The Authors of the Interesting Stuff in my Third Grader’s Textbook
A company called Pearson publishes the Scott Foresman textbook used in my third-grader’s class, “Communities.”
I posted about this textbook recently, and I mentioned research on the authors of this book. Here are the results of this research:
Valerie Ooka Pang has written a book about the unmet needs of Asian Pacific American children. She teach courses in multicultural education, social studies methods, curriculum & instruction, and social foundations. She is interested in culturally meaningful teaching.
Rita Geiger is currently a trainer for lessons on the First Amendment. She recently spoke at an event entitled, “Mean Speech: Emotion + Words and the First Amendment.” At this event, attendees discussed whether a lack of civility in our political discourse is eroding our First Amendment values.
(Huh. What does civility have to do with freedom of speech?)
Sara Miranda Sanchez is a specialist in early childhood education. She is recognized as a national leader in multicultural education teacher training.
Dr. James B. Kracht serves as Director of the Texas Social Studies Center for Educator Development. He has recently written about educators moving in a new direction, towards “authentic assessment,” as an addition to traditional testing.
No, I do not know what “authentic assessment” is, even after reading the article. Follow the link and see if you can suss it out.
Candy Boyd is an educator, activist, and novelist. Educating people about their positive potential is her priority. As a high school student, she tried to stop blockbusting in her native Chicago by convincing an African American, a Jew, and a Protestant to join her in personal visits to two hundred white families. She worked as an organizer for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When she earned her degree she became known, in her own words, as a “militant teacher.”
C. Frederick Risinger is a Director of the School of Education at Indiana University. One of his publications is entitled, “Women’s Issues in an Era of Inclusion.”
Finally, Geneva Gay is a Professor of Education at the University of Washington, where she teaches multicultural education and general curriculum theory.
(What’s General Curriculum Theory? A degree that proves you have spent considerable time and money to demonstrate you know how to teach and you understand current educational theory. What’s Current Educational Theory? Oh, I dunno, I give up.)
Geneva Gay has some very interesting quotes on the webz. Unfortunately, these quotes are not backed up by verifiable sources. Flippin’ hearsay.
With that caveat in mind, here is the first statement:
In 1996, Geneva Gay of the University of Washington said at a National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME) conference workshop that multiculturalist education demands the destruction of the American political and economic system. She urged educators to be cautious about revealing their goals to the public, however.
Finally, Geneva Gay is claimed to have said:
“That a core problem is we don’t have a language to critique the social structures that bind us. ‘English,’ she continued, ‘is the enemy of social justice and equality.’“
Wow. Makes me feel like Glenn Beck, finding statements like these. Remember, however, that these quotes are unconfirmed hearsay.
Still.
A crack team of multiculturalists, aren’t they? No wonder my kid is learning about the immigrant who painted a depiction of Washington crossing the Delaware, instead of actually learning about Washington crossing the Delaware.
UPDATE: The heavens have parted, and the sun’s rays have shone down on my little bitty blog while an angel chorus sings softly, “Innn-staaah-laaaaaaaaache . . . .”
Thank you, Glenn Reynolds.
Gosh, do Instalanches make anyone else nervous?
UPDATE #2: A personal defense of one author has served as a reminder that I do not know these people personally, and thus I should keep snark to a minimum. Consequently, I have removed a joke about the name “Texas Social Studies Center for Educator Development.”
OK, admit it–this is an elaborate parody, right? People like this aren’t really writing our childrens’ textbooks, right?
…right?
…oh, crap. :(
As a former editor of a major publisher, it was my experience that the “authors” do not actually write anything. Authors are chosen for their connections and act as the main spokespeople for the textbook series. The actual writing of the text is done by freelancers and the editorial staff. The content is driven by state standards.
Thank God we have the First Amendment or I would find it necessary to flog these people for what they are saying. They’re losers preaching on the town square with the full force of the US government behind them. An American tragedy. No other country puts up with crap like these people. Multiculturalism and communism are failures everywhere they are tried over and over and over again. Like Glenn Beck, your research is valuable to cast light on the roaches in our kitchen.
Looking at the site you got the Geneva Gay quote from… I’m thinking with an educator like that, it’s no wonder the state of California’s so messed up.
I know it’s heretical to consider such – but maybe the massive numbers of educators and their battling opinions and theoretical constructs may be getting in the way of actually teaching the kids…
just another reason to homeschool your kids.
You can say that again!
