The textbook problem

If you're a reader of my blog, there's a good chance that you're already familiar with the textbook problem. While there are a wide variety of factors that make this problem intractable, I was thinking that it would be incredibly helpful to have a really high quality free alternative set of textbooks for all standard K-12 courses. I'm not talking about a standardized curriculum here. In fact, a well structured series of core textbooks would be built as flexible tools that would allow teachers to customize instruction and support it with their own additional content.

In addition I'm not talking about policy here. School districts could choose to use whatever books they wanted to. The point would simply be to create a high quality free and open (print on demand) textbook series that would at least give those districts looking for great textbooks an affordable option. At that point, if it actually starts to give the publishing giants a run for their money, they'll have to adapt to the real market rather than suffering under the onerous weight of Texas (and to a lesser degree California) politics.

There are obviously vested interests that would never want to see something like this happen. On the other hand, the publishing giants have started to adapt. As they pivot towards a data centric service model, free textbooks become less of a threat. Regardless of the stance of the textbook industry, the question remains, what's the best source to fund a project like this? A federal agency? A philanthropic organization? A kickstarter? Hmmm.

Comments

[Jason Newbury]

I think you may be on to something here, Moses. An added benefit that you didn't list is the speed with which these new textbooks could be updated. If you can get people on the cutting edge of the various subjects interested, the info could be updated with comparative lightning speed.

The first problem that comes to mind is that the very changeability of the resulting resource is the first major argument that will be used against it. I think that the current existence, and success, of "crowd-sourced"(not sure yet if I like that term) data sources may go some way towards countering this.

The second problem that comes to mind is that if, as I think you suggest, the teacher(or other agent that downloaded the resource) can "personalize" the text to match the curriculum and/or needs of the class, there is nothing preventing the same sort of baseline alteration of the information to match an ideological agenda.
This second problem may be minor next to the benefit of the just having the resource out there and available to those short of the resources of, say, Texas.

These are just my first thoughts, and mostly thought out as I typed, but I'll give it some thought and perhaps have more later.

[Moses]

You definitely hit the nail on the head with regard to the second issue which is why I think the problem is ultimately intractable, but we can at least make a bad situation better. The fact that each teacher is sovereign behind the closed door of their classroom is both one of the most powerful features of the education system we have and one of its greatest weaknesses. I don't even want to get into the complexity tied to that part of things which is why I was thinking more along the lines of resources that can be used to support those educators who want to offer a higher quality experience for their students.

[Jason]

Fair enough. I think that is a perfectly valid approach. And also the more I think on it, you could set up a sort of "peer review" for the resource by getting enough people involved and recording all changes made to the resource by author and substance of the change. I'm sure there must be something similar in the discussion about the veracity of wikipedia, so off to google I go to track some down.