The Duty and Responsibility of the Text-Book Committee
By C. C. LEWIS
FROM letters written to the text-book committee by authors who have manuscript for text-books, it would seem that there is a misunderstanding in regard to the duty and responsibility of the text-book committee appointed by the Educational Department at the last General Conference. By reference to the report of the meeting of this department held at Takoma Park, May 30, 1905, it appears that nothing was said in regard to the duties of the committee and the time of reporting, except that this committee was also to study the question of finances and publication, and suggest to the Educational Department and to the General Conference such plans as they may formulate. But in the discussion of the appointment of this committee, it was clearly stated, and agreed to by all of the members present, that the report of the committee should be made to the educational council, which it was voted to hold some time during the summer of 1906. The reason for placing the report so far ahead was that the committee might have time to do thorough work in the examination of manuscripts and text-books, and also that their work might be passed upon by a representative body from the entire field of our educational work, at least in this country. It was feared that if a small committee should select text-books, their decision would not carry the weight which a decision of a more representative body, like a convention, would carry. It was believed that the course here outlined, while seeming a little slow to authors anxious to get their books before the people, would in the end be the surest way of bringing about permanent unity in regard to the text-books to be used in our schools. Some seem to think that the committee was designed to assume financial responsibility in providing for the publication of text-books, but this is not the understanding of the committee. They were instructed to recommend some plan to the Educational Department of the General Conference, but they can not assume any financial responsibility in regard to the publication of text-books. If there are authors who desire to see their books published before the text-book committee, widely scattered through the United States, can have time to examine their manuscripts and report recommendations to the educational convention next summer, they may have recourse to the recommendation of the last educational council held at College View in 1903; namely, that authors be encouraged to publish cheap editions of their books in order that teachers may have opportunity to test them before they are adopted as permanent text-books.