Do text book folk get all defensive because they feel threatened that their dated and unchanged medium is becoming more obsolete? I had to teach 5th grade Everyday Math (I know, I throw up when I think of that too) for 8 years. They have no textbook, or real meaningful anything. I longed for a text that would guide me and provide me with limitless problem sets and an online component. Then I was positioned into grades 7 and 8 which uses Holt. They have all those things, but I still am not satisfied with it. An online book is still a book. Same memorization of procedure with some shitty clip art.
What would it take to create a curriculum with media? We were looking at creating ePubs and getting them into iBooks. That was some pretty amazing stuff that could be done right there with text, photos, and movies. Why don’t these companies go this route? It would save them money and would create much more meaning for those using it.

I think that its the responsibility of the teacher to place the math into context if desired. As a teacher involved engineering i am always looking for a balance between simplification to prove a point and elaboration of details to show context. I think a textbook should not try to do the same but give an overview of the math involved in a concise but correct way without clutter. To use a textbook like a solidified classroom lecture is (in my view) not the way forward. Students who ask for this are more interested in worked examples that they intend to study for the exam.

On a side note in engineering disciplines like mechanical engineering, books form the 1920-1970 are much better than books from 2000 onwards for precisely that reason.

On the basis of nearly 25 years as math change agent and textbook author at all levels, the sad truth is that the editor is correct. It’s simpy amazing how much time and research every publisher devotes to sensing the market – particularly given that they are about to invest upwards of $20 million in a new product and have to convince the non-math higher-ups that they are responding to “the market”. So we are the enemy. Sit with me behind one-way glass mirrors as prototype lessons get analyzed in focus groups. Sit with me as adoption committees review three different programs. “There’s not enough practice.” “That’s too difficult” (usually meaning for me and therefore the kids). “That’s just not how we do it” (meaning that’s not how I was taught and how I’ve taught it for the past 20 years). So long as publishing is market driven and so long as adoptions are democratic processes (both positives in my way of thinking), until and unless we produce a more informed and discriminating consumer, you just can’t blame the textbook companies for what they do. In fact, looking at current textbooks, warts and all, including those that have my name on them, gives us all the clearest vision of exactly what the mainstream demands and why moving toward sense-making, reasoning and realistic problem-solving is such an uphill battle.

Steve L. is sadly correct. But additionally, publishers do share some blame in that internally, by the hands of the various editors (adding an Index, glossary, picture/diagram), the potentially rich work of the author can be sucked back to the norm–the helpful text, designed to make the work of the student (and teacher) as easy–i.e. thoughtless–as possible.
This conversation begs the question, what should the HS math textbook of tomorrow (today) look like? Should it be a “how to (think, calculate, solve, compute)” manual? Should it be a thoughtful, connected, growing sequence of rich, provocative problems? Should it be a collection of exercises? Else?
I ask with a true interest as a contributor to a current HS text, and more specifically as a designer of the teacher professional learning curriculum that goes with the text.

The Singapore math textbooks offer a much less cluttered, but more demanding approach – both computationally and conceptually. The visuals are about as cornball as you can get, but they assist in the understanding of the math as opposed to being the distractions you often see in US books.

I spoke with an assistant superindentent from a district that previously used Singapore math. He said it requires a lot of training and is a ton of work for the teachers. He also said that after a few years, you run into the “problem” of having a lot more kids ready for algebra in 7th or 8th grade and not enough teachers qualified to teach them.

Any one have any experience using these books?

@Robert: This occured because many teachers now find it their role not to teach mathematics but to teach kids not to hate it.

False dichotomy right there, innit? Even going with that premise, is the unstated prescription that math should be elective?

———————-

In the end, anything accomplished is elective, right? I mean, you are not a fireman and I am not a lawyer, probably for the same reason, it wasn’t our choice. But to your question “Should math be an elective?” I didn’t actually say “math”, I said algebra and calculus. I don’t think arithmetic and pre-algebra should be an elective anymore than I think reading should be an elective. But even there we are not successful and gimmickry shows up. But my point wasn’t if algebra should be an elective or not, that would be another discussion. My point is that when you force students past their inherent interest, understanding and command of the subject and unless you change the subject, they will hate it and you will hate it. Thus the gimmickry, with the hope that the students (and you) don’t hate that 50 minutes.

So this isn’t about whether courses should be electives or not, it is about whether students are ready or not. I was pointing out that when courses are electives then students generally don’t take courses they are not ready for (it is uber not fun). They can be too cautious and in need of some prodding, but this textbook discussion is not that at all.

@Dan,

“Same with the cornball visuals. ”

Well, obviously, the cornball visual is there to remind kids “Hey! Don’t you wish school was out and you were here in this pool instead of sitting through this?”

