Interesting Article on Quality of Math Textbooks

[Paige]

Has this been discussed yet? What are your thoughts?

 

Afraid of Your Child's Math Textbook? You Should Be.

http://open.salon.com/blog/annie_keeghan/2012/02/17/afraid_of_your_childs_math_textbook_you_should_be

 

I read this article earlier in the week and found it completely depressing. I had no idea how textbook publishing works these days! In another thread people were complaining that schools no longer use textbooks, but it looks like that may be a good thing. It makes me a little suspicious about purchasing any kind of textbook or curriculum that is marketed to schools or published by big names in the industry.

[*Michelle*]

The link is broken for me. Could you repost?

[wapiti]

The link didn't work - try this one http://open.salon.com/blog/annie_keeghan/2012/02/17/afraid_of_your_childs_math_textbook_you_should_be (I think this is the original blog link but I'm not sure)

[Paige]

The link didn't work - try this one http://open.salon.co...k_you_should_be (I think this is the original blog link but I'm not sure)

 

Thanks. I fixed it.

[Arcadia]

I read these two research articles a long time ago but relevant to this topic.

 

Influences on Mathematics Textbook Selection: What really matters?

http://www2.edc.org/mcc/pubs/Final%20Draft%20Research%20Presession%202010.pdf

Science and Math textbook selection and usage by teachers

http://2000survey.horizon-research.com/reports/status/chapter6.pdf

 

ETA:

Rating Algebra Textbooks research article

http://people.cehd.tamu.edu/~gkulm/Rating_Alg_Text(NCTM).html

Please forgive a naive question, but why are publishers constantly writing new math textbooks, especially for K-8? There must of have been thousands published by now, surely one of those must be better than most new publications. How many new math curricula do we need every year? I've been very pleased with Singapore Math, it doesn't need fancy color picture or slick pages, it's just straightfoward math.

[regentrude]

I am not surprised. And the reason so many bad school textbooks are out there is, IMO, the adoption process: school books are adopted by school boards, i.e. people who do not possess the subject expertise to discern good from bad books and are swayed by marketing. (This is also the reason that college texts are on average of vastly superior quality, because they are adopted by professors who themselves are experts in the fields they teach and who would not adopt a book they considered sub standard.)

One of the links explained that teachers are included in the adoption process and are asked how comfortable they feel with the materials, and the curriculum choosing authorities recognize that it is futile to select better materials that would require more teacher knowledge or other instructional techniques. Sadly, considering the level of teacher education, especially in math, many teachers are not qualified either to discern between different math curricula, approaches and methods. As one quoted curriculum coordinator states: the teachers "do" math without understanding math. Sigh. And no matter what book a teacher uses who does not understand math, he won't be able to teach effectively.

 

As to why there are constantly new books: it is an extremely lucrative market! So, new editions are simply a money maker. Just tell the schools how new and groundbreaking and enhanced and better your textbooks are - and some will bite because they don't know better. And because parents who are equally clueless may think it a good thing if their kids are taught from brand new books as opposed to quality books that are a few decades old. (I realize that you need updates in subjects like geography - but most definitely not in mathematics. There is nothing taught that is not a few centuries old.)

 

I see similar issues in the college textbook market: I can teach my classes just fine with books that are fifty years old, since no actual content has changed. The new books are much thicker, have a more distracting layout, glossy paper, unnecessary colorful photographs - and cost a ridiculous amount of money. The entire business is a huge scam.

[momacacia]

Well, no wonder I can't do math!! :laugh:

[Paige]

I see similar issues in the college textbook market: I can teach my classes just fine with books that are fifty years old, since no actual content has changed. The new books are much thicker, have a more distracting layout, glossy paper, unnecessary colorful photographs - and cost a ridiculous amount of money. The entire business is a huge scam.

 

Do you use those older textbooks or have you been pressured or found other barriers to using the older, less expensive books? Just curious..

 

I always thought college professors were writing the textbooks. Who else would have the expertise? I guess they only write for the college market.

[regentrude]

Do you use those older textbooks or have you been pressured or found other barriers to using the older, less expensive books? Just curious..

 

I can not use very old textbooks, for two reasons:

First, the current generation of students has been conditioned to expect colorful books with lots of side bars and "tactic boxes" etc and would be incapable of working with a black and white textbook with actual consecutive text, such as I myself used when attending university. Starting in school, they are trained to expect factoids, snippets and highly processed information, so that they enter college without the ability to read a scientific textbook that has actual text.

