“The world itself is already a great textbook.” Ma Yansong
In the early years of our country, many small schools were staffed by single young women who were bright and had sixth grade educations. Often, the young woman was housed by a village family who provided care and security when the young woman needed to live away from her own family.
In 1836, William McGuffey, a professor at Miami University, Oxford OH, was asked to create a series of readers for use in schools. Published in Cincinnati, the series enjoyed wide popularity across the country and across the years.
McGuffey readers provided curriculum and support for young teachers who had no formal training for teaching.
Today, the textbook industry continues to be big business, incorporating technology to match demands. Teachers, especially beginning their careers, still find teacher editions helpful.
In the 1990’s, the National Council for the Social Studies conducted an assessment of social studies textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools. As an active member of NCSS and the state organization, the Kentucky Council for the Social Studies, I valued those memberships for on-going professional development. I had much to learn.
The assessment of textbooks fascinated me. What a lot of experience I had with textbooks, as a student, elementary teacher, professor of education, and mother supervising homework.
On the Thomas More College Education Department faculty, one of my courses was Teaching Social Studies. Three earlier education courses for my junior-level students provided them with clinical experience in local schools and in using teacher editions of textbooks.
For my class, a lecture about the NCSS study? Maybe not the most effective choice. Could I create a micro-mini replication of the NCSS study? We’d give that a try.
Using a nationally popular series, approved for use in Kentucky schools, and seen in local schools, I randomly selected a grade level and two chapters. The manual pages in the teacher’s edition of the textbook were photocopied for use in this lesson.
Each student would have a complete copy of those pages: the publisher’s stated objectives and the individual activities/sets of discussion questions to be cut apart for sorting.
First decision: Did the publisher’s stated objectives match Kentucky standards? The students’ access to Kentucky documents provided confirmation.
Then, one by one the activities or sets of questions would be sorted into one of three categories: activity matches objectives, activity needs some tinkering to match an objective, activity does not match any objective.
The students, eager to get going, arranged themselves into pairs or small groups. Focused chatter filled the room.
Everyone finished. Time to share the analysis. We tallied the results.
There was general agreement. About one-third of the activities matched the publisher’s stated objectives for those chapters of the textbook. About one-third of the activities needed work to match an objective. And almost a third of the activities had no match to the stated objectives.
The discussion that followed could be called the best class discussion ever. Even students participated who typically let others carry discussions.
Students voiced their opinions: There are far too many activities to ever fit into an elementary classroom period for social studies. Teachers don’t have time for reworking sections that need it. And…why were activities included that had no bearing on a stated objective?
I don’t remember if any student mentioned there could be a better way to achieve the objectives…but these future teachers, as always, were creative, analytical, and thrived on rigor. They embraced student-centered instruction.
I pointed out that textbook publishers focused on their markets, the greatest sales being in the most populus states of California, New York, and Texas. Sometimes emerging trends coming from those states were included in new textbook editions, often as inserts or additions in the textbook and manuals to ensure positive responses in those states.
The time allotted for that lesson was up. As the students left, they were chatting away.
My objective for that lesson: “The student will explain the effective use of commercially available curriculum materials such as teacher editions of textbooks.”
Yes, I’d be keeping my membership in NCSS.
Judy Harris is well established in Northern Kentucky life, as a longtime elementary and university educator. A graduate of Thomas More, she began her career there in 1980 where she played a key role in teacher education and introduced students to national and international travel experiences. She has traveled and studied extensively abroad. She enjoys retirement yet stays in daily contact with university students.