A textbook case of failure (MSNBC, May 16th, 2006)

As younger, inexperienced teachers are thrown into classrooms to meet new federal standards, as much as 90 percent of the burden of instruction rests on textbooks, said Frank Wang, a former textbook publisher who left the field to teach mathematics at the University of Oklahoma.

Um, ok. And what is he basing this 90% on? Apparently, teachers are such idiots that we depend on textbooks for everything. As I recall, one of the first things that they teach you is that there is no perfect textbook. They merely form one trick in our magic hat. I was a young, inexperienced teacher and even I knew when to deviate from the book. I love how the hidden message in so many of these articles is, "No, really, teachers are such idiots."

By the way,

Textbooks have become so bland and watered-down that they are “a scandal and an outrage,” the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education think tank in Washington, charged in a scathing report issued a year and a half ago.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a predominately conservative leaning foundation. They have contributed a lot of money to various organizations supporting charter schools across the country. They also gave two $5,000 grants to the Philanthropy Roundtable, one of which went to support the formation of the "Coalition of the Willing." (What? Iraq? I'm confused. I Googled it but could find nothing.) Anyway, the Philanthropy Foundation is also a sort of hard to classify entity, but they contributed funds to the Terri Shaivo debacle. The Fordham Institute, as far as I can tell, receives funds from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, one of the big funders of the conservative restoration.

My boyfriend and I are always arguing about this, because he says, when I bring up things like this, "So what?" And he's right - people can give money to whomever they please. They can give it to Men for Beating Their Girlfriends for all I care. I just think that when some organization is quoted in an article as saying, "Textbooks are stupid," you should know that they have given thousands of dollars to charter schools and Terri Shaivo... stuff. Soooo, if they issue a scathing report... well, Diane Ravitch may just want to sell more copies of The Language Police. She's on Fordham's payroll, by the way, and recently came out with her own take on textbooks in California. (from the LA Times - registration required)

If you'd like to check out some of these things for your own little selves, look at the links on the left - Media Transparency (a leftist outfit) and The Foundation Center provide information on foundations and where their money comes from.