Second, the bookstore can not guarantee to be able to find enough of these books for my entire class. The book I officially require can be maybe the previous edition if I am lucky, but no older.

I set the current edition of the book and announce on my website that the older edition works fine for the reading, just the homework problems are taken from the new one. When possible, I correlate the problem numbers from the old edition to the current one. I also try to stay with the same textbook for a number of years and tell the students so that they can sell their books directly to the next class and do not have to take the pittance they get from the bookstore.

 

I always thought college professors were writing the textbooks. Who else would have the expertise? I guess they only write for the college market.

 

College professors write college textbooks. In fact, writing a textbook is a huge thankless task. There is hardly any payment to the author, it is tedious and extremely time consuming. (There are a few very good high school textbooks written by college professors; some are a spin-off of a previous college text that has been modified- Campbell for example).

The school textbooks are written by committees of often unrelated people; the process is described in the link of the first post.

I would suspect that hardly any mathematicians are involved in writing math textbooks for schools; this is done by math educators who mainly study the pedagogy, but not math. Which in itself is highly problematic and creates phenomena like extreme calculator use (because those people themselves don't do math without a calculator) and omission of certain concepts (a curriculum that calls teaching long division a waste of class time since it can be done by calculator has been written by people who have no idea that there there are similar techniques used in algebra for dividing polynomials by symbolic expressions where a calculator is completely useless).

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

This article made me think, sort of tangentially, of Hedge's book "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle". Tangentially, because the books isn't really about this at all, but linked because the textbook industry has apparently just become a spectacle- bigger, better, louder advertisements, for a product that really has no role in it's own promotion.

[stripe]

What's with the reference to adapting a math book from another country for the English speaking market? Is this Singapore? But their national language IS English.

[Mom0012]

What books do you think he is referring to when he says:

 

One math series out there is from a well-known textbook publisher incorporating the success of a particular math approach in another country (that’s a hint) into their textbooks.

 

Discovering Mathematics?

Math in Focus?

 

I'm curious because I've got Discovering Mathematics on my short list for my dd if Saxon doesn't work out for her.

[8filltheheart]

 

First, the current generation of students has been conditioned to expect colorful books with lots of side bars and "tactic boxes" etc and would be incapable of working with a black and white textbook with actual consecutive text, such as I myself used when attending university. Starting in school, they are trained to expect factoids, snippets and highly processed information, so that they enter college without the ability to read a scientific textbook that has actual text.

 

 

The entire article struck a chord with me. I have shared my dislike of textbooks in general. The bolded is a huge cognitive objection to my not using them with my kids, but the content focus in the humanities books is another reason. I don't (and won't) get involved in the typical ranting threads that occur on this forum about books that include issues x,y,z.......but a flip-side to the issue that exists in mass market textbook publications is what is omitted. Omissions equally distort.

 

The article made me realize that all of the math books we use with the exception of of 3 (AoPS.....which really doesnt count in this discussion since it isnt a school-adopted textbook series, Houghton Mifflin Geometry.....which also doesn't really count since it is a college textbook, not high school and is not colorful nor full of sidebars!! and MiF that I supplement with for one kids) were published in the 90s. :)

What's with the reference to adapting a math book from another country for the English speaking market? Is this Singapore? But their national language IS English.

What books do you think he is referring to when he says:

One math series out there is from a well-known textbook publisher incorporating the success of a particular math approach in another country (that’s a hint) into their textbooks.

 

 

I think her point was a cultural issue (not a language or math issue) that exists even if written in English. She was referring to having students using the "beauty quotient", phi, in math class.

 

The mathematical formula for the perfect face!

Sydney June 11, 2004 3:37:38 PM IST

 

It is difficult to define perfect beauty as the parameters for a perfect face may vary according to individual preferences.

 

However, scientists have narrowed down to a simple mathematical ratio of 1:1.618, otherwise known as phi, or divine proportion, to set standards of beauty.

 

"Only one formula has been consistently and repeatedly present in all things beautiful, be it art, architecture or nature, but most importantly in facial beauty," The Sydney Morning Herald quoted US dentist Yosh Jefferson, who operates a website dedicated to divine proportion, as saying.

