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Tønsberg: Høgskolen i Vestfold, 2001
Egil Børre Johnsen: Textbooks in the Kaleidoscope.
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Introduction
by Alan C. Purves
The University at Albany
 

Textbooks have been with us for many centuries. Among the
incunabula exist a number of religious and secular textbooks.
Orbis Pictus of Comenius is frequently mentioned as among
the first illustrated school texts, but it was preceded by many
with and without illustration. In most of the world they have
come to be an integral part of education and literacy, so much
so that we almost forget they are there. The Qu'ran is a textbook
in the religious and literacy instruction of Islamic youth. The cookbook
in nearly every literate household is a textbook. The manual a
ccompanying software and hardware as well as every new appliance
is a textbook. Although he focuses on the textbooks used in
formal and secular schooling, in this volume, Egil Børre Johnsen
undertakes a painstaking summary of the analysis of their presence,
their design, and their effect in schools in Europe and North America.
This excellent analysis combines four inter-related issues on which I
shall offer some comments from a trans- Atlantic and mother tongue
perspective: the very existence of textbooks; their content, their
design, and their relation to instruction. My perspective is also that
of a person who has spent some time composing and compiling
textbooks for schools and universities as well as doing some research
on their effects.
  I should also mention a fifth issue, the influence of state purchasing or
publishing, which leads to issues of censorship and politics around the
textbook industry. In the United States we have witnessed the inclusion
of creationism as a topic in biology; Germany saw the deliberate
anti-semitism of textbooks in the 1930's, and the de-Nazification of the
textbooks in the late 1940's. Textbooks exist within a political context
no less than do schools; we cannot discuss either as if they were
representations of an isolated entity called "pure knowledge" or "pure
pedagogical practice". Johnsen's analyses frame textbooks within this
ideological context.
  For educators, particularly educators in the mother tongue and the
social sciences, textbooks have had a mixed reputation, although fewer
critics have challenged their importance in technical subjects and many
of the sciences. I have lived through two rounds of attacks on textbooks
in the mother-tongue curriculum in the United States. The first was the
"paperback revolution" of the 1950's and early 1960's; the second is the
"whole language" movement of the late 1980's. Both declared the end of
the textbook. The claim was that paperbacks or trade books would
supplant the anthology-based text series by providing greater variety
and flexibility of literary works to teachers and students. A parallel
movement in the social sciences argued for the use of original source
materials. While the claims of variety and flexibility cannot be denied
theoretically, there was a practical side to those textbooks that helped
them to survive their challengers. Normally the anthology costs less,
whether it be the school or the pupil that purchases it. The challengers
flourished in times of prosperity; when a recession comes, the textbook
tends to return. Even though the cost of permissions has soared, it is
still lower than the cost of individual volumes. The cost of maintaining
a school library has also risen sharply; and the library does not allow for
multiple copies. In the United States, copyright laws have virtually
prohibited teachers from providing class sets of duplicated materials.
The next challenge to the textbook will, I think, come from the electronic
media, and it remains to be seen whether the low cost and easy portability
of the textbook can be matched or surpassed. On-line access to multiple
texts may be simple, but copyright and other costs may again allow the
textbook to survive as an inexpensive alternative.
  Related to the existence of textbooks in schools is the question of
content; from which question, to my mind, two issues arise: timeliness and
selection. In the sciences in particular, information and experimentation
offer the practitioner a constantly changing universe. Such is also the case
in the more contemporary parts of history and literature. The textbook
takes about two years to produce " although desk-top publishing can
shorten the process somewhat. In many schools, the life of a textbook is
about five years. Taking publishing time and shelf-life together means that
the content of a text book can be up to seven years old, and perhaps seven
years out-of-date. Schools could be sued for malpractice if up-to-date
information is a criterion of schooling. In the United States and, I suspect,
other countries as well, literature texts suffer from an additional conservatism
on the part of teahers who much prefer to teach the poems and stories that
they know. A publisher dare not devote more than 20 percent of the total
pages to new selections. It is for this reason that there has been relatively
little change in the selections in United States anthologies, as Applebee (1991)
has observed.
  A second aspect of content is selection. A textbook necessarily represents
a perspective, a point-of-view with regards to the material. That perspective
will dictate such matters as selection, sequence, and emphasis. It also affects
the very language of the textbook (as Johnsen explores in detail). The problem
