This article provides an interesting, clear, if not disturbing description of the process of (ghost)writing and editing textbooks. It indirectly offers a rationale for why the K-12 public education system in the United States suffers, especially when politically biased groups within three very large, populous states with their own rather conspicuous ideological tendencies can control the market. But it also clarifies how the obviously flawed system of standardized testing limits the content and organization of American textbooks, just as it hampers the content and organization of American classrooms. It's no surprise that incoming college students are often not fully prepared for the rigors of higher education if they are fed mediocre (or worse) textbooks taught by teachers chained by teaching to the test. The author, however, does offer some potential solutions at the end, so there is hope for progress in this significant factor of early education.
But one really does begin to question the statewide textbook adoption system. One also wonders why university professors are not allowed to write and publish K-12 textbooks in their fields of expertise to fulfill tenure publication requirements. After all, higher education faculty are the experts in the sciences and the humanities, and ideally, students in primary and secondary education deserve to be educated and enriched by scholarship researched, written, and/or compiled by academics. However, the professionalization of all university disciplines seems to have rendered any publication for general audiences "below" the standards of tenure and promotion in the university system.
For instance, see Peter J. Bowler's Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain (applicable to the US despite its focus on the UK). Bowler argues that scientists in the early twentieth century often wrote instructive texts for general audiences because secondary education had become compulsory but universities were still unaffordable for many, which created an audience hungry for educational texts about subjects like biology, physics, chemistry, and math. Scientists who engaged these not-quite-mass-market projects were not looked down upon by their colleagues, professional organizations, or research institutions, and because they were often paid poorly for their teaching commitments, they had additional incentive to share their knowledge with audiences beyond the college classroom. But once universities became more accessible in the 1960s because of changes in financial aid and admissions, and once the masses turned to different forms of entertainment (television, the Internet of the mid-twentieth century), scientists were no longer encouraged to write for the general populace. Journalism became the realm of popular science, and publication in journalistic media or other markets, such as primary and secondary textbooks, would no longer meet the requirements of academic credentialing. And from there, we begin to see the erosion of quality in instructional texts for children, quality contingent not on the accuracy of content but rather on the stultifying demands of a compromised market.
It might be interesting to see what would happen if college professors were again allowed to write for general audiences. Could we galvanize greater interest in academic subjects and improve informal education among the public? (This would depend, of course, on the talents of faculty who, like the scientists profiled in Bowler's book, would likely need to be trained to adapt to a writing style accessible to non-academic readers). Could we alleviate the pressure on faculty who are (unfairly) asked to operate under the publish-or-perish imperative/threat even while publishers and markets for academic monographs dwindle? Could we change the process of textbook composition so that K-12 students might enjoy reading (and K-12 teachers might enjoy teaching) materials that reflected more informed, scholarly content less prone to the editorial intervention of and censorship by groups whose interests have less to do with education than with political or personal interests? Could students therefore become better educated and thus better prepared for higher education?
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