 

"Ideal facial proportions are universal regardless of race, sex and age, and are based on divine proportions," he adds.

 

He defines the formula and says, if the width of the face from cheek to cheek is 10 inches (25 centimetres), then the length of the face from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin should be 16.18 inches to be in ideal proportion. If you're keen to see how you measure up, keep in mind that the ratio of phi also applies to:

 

+ The width of the mouth to the width of the cheek.

 

+ The width of the nose to the width of the cheek.

 

+ The width of the nose to the width of the mouth.

 

Dr Stephen Marquardt has gone one step further to prove the correlation between the divine proportion and facial beauty by developing a phi mask that acts as an archetype of the ideal human face. (ANI)

http://www.cojoweb.com/phi.html

 

 

But, even in our use of some British books, my kids have noticed a difference in how we would say something (I can't remember off hand, but we noticed different prepositions being used than we would have used.) I have often thought wording in SM/MiF is unclear. It could be reflected in cultural use of language which is clear to them but would be stated differently here.

[Matryoshka]

What books do you think he is referring to when he says:

 

One math series out there is from a well-known textbook publisher incorporating the success of a particular math approach in another country (that’s a hint) into their textbooks.

 

Discovering Mathematics?

Math in Focus?

 

I'm curious because I've got Discovering Mathematics on my short list for my dd if Saxon doesn't work out for her.

 

Discovering Mathematics is not from a well-known US publisher, it's the book directly from Singapore. I know they're coming out with a "Common Core Aligned" version (I honestly would rather they leave well-enough alone), but I don't think it's from a big publisher, isn't it still being published by the Cavendish people over at singaporemath.com?

 

Math in Focus is a series from a well-known textbook publisher adapted from the Singapore books - but I've done Singapore math from Primary though DM1 and never seen that problem they reference. Maybe it's in one of the newer Singapore series (My Pals or one of those??)

 

I hate textbooks these days. I like consecutive black and white text! All that color makes me feel seasick. Color to highlight, color in a picture, that's all well and good, but the background pages are often not even white, and each page a different color background, and sidebars, and pictures (often of random kids that have nothing to do with the subject), and clip art diagrams, and on and on and on... too much! All the snippets and factoids and sidebars and bubbles - I don't know where to look! I have studiously avoided any of that ilk. For math, we did Singapore, Foerster and AoPS. For Spanish, we found Breaking the Barrier (ah, black and white!), for history, K12's Human Odyssey reads nicely and sequentially, and the color stays in the photographs that are not of grinning middle school kids, but of, oh, history stuff. But it's like a needle in a haystack!

 

Maybe the pp is right and I should be grateful my kids that are now in ps high school barely use the textbooks in school (if they get any at all).

[Farrar]

What's with the reference to adapting a math book from another country for the English speaking market? Is this Singapore? But their national language IS English.

 

I wondered if it was Math in Focus (aka the "other" Singapore math), which I'm pretty sure is adapted and translated. But the problem example she gave was just so weird. I couldn't quite understand it, so that's probably just a failing of my math education, but how *do* you use a ratio to calculate your own attractiveness?

 

I found the article depressing, but also not unexpected. As a PP was saying, the problem is at every level. First, the ideas floating around in education schools and publishing houses about how to do textbooks aren't always great to begin with. Then, the publishing houses speed this shoddy work to publication. Then, school boards that don't know what they're doing adopt something. Then teachers, who may have been trained in a totally different method of teaching, are stuck teaching it. How can you win?

 

I'm also extremely suspicious of anything marketed toward schools. There are some good textbooks - older ones, but some newer ones too - but it's not just math. So much of it is crap.

 

ETA: Okay, I looked up the calculating beauty thing. I get it. It's actually interesting, though I see her point that it could, perhaps, be a blow to self-esteem? This is definitely a cultural difference.

[PeterPan]

Also remember the move to online and ebook textbooks. When I search online, I'm finding syllabi that tell students to use the online version of the textbook with the code the teacher gives them. So things are radically changing in the publishing world. You're getting some very interesting intersections of technology and text, where say for some of the newer history etexts you'll read and then click a picture to pop up a History Channel video on the topic. This kind of interaction is interesting to me, though I'm not sure how it's supposed to help students learn to read a serious text and take notes, etc.

