Pet Peeve -- Textbooks

Yesterday, Steve took the kids for a long hike. With REM in the background, I sat in the arm chair in the living room and started plowing through the textbook that I've assigned for next semester's Introduction to Political Science class.

It's not a bad book. It hits upon the key words and terminology that the kids have to know. It helps provides the backbone for the class, and I'm assigning other readings to get conversation going. However, the writing gets bogged down with naming dropping.

Scholarly writing has become very formulaic with predictable structures -- introduction, literature review, methodology, findings, discussion, and conclusion. Boiler plates are useful. They make writing less overwhelming, because you know where to plug things in. The reader knows where to find things.

The literature review section is designed to show how your work fits in with the scholarly debate. "Prof. Smartypants says this and Prof. Smartyboots says that. My research sides with Prof. Smartypants in this regard, but Prof. Smartboots in that regard." The drawback comes when your ideas or your interests are entirely new and you have to make strained references to distantly related material. This also has a larger impact on non-scholarly writing.

The writers of textbooks have been so steeped in this style of writing that many can't get out of it. Textbooks, which are aimed at 18 year old kids, have become name dropping catalogs instead of beautifully written discussions of a topic. The average student doesn't want to know and doesn't need to know what Prof. Smartypants has to say about the party system. She needs to know what parties are, how they developed, why different countries develop differing models. The textbooks blow past the basics. They miss opportunities for great anecdotes and examples that will grab the kids imaginations. They are aimed at junior level faculty who are easily impressed with references to their advisors and the big names in the field.

Whenever I read these textbooks, I'm get distracted with thoughts about how they could be better. If I wrote this book, I would talk about this and that and completely delete this long passage. I know where the students are going to get derailed by the name dropping nonsense. I often think that I could do it so much better. But then I think better of it.

Years ago, my dad wrote an Introduction to American Government textbook. It was an excellent book and I used it when I first started teaching in the mid-90s. However, he got burned by the project. He spent years writing it and revising it, but got little pay off for his work. Textbooks don't gather the same respect as boiler plate papers for conferences. And then the small publishing company that he worked with got eaten up by a middle sized company. The middle sized company was gobbled up a short time later by a larger company, which already had a similar textbook. Good-bye dad's textbook.

So, I'll never write a textbook, and the students and I must suffer through these name dropping books. However, we're supplementing it with Dad's other textbook, which is now in the 15th edition.

Comments

[timna]

dad's other textbook might work nicely in a college comp class. hmmmm.

[Diane Corriette]

This is a great blog post, and its a pity you wouldn't write your own textbooks because from everything i've read on your blog, you'd make a great writer! Maybe its time to get rid of those "predictable structures" and show another way!!
Diane Corriette

[RCinProv]

Laura, I certainly sympathize. I have used lousy textbook after lousy textbook in my Intro to Public Policy course. And the prices keep going up! I was recently offered a "deal" on one such book for "only" $99.95 if I acted immediately.

I am so frustrated that while I am not going to write my own text book, I am going to create my own content. My goal for next fall: have web-based modules that replace the lousy, overpriced textbook. Wish me luck.

[WendyW]

At a recent department meeting (I teach English), I raised the issue of not using textbooks. Crickets chirped. :) But I think not only do we need to free ourselves form the tyranny of book publishers ;) but we also need to consider the new ways our students are accessing information. RC, if you have success with the web-based modules, I'd love to hear about it.

[Laura]

Yeah, I want to hear about the web-based modules, too.

[Chris Lawrence]

My critique of intro textbooks is that they're typically not "political sciencey" enough; probably the opposite of your critique, although I suppose you could be non-wooden and political sciencey at the same time. I haven't seen that textbook yet though.

The Penguin Academics "America's New Democracy" (Fiorina, Peterson, Voss, and Johnson) seems to be at a reasonable crossroads there, although it fails to be rigorous enough for me with more sophisticated students (it was too simplistic for my students at Duke, but I think it would have worked here at SLU).