Complaints about School Books.
There is great complaint on the part of parents over the frequent change of text-books in public and church schools. Town Talk, for instance, of a few months ago, thus speaks of the text-books in the schools of California:— At the present time, parents are burdened by the purchase of the new histories, geographies, and arithmetics just issued by the State Board of Education, with the pleasing prospect of new books in the other studies to follow as soon as they can be issued. It is said that the old books were so bad that they could not be used any longer, and a change was imperative. True, the old books were bad, but, in the opinion of teachers, the new ones are no better. It then utters the following good sense as to the purpose of text-books:— In fact, the whole plan and purpose of a modern text-book is wrong. A text-book to fulfil its proper purpose should be an aid to the pupil, not an exponent of methods for the teacher. Why should there be such a bewildering number of arithmetics, grammars, and geographies on the market? The principles and facts suitable for the use of the schoolroom are comparatively few in number and well defined. They can not vary much, no matter how numerous the books. Two times two are four, Columbus discovered America, and a verb must agree with its subject; these and like verities form the bulk of the subject matter in school books. Why, then, such an infinite variety of books and compilers without number, to set forth facts so few and palpable? How can the grammar of Brown differ so widely from the grammar of Green, and the history of Smith be at variance with the history of Jones?—Because, in order to make a market and to sell text-books, book-makers have to create a difference where none exists; because the school book has departed from its legitimate function and has assumed one which does not belong to it. It now exploits methods of instruction and teaches the teacher how to teach. Needless to say, it does this imperfectly, clumsily, and impertinently. A certain very late text-book for the use of infants beginning to read has each day's lesson divided off and numbered, with minute directions for each step, for fear the teacher might go astray and teach rat before she does cat. The State Board of Education could not do better than to issue a series of books containing the elements of the subjects to be taught, and leaving the methods to the intelligence and professional knowledge of the teaching body. The book would be less bulky, the subject matter less complicated, and every new whim in pedagogy would not necessitate a change of texts. And we believe that every live, progressive teacher will agree with the above. The demand for too rigid uniformity makes machine-made men and women.