Two additional small ways in which the textbook publishers ARE complicit in the terrible product they publish:
(1) They seem to be unable to ask teachers (who I would not dismiss as poor informants, or misguided) the propoer questions as they collect feedback about the texts, via survey, in depth commentary, or focus groups; and
(2) They lack the cajones to publish something bold. i.e. They will only (?) follow the highest probability for income. I could say this better, i.e. in their language, if I had a business mind. But I don’t, I am a teacher. I am concerned about my fellow people/learners/teachers/students–not the “bottom line.”

I was in the audience for Dan’s keynote at this NCTM institute and really hope that the math ed world (publishers, professors, teachers, parents, school boards) would listen to Dan’s message and make the necessary changes so that our students become sense makers and reasoners! Who needs a population of students (read future decision makers, employers, leaders, politicians) who can only robotically follow instructions? Yet, that is what we (in math ed) continue to create.

Dan, keep spreading your message!

Telannia, I agree with you. I believe there is a profound shortage of quality math teachers in this country. Evidence? Look how many textbooks are designed so that a teacher can conduct a lesson without really knowing what they are teaching. Sad, but I do believe this is true. In fact I scour the Internet and other sources for ways to enhance my math classes because I know I can’t rely on the major publishers for that kind of assistance. TGFTI!!! Thanks, Al Gore. (Had to put that in…)

It’s tiring to do all that extra searching, but that’s part of the life-long learner bit.

You’ve inspired me to write something longer, but it’s not ready yet — I am already late for this commenting party, but here goes:

1 (mealy-mushy): This does happen, but not from all teachers. Our inclination in writing CME Project was to include leading questions in the teacher’s edition. I think students can handle much more difficult problems than “expected”, as long as they have the inclination to try… that is the tough part. Keeping expectations high is tough, too, but has to be done.

2 (helpful pointers): Again, this is something a good teachers’ edition should do, but the student edition should NOT do. Students should be the ones to recognize when previous work will be helpful. Maybe it’s okay to reduce the cognitive load early in the year, especially if students don’t recognize they can use something they did last Tuesday in today’s work! But those scaffolds need to be removed quickly. We have fought with a few teachers on this piece, and our publisher (Pearson) stood by our philosophy — in general these sorts of “look backs” are not found in our books. They do not help students learn real mathematical thinking.

3 (visuals): Visuals sell books, but not in the way you might expect. They are not for the students, they are not for the teachers, they are for the selection committees. A black-and-white math book somehow doesn’t “feel” like a math book and gets rejected before anyone looks at the math. This is a sad reality, and I don’t see it changing.

I’m glad we have a publisher who helps us get through the door, because as good as our math is, we’d never make it as a self-published text because our visuals wouldn’t be up to par. Pearson gave us (the math writers) final approval over any artwork or caption, and we rejected a few particularly awful pieces of clip art. Pearson made custom artwork (admittedly cornball) in service of the mathematics, such as a dude holding up an X on the high end of a seesaw against a girl holding up an X+1. Not all the artwork is that useful, but it’s not a complete throwaway.

Still it has to be there. Publishers know sales — and apparently a snowboarder on our Algebra 1 cover increases sales. But they listened when we forced that cover not to include “y = mx + b”.

I apologize for sounding like a pitchman for our books, but I take offense to comments like Deacon’s that say textbooks all have the “same memorization of procedure” or Robert’s comment that “pictures and gimmicks are the standard fare”. Our books aren’t like that at all, with mathematical habits of mind at the core and the goal for all students to learn real mathematics.

Thanks and best wishes to all teachers.

I guess you’re meaning the add of

6. What is the rate of the printer in seconds per page?
7. What is the rate of the printer in pages per second?
8. What is the rate of the printer in pages per minute?
9. Which of those measurements of rate is more useful to you?

Which I’m not wild about (especially #9) because it gives the notion there is One Right Way of doing the problem. I guess most students would reach for 7 or 8; I’d use 6 because I mentally have the units cancelling (88 pages * X seconds / 1 page causes the unit of pages to cancel) Usually with this sort of problem I have some students use seconds and some students use minutes and everything goes fine.

I would either rephrase #9 to make it clear this is a preference of the student, or rewrite that portion entirely to be a more general hint (ex: “Hint: Relate the number of pages to the time by a ratio.” — how this would read exactly depends on the grade level you’re aiming at here.)

A more open ended hint would also allow more strategies. There’s no shame in the students starting with a raw table before jumping to rates; they could solve the problem without thinking of rates at all except implicitly (something the teacher could then leverage; that’s the sort of thing you’d want in the teacher guide). Also from my experience of students watching videos with timers there’s a bit of disagreement as to when the cues happen. A table would make clearer this is an inverse problem with no absolute “right” answer given the information the students have.

(Some problems are inverse problems through-and-through — is something mystical going on in the Bermuda Triangle? — and some are problems you can make inverse problems by withholding information — is Mark Twain is the author of this text? The printer problem is the latter.)

Be less helpful!

I think the “extra questions” are too helpful and make the task worse. Also, #9 is a “what’s in my head” question that some students will read as “What does the teacher want me to say now?” instead of a real question to be answered. I like the alternate suggestions by Jason and Luke.