 

As far as the math, my MOTHER, who has a degree in art history, was on the committee to select math texts at my high school one year, lol. Totally what regentrude said. No background in math AT ALL to have a clue. She brought a pile to me and said what you do you like? I said the one with the purple cover. :D Oh yeah baby, that was the year they got rid of the Dolciani math and brought in who knows what.... I still have my Dolciani text from there.

 

But you know it's also inaccurate to say there's not good being done in the textbook realm. BJU has been making some serious updates to their texts in a way that's really interesting. Their Dominion Math (think engineering application, flow rates through pipes, that sort of thing) is unique among the curricula I've looked at. Some of the old favs (Foerster, Dolciani, etc.) still stand. Standards though are changing. I'm not sure just taking some old, ood math text and using it necessarily works out well. I've got a 1960's Dolciani algebra 1 tm, and the new edition BJU is more challenging (imho). I'm also not sure the logic works to say a college prof written high school text is better either. I'm NOT saying there's not an issue with the qualifications of writers, because I agree there is. But at least someone with experience teaching HAS A CLUE about how students think and the *variety* you have in a school classroom. I get SO TIRED of xyz expert-written curriculum that might be fine for a niche or one type of student but can't flex to work for other types of students. At the college level you don't expect that type of flex, because by then they should have learned to accommodate and work with things. But for school age, there's still that variety and the expectation that you're working with them, not compelling everyone to learn the same way. So where some of the people here needed b&w, I had to LEAVE a b&w curriculum I liked to seek out something with COLOR for my dc. And that curriculum had b&w options for the kids who needed b&w, color in the main book for kids who needed color, kinesthetic activities and narratives and all sorts of connections so it could work for a variety of kids. To me Dolciani always felt so niched, because it's a thought process for one type of thinker without giving a rip about whether other people thought other ways. I love the more modern texts that give me what was GOOD from Dolciani but add in the other things we expect. So not everything new is bad.

[Jane in NC]

One of the issues that inevitability comes into a discussion on math texts (in the US at least) is that of relevance of material. We are pragmatic people. We want to use our math immediately.

 

That is all well and good but sometimes math is complicated which means that in order to learn the interesting complexity one must jump through a series of steps. The relevance of these stepping stones is not always immediately seen.

 

I cannot tell you how many people have commented to me after learning that I have math degrees that I must have a balanced checkbook. Bookkeeping is not Mathematics, yet this application of arithmetic is seen as a pragmatic use of the subject. One that is more relevant to some than algebra or Calculus. (As though the applications of Mathematics in the technology of our everyday lives is irrelevant!)

 

Anyway, Mathematician Mary Dolciani began writing her texts in the early '60's when mathematicians and scientists gathered to rethink American education in a post-Sputnik world. Later these books were abandoned as people complained about things like learning bases other base 10--considered irrelevant to everyday life. Hmmm..so people using base 2 and hex did not make the computer revolution possible?

 

My complaints with many modern texts are two fold. One is content and one is display. On the issue of the later, publishers are obsessed with making busy texts in which the relevance of the material is demonstrating in sidebars. These books become hard to read and are highly distracting.

 

Curmudgeon Jane

[Arcadia]

One of the issues that inevitability comes into a discussion on math texts (in the US at least) is that of relevance of material. We are pragmatic people. We want to use our math immediately.

 

 

That is true in a way. However my older is learning compound interest in his K12 6th grade math and there are people out there who are baffled by compound interest. It seems like even applied math is not getting across well and that is a sad state of affairs.

My opinion is that my friends who like pragmatic kind of maths end up in accounting and engineering. My friends who are into theoretical math end up being mathematicians.

The high school textbooks that I looked at here are so much more cluttered than the asian or even OUP ones. The train of thought in math and science textbooks are also not very coherent. I had look at Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, Holt McDougal Litell, Pearson, Prentice Hall and the books made me feel like a scatterbrain suffering from sensory overload.

I'm not a textbook learning person, hubby however learns best through textbooks and Schuam outline series. I prefer the clean cut look of Stroud's Advanced Engineering Math and Krezig's Advanced Engineering Math. For science, one of my favorite would be Morrison and Boyd Organic Chemistry 5th edition. The AoPS books are slightly wordy but clear, concise and the bland layout is less distracting.