Homeschooling’s looking better and better by the day…
I am a university researcher, a former K-12 teacher, and a conservative. I know, respect, and like Jim Kracht. While we don’t see eye to eye on some things, I do agree that a multiple choice test is not the only (or even the best) way of assessing learning. As a classroom teacher, I attended many workshops that taught teachers how to work with students in order to “game” the high stakes test. Test scores are often a better indicator of how teachers/students play the game rather than of learning. This is what Jim means by “authentic assessment”.
Hi there, and thanks for the additional background information. Truly. I’m glad Kracht’s a respectable guy. That article is pretty much academia-speak for me, so your explanation is helpful. I agree with you guys, that an authentic assessment would be superior to kids just “learning for the test score.” We need more bottom-up and less top-down structuring in our school system, me thinks.
You make a decent point here. For example, many skills could be better measured by short answer or essay tests. But the problem I see is a nultiple choice test is at least objective, and at least tests for specific measurable knowledge. This “authentic assessment” idea could be better (one example is testing a programming course by having questions that require the kids to write real code), but could also be leftie feel good claptrap. It is a subjective idea, that is open to interpretation. If interpreted and admisistered well, it might be better, but if interpreted and administrated wrongly, or with political overtones (as leftist or incompetent/lazy teachers are extremely likely to do) it could be disastrous.
I’m not necessarily of the “multiple-choice-is-evil” school of thought, but I have to point out that the only thing that is objective about this type of question is the scoring. On the other hand, there are ways to reduce the subjectivity in scoring short-answer questions, essays, or other types of test tasks (most notably through well-written scoring rubrics). Multiple-choice questions are easy to write, but it is rather difficult to write _good_ multiple-choice questions, especially without training and experience.
As for subjectivity in content, multiple-choice questions offer just as much potential for bias, incomplete coverage, or focusing on claptrap. While the scoring may be objective, there is no guarantee that the content of the questions will be!
That being said, MCQs do have the benefit of being fast and easy to score, which makes them much cheaper to use in large-scale assessments.
So, based on this research, what is the appropriate parental response? Tell the teacher that you’re no longer going to allow your child to read this textbook? Remove your children from public school? Run for a seat on the school board?
That’s an excellent question. I will start with talking to a few other parents and letting know what I’ve learned. I think a meeting with the Principal, again just to make them aware of concerns, would be the next logical step. Then, attending a school board meeting. Then, trying to influence the textbook purchasing decision in whatever way feasible. Getting on the school board could be one way of doing this.
Me, I’m actually paying for Catholic school, so the process would probably be easier. The Navy relocates us next year, anyway, and homeschooling is becoming a very real option.
Hey, look who’s (still) here! One of the du Toits. Cool. Say hi to Kim.
Nothing about school textbooks surprises me. Nineteen years ago, I worked in a large print shop, and one of the books we printed was a fifth-grade science book that called the sun “a large ball of fire.”
Don’t tell me fifth-graders are incapable of understanding the potency of nuclear fusion. We calculated the energy released from 2H->He and then scaled it up. We understood perfectly well that the sun’s heat was from a nuclear reaction.
Nope, not shocked at all. Not any more. And I felt embarrassed to be part of an industry that was force-feeding that kind of crap to our students.
This demonstrates that perhaps we should promote a policy of less educators and more teachers. Couple that with allowing people to teach K-12 without a teachers degree and we may, just may, eliminate whole theories of absurdity. Now about eliminating the federal Department of Education and throwing the whole she bang back to the states, which actually pay for K-12, and we can sit back and watch the progress. Oh, and lets not forget, all of the “education grants” from the other departments and we might even save a few bucks at the federal level with the side effect of somehow turning off the tap that allows the above mentioned geniuses the funds to pay for their salaries, symposia and satraps.
Great ideas! Good luck getting them past the teacher’s unions. :(
This stuff has been going on since 1905 with the General Education Board.
Download the free ebook, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America by former Dept. of Ed official, Charlotte Iserbyt for a full accounting of what has been going on behind the scenes in the education field. This book is a paper trail with the educational planners, in their own words, calling the family a disease and dreaming of controlling society through the educational system. It will turn your blood cold.
Many teachers have no interest in “authentic assessment”, rather in the experience of our family school assessments are based on adherence to rules and if students agree with, or at least don’t voice opposition to, a teacher’s politics. One of my sons is bright, well spoken and conservative. He has a C in social studies partially due to not turning a copy of the teacher’s syllabus and class rules in in one day. This “assignment” was given the weight of two tests, (there were only four tests this semester), and the teacher would not accept it a day late. His average on tests is 95%. He is also marked down for his participation grade and has been called racist by the teacher for supporting the AZ illegal immigrant law. He also took issue with the historically inaccurate portrayal of the Crusades by the teacher. In elementary school, he struggled with the vast amount of coloring and other art projects disguised as academics. However, most of the girls did well on these projects.