I wouldn’t lose the extra questions altogether, since they are useful as guiding questions for teachers to use if students are off task or heading in fruitless directions. Guiding questions would also help teachers with task implementation, since there’s always the worry of “What do I do if it’s not working?” These questions should not be immediately available to students: if this task were for a textbook, those questions would go in the teacher’s edition and not the student book.

I don’t know your grand plan, but if students work this in an online / interactive resource, the resource could provide the guiding questions behind a curtain, maybe a curtain that reveals itself only after 5 or 10 minutes of playing around with the problem (or solving a painful math-related CAPTCHA, heh). Then the guiding questions would only appear to students who need them.

This is a real bugaboo in textbooks: if there’s any help you think students may want (important things like “Remember: the origin is the point (0,0)”), you either decide to provide it to all students by putting it in the book, or not provide it to anyone. The only in-between is leaving a note for teachers, then crossing your fingers that it gets read and used appropriately. This stinks, and nothing can be done about this. It easily leads to texts being too helpful in bad ways. But an interactive resource could make the right amount of support appear, and only when necessary.

Lastly, I felt you should put question #2 (“Guess as close as you can”) after #3 and #4 (“too high” / “too low”), so I’m curious if you could say something about the decision to use the ordering you did. Thanks for posting it, and good luck with Project X!

I think Jason casually hit the nail on the head when he mentioned a teacher’s guide for something like this.

You need to know what questions to ask as hints to students when they stall out for 10 minutes and aren’t getting anywhere. Those who have seen this kind of thing in action before will probably be able to figure something out, and will have questions 6-9 and (more importantly) 11 in their back pocket already. Those who haven’t done this before and didn’t have teacher training getting the concept of Socratic questioning in their heads will probably benefit from a cheat sheet of what they *might* need to ask and when/why.

If it doesn’t make sense to have a second “hint” resource, maybe some of these questions could be collapsed and expanded by clicking on a “Hints” subtitle, so they’re there if kids need them but it’s more clear that they aren’t necessary.

My complaint is that I just opened the text for my 7th/8th grade classes and found a large graphic advertisement for USA Today smack-dab in the middle of the chart in chapter 1.

The page is already cluttered. I need THIS?

has corporate rule of the academy
produced generations of expensive
and mostly not-very-useful
math-ed materials across USA?

this appears to be more or less obvious
to all parties not believing with steve
“abolish pencil and paper” leinwand’s
riotously funny remark that
“adoptions are democratic”.

now: what’s the solution?
more corporate rule evidently.
geez guys. i’m glad dan’s got
a good job and everything but
can we reimagine some of this
kind of discussion with issues
of scale and diversity and whatnot
somehow not-entirely-ignored?

it’s like the whole explain-budget-fiasco-
-by-appealing-to-ward-and-june-fantasies-
-of-family-life thing. oh, look. another
hard-working teacher prepared another
fine lesson and the students learned a lot.
let’s find some way to make all these
prisoners of the EDU-wars *pay* (and
pay and pay) for some sick *parody*
of that lesson by jamming it down the
throat of entire states with governments
so corrupt they make one nostalgic
for richard frigging nixon. everybody
(that counts) will make out like a bandit.

i mean, i’m glad dan’s got a good job and all.
but (philosophically dodgy concept alert)
the “median math teacher” of USA has
seen the job get worse and worse and worse.
and promoting a few talented superstars
into the stratosphere isn’t likely to do
much about it.

good on ya, dan. i expect you know
i mean it. i’ve admired your work
for years. “TED”, though? massively
*part of the problem*. i’d sell out to
the money myself in a heartbeat of course
but haven’t been able to stir up any interest.
in much the same way as i’d work in
a “defense” plant making WMD’s even though
i’ve been anti-every-war since v’nam.

indeed i *did* get a couple of those
“submit your carefully-prepared notes
to our user-defiant humans-are-drones
interface and get a small check while
we ignore your work and print your name”
gigs and would gladly perform this
humiliating work full-time: baby needs
new shoes. but my networking skills
evidently peaked when i was back home
in grad school ignoring “real life” like a man
possessed; ever since i graduated, the
world has offered me less-and-less satisfying
work and less of it pretty doggone steadily.
these guys only wanted me for my (tenuous)
affiliation of course: you need a job
to get a job.

and, please understand. i’m hoping… against
my usual talking-about-politics-is-useless
strategy… here to speak for *many others*:
maybe even a majority of “adjuncts” and probably
a pretty goodly portion of the brave footsoldiers
slogging it out in public schools. *however* many
it is, and however much i hate when people
say “we” (meaning almost anything *but*
“you and i” when politics is the subject):
we math-teachers-caring-about-math-
-but-hating-and-fearing-big-money-power
haven’t done very well since i’ve been on board
(~1985).

so. i know, i know. my whining is very
unpleasant to many readers who are sure
i deserve much worse. so my message is:
you’re gonna hear a whole lot more *of* it
(and not just from me) now that the
EDU wars are in the streets. viva santiago.