[Mom0012]

Discovering Mathematics is not from a well-known US publisher, it's the book directly from Singapore. I know they're coming out with a "Common Core Aligned" version (I honestly would rather they leave well-enough alone), but I don't think it's from a big publisher, isn't it still being published by the Cavendish people over at singaporemath.com?

 

Math in Focus is a series from a well-known textbook publisher adapted from the Singapore books - but I've done Singapore math from Primary though DM1 and never seen that problem they reference. Maybe it's in one of the newer Singapore series (My Pals or one of those??)

 

I hate textbooks these days. I like consecutive black and white text! All that color makes me feel seasick. Color to highlight, color in a picture, that's all well and good, but the background pages are often not even white, and each page a different color background, and sidebars, and pictures (often of random kids that have nothing to do with the subject), and clip art diagrams, and on and on and on... too much! All the snippets and factoids and sidebars and bubbles - I don't know where to look! I have studiously avoided any of that ilk. For math, we did Singapore, Foerster and AoPS. For Spanish, we found Breaking the Barrier (ah, black and white!), for history, K12's Human Odyssey reads nicely and sequentially, and the color stays in the photographs that are not of grinning middle school kids, but of, oh, history stuff. But it's like a needle in a haystack!

 

Maybe the pp is right and I should be grateful my kids that are now in ps high school barely use the textbooks in school (if they get any at all).

Thank you! I suspected it was Math in Focus that they were talking about, but it's nice to hear someone else say it should we decide to dabble in Discovering Mathematics.

[stripe]

I think her point was a cultural issue (not a language or math issue) that exists even if written in English. She was referring to having students using the "beauty quotient", phi, in math class.

Except she said

One math series out there is from a well-known textbook publisher incorporating the success of a particular math approach in another country (that’s a hint) into their textbooks. A while back, a group of us was hired to edit and adapt the product for the English-speaking market since it was written overseas.

so she chose the term "English speaking" rather than "American." Given that she is presenting herself as someone who phrases things carefully, I am surprised she would confuse American culture with speaking English. Or maybe she said what she meant. In which case, what country is that?

ETA: Okay, I looked up the calculating beauty thing. I get it. It's actually interesting, though I see her point that it could, perhaps, be a blow to self-esteem? This is definitely a cultural difference.

Cough. Maybe for some people. ;)

I cannot tell you how many people have commented to me after learning that I have math degrees that I must have a balanced checkbook.

Wow. Well, that's one stupid comment no one's made to me, at least.

[Arcadia]

so she chose the term "English speaking" rather than "American." Given that she is presenting herself as someone who phrases things carefully, I am surprised she would confuse American culture with speaking English. Or maybe she said what she meant. In which case, what country is that?

 

My guess is India

 

ETA:

Change my guess to Japan. However the articles I found was Japanese textbook translated for overseas market by Japan publishers. So not what the OP's article was hinting at. Elaborated in #24

[Farrar]

My guess is India

 

 

But that would also be in English! All those N-Cert books are. Or nearly all.

 

Maybe it's somewhere none of us realize the math is really good. How's the math in Lithuania? How about Bhutan?

[Arcadia]

But that would also be in English! All those N-Cert books are. Or nearly all.

 

 

I was thinking of Vedic math. Pearson and Longman publish English math textbook in India, so I guess wrong :)

 

I found this interesting article though "US turns to Japanese textbooks to teach math"

http://educationinjapan.wordpress.com/of-methods-philosophies/the-japanese-math-curriculum/us-turns-to-japanese-textbooks-to-teach-math/

http://web-japan.org/trends/science/sci061004.html

ETA:

In case anyone is curious the translated Japanese math textbooks covers look like birthday cakes and the books are distributed by Kinokuniya

http://www.gakuto.co.jp/20050131e/

"What makes Japanese math textbooks so powerful"

http://science.kennesaw.edu/~twatanab/QuEST07.pdf

Tokyo Shoseki Math International

http://globaledresources.com/

[Farrar]

I was thinking of Vedic math. Pearson and Longman publish English math textbook in India, so I guess wrong :)

 

I found this interesting article though "US turns to Japanese textbooks to teach math"

http://educationinja...-to-teach-math/

http://web-japan.org.../sci061004.html

 

Vedic math stuff is really interesting. But I haven't heard it was catching on here?