of selection has become particularly crucial in literature, where the issue of
canon and its relation to culture has become a political as well as a pedagogical
issue. The creator of a literature textbook, like the teacher in the classroom,
must make a selection from the vast array of texts. So too must the writer of
a history or a science text. Any selection results from preference, whether it
be taste, interest, a sense of what is pedagogically sound, a sense of what is
appropriate for the age or training of the students, and, in many cases,
availability of the material in copyright or the public domain. All of these play
their part in some mix. Generally, the authors of textbooks do not make their
criteria known and they do not suggest its arbitrary character. That they should
is the argument of many, particularly Suzanne de Castell, whom Johnsen cites
frequently. That they do not cite their criteria comes from a sense that the
textbook is authoritative or definitive, a position that can no longer hold.
It may be more or less rational, more or less fashionable, and it may give
the illusion of authority and definition, but readers and teachers are finding
themselves increasingly free to be skeptical. Some textbooks are beginning
to announce their limitations and the authors are beginning to be fittingly humble
. It is a trend that I hope will continue.
  Related to the selection and ordering of content is design. The textbook
is a complex visual display of information, one in which the graphics may
play as great a part as the verbal content. Often textbook analysts and critics
are unaware of this design. The information is embedded in a page and that
very embedding may indeed shape how the information is perceived. In the
United States, for example, a literature textbook usually surrounds the poem
or story with an introductory page or more, a set of "literal" and "inferential"
comprehension questions (usually indistinguishable upon close analysis), a
section on vocabulary and a set of directed activities for writing or discussion.
In Europe, by contrast, the literature is often separated from this paraphernalia.
One can infer that the two presentations reflect and inculcate different approaches
to the notion of literary text and to what is expected of the student reader.
History and science texts are similarly cluttered with material that may be more
confusing than enlightening to the student. Some material may be boxed;
some may be contained as captions to illustrations; some may be color-coded.
The cues as to which information is more important are often subtle for the
unwary and unprepared reader.
  The design of textbooks is partly the matter of chance and history and partly
the result of delibarate instructional planning. The margins in some science and
mathematics textbooks are deliberately widened so that students may enter
calculations. Type size reflects an untested notion as to what is most readable
by groups of students of different ages. Presumably older students have greater
visual acuity and so can read texts in smaller fonts with less leading. Illustrations
are often inserted not with instructional aims but with aims that are related to
some notion of page design.
   The final aspect of textbooks, and the one that Johnsen devotes much
penetrating analysis is the role of the textbook in instruction, and particularly
the relation of the textbook to the teacher. There was a period in the United
States and elsewhere, when publishers and instructional designers wanted to
create "teacher-proof" textbooks. These were to be books that would fit into
an "instructional system". The teacher was to be programmed to use the books
in precisely the way that the authors and editors had designed. It is this "systems"
approach to textbooks, particularly basal reading series and introductory
mathematics series, that has caused the most anger on the part of critics. Those
who examined the effects of these approaches soon learned that the system was
far from perfect. Teachers were able to transmute the most teacher-proof texts.
Questions that were to stimulate discussion were transmuted into factual recitations.
Plans were sabotaged by the very fact of the classroom and its inhabitants.
  Johnsen reviews the various studies of textbook use, which show nicely the
relation of the textbook to other facets of instruction. We can appreciate the
myriad uses that textbooks enjoy; some as proof from the teacher and some
as clay in the hands of the teacher. Some are in the center of the classroom,
being the focal point of instruction. Some are in the center in a different way,
being a reference tool for the teacher and students. In my studies concerning
the curriculum and instruction in written composition, the pattern of use of the
textbook is far from consistent even within a country. There are also differences
among textbooks: some are grammars, some are rhetorics, some are instructional
texts. Generalizations are difficult indeed. Textbooks in mother tongue are indeed
ubiquitous. Whether their ubiquity is accompanied by uniformity in use is another matter.
  Textbooks are indeed a kaleidoscope, and we should not see them as being a
single image or even a single refraction of the light of instruction. How we view
them depends on who we are, what our view of curriculum and instruction may
be, and what our view of knowledge and learning may be. Egil Børre Johnsen's
magnificent volume causes us to rethink and review our perception of one facet
of the world that surrounds us.
 
 
 
 

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