Posted on 09/02/2003 3:49:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
AUSTIN -- Texas history teachers this year won't have to use antiquated textbooks that name Dan Morales as attorney general. After all, the state's former top legal official is headed to federal prison after pleading guilty to mail fraud and tax evasion charges. Other textbooks won't be as current.
Despite pleas from the state Board of Education, the Legislature cut textbook funding by $182 million this year. As the school year begins, some books are 14 years old, and gaffes in accuracy are inevitable.
For example: The Food and Drug Administration now recommends two to three servings of dairy a day, but outdated health books still recommend four daily dairy servings.
Jim Hutchinson, a high school health teacher in Bastrop, said recent strides in research and health care have turned numerous truths into fallacies.
"In the AIDS and HIV chapter, treatments were so limited at the time the book was written there were just three possible treatments. Now there are probably hundreds," Hutchinson said. "Also, it's so limited with symptoms simply because of the time it was published."
Health books used in all grade levels were published in 1989 and were implemented in the 1990-91 school year.
Education officials weren't planning to renew those books until the 2005-06 school year anyway, largely because priorities were placed on other subjects after a 1995 curriculum overhaul, according to Robert Leos, director of textbook administration for the Texas Education Agency.
Most of the books scheduled to be adopted in November weren't funded. But money for those books likely won't come until after the next regular legislative session -- in 2005. Until then, teachers will have to rely on outdated books, most of them about 10 years old.
Of the books scheduled for adoption this year by the State Board of Education, biology will be the only textbook to be renewed. New biology books are scheduled to be adopted in November.
Books used to teach English to Spanish-speaking students were among those forced into extended lifespans.
Others include agricultural science and technology education, business education, home economics education, technical education/industrial technology education, marketing education, trade and industrial education, technology applications, career orientation and health science technology education.
New social studies textbooks, with the Morales reference, were replaced earlier this year -- helping to bring books up to date with newer curriculum mandates.
"The new books are aligned with Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills and assessment," said Rosemary Morrow, administrative superintendent for social studies for the Austin school district. "The outdated textbooks just meant we didn't have things aligned to our state standards."
The new books, Morrow said, have extra software and support tools that were not available before.
Hutchinson, who's also a high school football coach, said keeping books current could go a long way to improving students' lagging enthusiasm.
"It's just so outdated, but luckily we have the Internet so we can supplement a lot of the outdated stuff," he said. "It's just not an adequate learning tool right now."
As to the number of dairy groups served a day, or the treatments for AIDS, just what the hell does that have to do with education?
If you use text books from the late 1800's and early 1900's, you'll get a college education by the eighth grade.
Not to mention the money funneled into publishing firms which, I'm sure you have noticed, are churning out the LIBERAL point of view every chance they get.
Again, no textbook meets standards, except the ones placed by college educated elites. The best textbooks in the world can not hold a candle to a teacher that can light-up a classroom.
I know, when I taught Digital Electronics, I told my students that if they open the book other than to answer the questions, they wouldn't learn a thing. I invented a method of converting decimal to binary in seconds, made karnaugh maps a breeze, and we built fighting robots at the end of the class. The students had the time of their lives.
When I taught computer repair, there wasn't one textbook on the market that was close in covering the skills that they would need. I told the students that the books they were force to buy were for reference only. Ditto for networking technology.
We did at least 25, usually 30 problems per day in each Saxon lesson.
Practice problems on material learned that day (about 5), then 20-30 more problems to solve that included new concepts plus mixed review of familiar concepts.
You sure you're talking about Saxon????
But, dumbing down school and college serves one great purpose - to provide job security for the teachers' union membership and for the Vietman protesters/college professors. Very self-serving circle of educrats, but little benefit to those that they are entrusted to teach.
Because TX (and CA) buy so many textbooks. And there, to a large extent, is a large part of the problem.
Agreed, there are too many people working in the school districts making six figures that are not really contributing directly or indirectly to education. It seems like way too many districts have way too much overhead when you reach the admin level.
You know what's really sad? Your liable to have kids who don't pay attention to the world around them read about President Reagan in the outdated books and think he's still the President, or think that the President Bush they are reading about is still the same President Bush today.
I remember doing some volunteer work with one of my daughter's teachers, and she was running the kids through a current events exercise, and the hot topic in the news was the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. She started off with a very simple question : Which nation did the Soviet Union just invade? (keep in mind these were high school kids 10th grade level). The first person to answer said Australia, the second one said "no it's Austria". The teacher just had this look of suprise on her face. I kept thinking "The Australians and Austrians are going to be very surprised to hear about this".
New books mean latest leftist agendas.Yup. The textbook publishers get rich in collusion with the PC-police... all paid for by the taxpayer.
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