supportive training possible. You would have to maintain a good math program for the rest to root out the late bloomers and give them the level of math and science needed to be a contributing member of society; in other words, someone who uses reason and logic rather than superstition and religion to guide their life. So let's go with the assumption you are one of the rare few teachers who really and truly care, (and have not been ground down by the administration into not giving a shit) show them how math and science apply to real life. That kind of thing is what got my interest, for instance the math that goes into designing a motor cycle frame, or talk about the great scientists of the past that sacrificed everything for science and why they did it (marie curie for instance), give them a vision of where we as a species are going and how these skills can contribute to it. Deep down I think most people wish life was more like star trek, no inner conflicts unified as a species striving for some sort of progress. caveat: I am not a trekkie but i remember growing up the new generation was one of the few shows that gave me hope for the human race.

This is a better explanation. And I remember now that I first heard this parable mentioned in one of Richard Feynman's books; the chapter can be found here.

LoL.

As if stopping "meddling" in the middle east would even begin to solve the problem. Not all islamics are middle eastern. Just wearing bikini's in the states are enough to piss them off. Just not believing "Allhu Akbar" is justification enough to do these things.

The occasional wackjob is not the problem. There are christian crazies, atheist crazies, and probably bhuddist and hindu crazies. The problem with islamics is that the *sane* ones by their own belief systems head large organizations with the resources to perform these acts and they really really do want to kill us.

As Khomeni said, "Those who advocate peace with Islam are fools of this century."

Small isolated wackos who would be turned in by members of their own religion just can't do much effectively. Sane people taught from birth that we are evil don't need poverty or "meddling" in their countries as a reason to kill us. They didn't have a chance- they were corrupted towards murder and death before their brains were finished developing.*

And anyway- the powers that be (corporations and near nobility multi-national rich) don't care that we get attacked anyway so meddling in your countries (and our countries) are not going to stop. Blowing us up kills a few of us but the corporations are immortal and soulless. The multi-national rich have allegience to no country or creed. In fact, it's probably in their interest to KEEP you stirred up since then we'll all buy weapons (from the military-industrial complex as foreseen by Dwight Eisenhower). Ask yourself- if most democrats, republicans and libertarians in america favor closing our southern border and the republicans *know* it will probably cost them many elections this fall- why are both parties ignoring this issue? Could it be because the wealthy and the corporations want cheap labor and they control both parties in power in the US?

*
http://www.textbookleague.org/121musm.htm
Sowing Seeds of Hatred
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1307263/p osts
The Palestinian schoolbooks: Planting seeds of the next war
http://www.teachkidspeace.org/doc3516.php
Teach Kids Peace - Saudi Education: Hatred of Christians & Jews
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/06/25/wsaudi25.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/06/25 /ixnews.html
Christians still 'swine' and Jews 'apes' in Saudi schools

As a libertarian I certainly don't think public education should disappear - I think the Federal Government should simply dissolve the "Department of Education" and let the states sort it out. If the voters of a given district want public education, good for them.

1) Hire better teachers. This is helped by #2 and #3 below.
2) Allocate more funding to teacher's salaries. They have a huge impact on our children's lives (perhaps more than parents are) yet we cannot afford to hire the kinds of teachers which will make the best impact.
3) Masters degrees for teachers are required, or at least must get MS w/in X years of completion of Bachelors. Offer tuition loan/assistance which is forgivable over time (so teachers can't get a free/cheap MS then quit/move to a different area).
4) Hire better/smarter staff members. Presumably, this is done over time (smarter kids grow up to be better people, etc.)
5) Choose better textbooks, see: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm
6) Staff/administrators/teachers/coaches/etc. etc. should be fired (zero tolerance) for coercing another teacher to give favors to students/star athletes/etc.
7) Remove athletic scholarships for post-secondary education, or somehow strongly correlate academic performance to scholarship retention (while employing #6 above). Although this doesn't directly impact public education it reduces the "Oh I can go to college only to play basketball and then go to the NBA all while remaining ignorant and lacking critical thinking skills" mentality that encourages students to coast through
8) Stop grade inflation. A "C" is should not be an unmentionable grade but representative of the "average." There are plenty of problems with "curving" to a normal (Gaussian) distribution, but is there a better way?
9) Require "Government" class which explains the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, etc. and the reasons/motivations/fundamentals for each. Reading of the entire Federalist Papers is a requirement the summer before their senior year (the reading is something a high school senior should be able to tackle).
10) Require elements of logic courses which ensure students are prepared to question statements via critical thinking.
11) Require a "Daily Show" type course EVERY QUARTER/SEMESTER/whatever where teachers and students analyze, pick apart, and ultimately decide the veracity of public figures' claims - be it Tom Cruse's insane rantings or a politican's doublespeak.
12) Require summer reading programs. This is a tricky one because inevitably you wind up with books which either are not challenging or are politically motivated/biased. However, the goal should be to ensure that students are continually reading even when there are no "structured" classes to take.
13) Don't listen to the parents of the students for curriculum decisions. Well, this is not quite what I mean, but parents are emotionally involved in their child's life (as well they should). If something is hard for the kids, the parents want to fix it to make it easier - be it meddling in legal affairs (see kids getting away with murder) to dumbing-down the curriculum to "improve self esteem." Although parent feedback is vital - engaged parents provably produce better children (see Freakanomics) - provide structured ways to receive feedback/criticism and then appropriately deal with it. As parents get "better" education (via their own childhood) then presumably they will be more likely to demand high quality education for their own children.

Go out to get yourself in trouble.