 

Also, according to that first link, early Singapore math books sold here, "contained references to curry puffs and the Asian fruit rambutan." Mmm... Rambutan. Someone told me it's illegal to import them fresh and the canned ones are yucky. I haven't had a rambutan in years. :(

[VeritasMama]

"Hungarian math"? I thought I read that MEP was based on the Hungarian math model, but I never bothered to research what that is...

[stripe]

I knew about the Japanese and Indian books already, and actually I think I was the one who posted first on the board about the Japanese texts (is this my legacy? I'll doubtless never top it!), and while I did post about NCERT books in India, I was actually not the first (KristineinKS was), but I got the impression that the Singaporean ones had a leg up over anything from Japan because it was already in English. But I have no clue what math from another high ranking country anyone ever talks about, especially referring to it by nationality.

 

In other words, it's got to be Singapore, but her choice of words doesn't make sense. I think Americans have trouble believing that people in any country other than the UK and Canada actually are educated in English, even if that's not their native language.

 

For what it's worth I wanted the original, third editions of Primary Math because I liked the Singaporean set ups and names. I had a canned rambutan, and it seemed like a lychee. My local Chinese store sells fresh durians. I got some frozen durians and durian flavored cookies for my grandma. That was one of the most memorable gifts I've ever gotten her. I then got her a small bottle of durian flavoring as a gag gift.

 

Unless there's some Finnish program out there? And I know several of us would love to see more Russian math translations.

[EKS]

My son has been using the new Common Core aligned Larson Algebra I text this year for his class at school. The Larson text is apparently well respected by many folks on here and it is what is used in the Chalkdust program.

 

I have found several problems with it, though overall, I'd say that it is not a totally terrible text.

 

• There is very little actual conceptual development. Most of the teaching is done by example which reduces the take home message to the procedural level.
  
• The problem sets don't take students through a process of understanding the concept (supposedly) being taught. Instead, problems go from using "easy" numbers to "hard" numbers. This reinforces procedural competence but not necessarily big picture understanding.
  
• It forces word problems for every single section even when doing word problems isn't appropriate given the level of development of the concept to that point.
  
• And it doesn't cover everything an Algebra I course should cover. I'm pretty sure this is a Common Core issue. Two major omissions are dealing with algebraic fractions and dealing with square roots. At first I thought that they just decided to end the book at the quadratic formula chapter, but when the class got to that chapter I saw why omitting those chapters was a problem: You need to understand how to deal with algebraic fractions and square roots to understand the derivation of the quadratic formula and how to give exact answers in square root form. The book just hands students the formula and has them use a calculator to find the square roots. (To the book's credit, the formula is derived after the lesson on the quadratic formula, but it is not part of the main lesson, just an extension.)
  

 

[Arcadia]

In other words, it's got to be Singapore, but her choice of words doesn't make sense. I think Americans have trouble believing that people in any country other than the UK and Canada actually are educated in English, even if that's not their native language.

 

Unless there's some Finnish program out there? And I know several of us would love to see more Russian math translations.

 

 

The beauty quotient thing throws me off though. Singapore does not teach beauty quotient or golden ratio. We do learn about Leonardo Da Vinci's human body ratio but that is only in passing in science.

My kids like jackfruit and lycee and it is so pricy here. They have tried rambutan and all the other fruits mentioned in the original primary math in Singapore :)

 

On an interesting note

"The United States is an exceptional case regarding the number of pages in mathematics textbooks. Only one of the textbooks intended for nine-year-olds have fewer than 500 pages, and it had 448 pages. The average number of pages in mathematics textbooks for 4th graders is 125." (textbooks in mathematics education: a study of textbooks as the potentially implemented curriculum 100 page research paper from Sweden)

 

ETA:

Have you seen this? Math program written by Finnish authors http://www.learnetic.com/content/math-elementary-school

[stripe]

ETA:

Have you seen this? Math program written by Finnish authors http://www.learnetic...ementary-school

 

 

NO! Thank you!

[Arcadia]

NO! Thank you!

 

"Lower Primary Maths course is based on “Laskutaitoâ€, an unrivalled maths textbook from Finland that has become a benchmark for educational standards worldwide."

http://www.ydp.eu/so...r-primary-maths

 

Apparently the Laskutaito curriculum has been translated into Korean. Don't seem to have an english textbook version.