Although standardized tests can be gamed to some degree, it has been our experience that the teachers who teach reading, writing and math well have students who score well on tests. If you fail to teach the kids fail. It is impossible to waste all year on social justice projects, movies, telling personal stories and other nonsense, then teach the kids how to take the tests with satisfactory results. Standardized tests are imperfect, but the educational system refuses to police itself, and these tests are the only way short of abolishing teachers unions and banishing anyone with an ed degree fro the school system, to demonstrate any sort of accountability.
I agree. These standardized tests make life slightly harder for the really good teachers, because they may not measure the important things they teach in addition to the standardized knowledge. But they are absolutely essential in exposing the incompetent leftie frauds who teach nothing but their leftie claptrap, and grade mainly based on adherence to their idealogy, not actual knowledge. I would be much less worried about this “authentic assessment” business if it wasn’t mainly leftie education degree types who are pushing it. Anytime a leftie is pushing something that is a big change from standard methods, and is also subjective and imprecisely defined, I definitely smell a rat.
At least, when right wing zealots want to cram some idealogy down our throats, like creationism/intelligent design, they are honest about what they are doing. The leftists cover up their garbage in fancy sounding education jargon, to conceal how foolish it is underneath.
Your experiences sound a lot like the road I seem to have started down. Thank you for sharing with me. You make a good point about how standardized tests are just about all we have to hold educators accountable for results in the public system. Monopolies are not known for policing themselves. Of course, the real solution is to hold schools accountable by giving parents the freedom to choose where to send their school tax dollars. Vouchers!
I was under the impression that since the Time Magazine cover story of October 31, 1938 — Progressives Progress — (http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19381031,00.html), everyone knew that our schools were a swamp of degradation.
Most textbook content, for the entire USA, has its origin, in Texas. The reason for this is that Texas adopts textbooks at the state level and thus is the largest purchaser of textbooks… in the world. Other big states, like CA, NY, PA FL, adopt textbooks at the local level and don’t have as much clout. The publishers tend to cater to their biggest client and the rest of the states buy whatever Texas chooses to adopt.
The Texas State Board of education appoints committees to examine and choose textbooks in each subject area. Like most appointees, it’s not what you know but who you know. So US textbooks are inevitably a reflection of the whims and prejudices of the Texas State Board of Education.
Public schools no longer educate, they indoctrinate, and have been doing so for years since the left took over our education system. I still remember when I was a kid in the eighties being “taught” environmentalism in a social studies class and all of the negative aspects of American history (many of which I found later to be completely false) coupled with an overindulgence of minority studies, even English was subverted to teach liberalism. My children also went through the same gauntlet in the early part of this decade and suffered lower grades and many confrontations with their teachers for failing to kowtow the (democrat) party line. And outright (lefty) political activism and protest was strongly encouraged by these “teachers” over actual study. If your wondering why academic achievement has veered into the gutter simply look at the state of our schools and their preferred propaganda…i meant “textbooks.”
As a former editor for such mainstream publishers, I can say that most of the writing for the textbooks I have worked on is done by free-lancers and editors. Very little is actually written by the “authors”. Authors are more the spokesmen for the textbook series than actual creators. They are chosen for the political connections rather than their creative input. The main drivers of content are state standards and the editorial staff.
Linda, I just ran across this site this morning, and thought you might be interested.
http://www.endingspending.com
This pertains to earmarks and the people that are trying to financially break the country.
Great site.
See “The History of Political Correctness” on youtube.
Congrats on the instalanch!
To pick up on the point that Josh made, here is an essay that explains how textbooks are produced:
http://www.edutopia.org/muddle-machine
Thanks, edgy!
The Usual Suspects, out to git ‘em while they’re young. Intellectuals have done more damage to the Republic than smallpox, and there’s no vaccine.
According to captured insurgents in Iraq, AQ is planning terror attacks in the US & Europe over the holidays. You & your readers stay alert & stay safe, please, especially when visiting crowded restaurants,shopping malls, etc. Whenever you think it can’t happen here is usually just when it happens here.
Big ups on the Instalanche, No-1.
As for the Left and Edumakation…well, there’s a reason why Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn are ‘educators’.