Korean editon on amazon http://www.amazon.co...ords=Laskutaito

Finnish edition http://ratkaisut.san.../laskutaito-1-6

[Farrar]

On an interesting note

"The United States is an exceptional case regarding the number of pages in mathematics textbooks. Only one of the textbooks intended for nine-year-olds have fewer than 500 pages, and it had 448 pages. The average number of pages in mathematics textbooks for 4th graders is 125." (textbooks in mathematics education: a study of textbooks as the potentially implemented curriculum 100 page research paper from Sweden)

 

 

It always seems to me that this is one of the big mistakes in American textbooks. The publishers, buyers, and politicians conflate more pages with higher quality. It's longer, therefore it must be better and more rigorous! [sarcasm] Yeah, because everyone knows that Ethan Fromme and Of Mice and Men are crap for being short but Battlefield Earth is high literature. [/sarcasm]

[regentrude]

It always seems to me that this is one of the big mistakes in American textbooks. The publishers, buyers, and politicians conflate more pages with higher quality. It's longer, therefore it must be better and more rigorous!

 

I am not sure that this is the reason.

The overly long textbooks are so long because the font is huge (some US high school textbooks have bigger font than elementary texts elsewhere in the world), because there are tons of sidebars and boxes and pictures in an attempt to make the content "relevant" or "interesting" or "interdisciplinary" which, as the education reserachers claim, is supposed to enhance learning. It's basically a large amount of sauce on very little meat.

[Farrar]

 

I am not sure that this is the reason.

The overly long textbooks are so long because the font is huge (some US high school textbooks have bigger font than elementary texts elsewhere in the world), because there are tons of sidebars and boxes and pictures in an attempt to make the content "relevant" or "interesting" or "interdisciplinary" which, as the education reserachers claim, is supposed to enhance learning. It's basically a large amount of sauce on very little meat.

 

Oh, absolutely. But I think the length of the book - which has been beefed up with those sorts of random side trips, not with more content - is a seller for many districts. Imagine that you don't know what you're doing and you're asked to pick a health book for sixth graders. Cause most of the book pickers don't know what they're doing, after all. And you're presented with lots of options. If you can't evaluate the content very well, then what can you evaluate? The pretty, glossy pictures and the thickness of the book. I mean, on the surface, it seems like that thin one can't possibly be as good as the others. Surely it's not as comprehensive!

[Dmmetler]

I was on a textbook committee for my district for music. None of us particularly wanted books-we wanted instruments and resources we could actually use. My former district is one of the largest Orff-based programs in the country, and music teachers all were required to have that training (minus, perhaps, a couple of 1st years hired as last minute replacements, but even they would have been in ongoing mentoring and training). Furthermore, at the time, the district was bulging at the seams, and a majority of the schools were overcrowded, so music teachers didn't have classrooms. Most of us were trying to teach classes on the stage for part of the day and in the back of the gym for another part, or going room to room to elementary classes. We were mostly dealing with whatever we could manage to tote around on a cart or in multiple duffle bags or get kids to help us carry. The best thing we could manage for teaching music reading was to carry overhead slides and hope that the classroom teacher had a projector that worked in place. We did a lot of recorder because the kids could keep their individual recorder and book in their desks.

 

The last thing we needed was hundreds of pounds of student books, CD, and teacher's guides that didn't fit our approach all that well, and that assumed a classroom with a full complement of instruments and resources. But, legally, the district couldn't actually spend money on anything but materials from the textbook list.

 

 

The final decision the committee made had nothing to do with the books, but because, since our district was so large, the publisher offered a bonus-a portable Yamaha electric keyboard for every school buying books for 500+ students-which was every school in the district. We couldn't use the books, but since pianos aren't portable, either, those keyboards were useful. So, the publisher got a HUGE contract (At the time, I believe we had 146 elementary schools), when giving each teacher a few hundred dollars to spend on classroom instruments would have had a MUCH greater benefit.

[Paige]

 

It always seems to me that this is one of the big mistakes in American textbooks. The publishers, buyers, and politicians conflate more pages with higher quality. It's longer, therefore it must be better and more rigorous! [sarcasm] Yeah, because everyone knows that Ethan Fromme and Of Mice and Men are crap for being short but Battlefield Earth is high literature. [/sarcasm]

 

 

 

It's even funnier because when I was in school we never finished any of our math textbooks. How is making them longer going to benefit anyone when they weren't finishing the shorter books?

[Arcadia]

It always seems to me that this is one of the big mistakes in American textbooks. The publishers, buyers, and politicians conflate more pages with higher quality. It's longer, therefore it must be better and more rigorous! [sarcasm]

 

I read this quite awhile ago but it partially explains why American textbooks are bulky. It is by National Science Foundation.

"Analyses conducted in conjunction with TIMSS (Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen 1997) documented that curriculum guides in the United States include more topics than is the international norm. Most other countries focus on a limited number of topics, and each topic is generally completed before a new one is introduced. In contrast, U.S. curriculums follow a "spiral" approach: topics are introduced in an elemental form in the early grades, then elaborated and extended in subsequent grades. One result of this is that U.S. curriculums are quite repetitive, because the same topic appears and reappears at several different grades. (See figure 1-14 .) Another result is that topics are not presented in any great depth, giving the U.S. curriculum the appearance of being unfocused and shallow.

The Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen (1997) study also suggests that U.S. curriculums, especially math, make fewer intellectual demands on students, delaying until later grades topics that are covered much earlier in other countries. U.S. mathematics curriculums also were judged to be less advanced, less challenging, and out of step with curriculums in other countries. The middle school curriculum in most TIMSS countries, for example, covers topics in algebra, geometry, physics, and chemistry" (source, bolded mine)

[regentrude]

I read this quite awhile ago but it partially explains why American textbooks are bulky. It is by National Science Foundation.

"Analyses conducted in conjunction with TIMSS (Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen 1997) documented that curriculum guides in the United States include more topics than is the international norm. Most other countries focus on a limited number of topics, and each topic is generally completed before a new one is introduced. In contrast, U.S. curriculums follow a "spiral" approach: topics are introduced in an elemental form in the early grades, then elaborated and extended in subsequent grades. One result of this is that U.S. curriculums are quite repetitive, because the same topic appears and reappears at several different grades. (See figure 1-14 .) Another result is that topics are not presented in any great depth, giving the U.S. curriculum the appearance of being unfocused and shallow.

The Schmidt, McKnight, and Raizen (1997) study also suggests that U.S. curriculums, especially math, make fewer intellectual demands on students, delaying until later grades topics that are covered much earlier in other countries. U.S. mathematics curriculums also were judged to be less advanced, less challenging, and out of step with curriculums in other countries. The middle school curriculum in most TIMSS countries, for example, covers topics in algebra, geometry, physics, and chemistry" (source, bolded mine)

 

Amen to the bolded.

I love the wording "giving US curriculum the appearance of being unfocused and shallow." LOL. It would be nice if it only appeared so.

[stripe]

Also my calculus book included two years' worth of material. I know because I used the first half in high school and the second half in college. There was a newer edition between the two years; it had snazzier graphics in color.

[daijobu]

Please forgive a naive question, but why are publishers constantly writing new math textbooks, especially for K-8? There

 

I can't find a citation, but I've heard California public schools are REQUIRED to purchase all new textbooks every 7 years whether they are needed or not. (Do I smell a publishing conspiracy?)

[Arcadia]

I can't find a citation, but I've heard California public schools are REQUIRED to purchase all new textbooks every 7 years whether they are needed or not. (Do I smell a publishing conspiracy?)

 

it is every six years apparently for K-8 http://cmc-math.org/family/PDF%20Documents/TextbookAdoption.pdf

 

it is every six years apparently for K-8 http://cmc-math.org/...ookAdoption.pdf

 

 

Wow. Just wow. I wonder if the same text ever survives to live the second time through the six year cycle.

[Farrar]

That's so absurd. In heavy-use subjects like math, you might need to replace most of them that often. Books take a serious beating. But not in every subject! Surely evaluating case by case would make more sense. Oh wait, sense and public school bureaucracy don't go together.

[*Michelle*]

I can't find a citation, but I've heard California public schools are REQUIRED to purchase all new textbooks every 7 years whether they are needed or not. (Do I smell a publishing conspiracy?)

 

Yup, follow the money. Book publishers and military uniform suppliers: they'd all be bankrupt without lawmakers mandating new purchases on a regular schedule.