SED 407 Reading Response: Daniels & Zemelman ‘Subjects Matter’ Chapters 3 & 4

Sorry guys, I think this one is especially rambly..

Reading these chapters, I was trying to reflect on my experiences with textbooks in middle and high school. It’s been a long time, so I don’t quite remember, but I’m sure that textbooks were used pretty traditionally in most of my classes – I was certainly very familiar and comfortable with textbooks by the time I graduated high school. I do remember being exposed to and assigned other types of texts though. I especially remember one science teacher requiring us to read a science biography – I read the autobiography of the physicist Richard Feynman and I loved it. I was already confident that I wanted to pursue a career in science at that point, but reading this book stoked that flame in me. While this one reading assignment wasn’t a totally transformative experience in and of itself, I think it serves as an example of one of the many ways this teacher (one of my all-time favorite teachers) was able to broaden my view of science as a discipline. In addition to the biography assignment, he also required us to read and think about current scientific discoveries – we read about science in the news and he challenged us to tackle primary source research papers. It wasn’t just about what was in the textbook (though we did read the textbook too) – science also involved the stories of people and discoveries, science had a history and a life beyond the textbook that was daily evolving, science was something that I could be a part of. This teacher taught in a way, presented science in a way, that got me fired up in the way that D&Z talk about back in Chapter 1 as the wish all teachers have for their students – he helped me develop the passion of a life-long learner.

I feel like I’m getting a little off topic here… I am writing about this teacher because he was a teacher who used the textbook strategically and sparingly. He had respect for the textbook as a valuable reference, but he didn’t let the textbook dictate the curriculum or be the only voice of authority. And I had several teachers like this one, across disciplines. I wonder now if I was just lucky to have had a lot of great teachers or if my experience might be reflective of the fact that I was in school before (or at the very beginning of) the standards movement in education. (I graduated high school in 1997, it’s not entirely clear to me when the standards movement began, but I don’t think it was in full swing when I was in school). I can understand how these days schools and teachers, under the pressure of meeting standards and being sold the idea that a particular textbook is a sure shot for success, fall into the trap of letting textbooks dictate curriculum. Not that I approve of this situation, but I can understand why it happens – the pressure is great and the textbooks seem like an easy ticket. So I am glad that D&Z are getting this conversation going, presenting an alternative, reminding us of what should be common sense – that textbooks have value, but they are not enough on their own – that teachers need to be critical of the textbooks they have at their disposal, to use them sparingly and strategically, to supplement them with other kinds of texts – this is in the best interests of our students, this is good teaching. I want to be the kind of teacher that approaches the textbook in the way the D&Z propose, I want to assign biographies or even fiction in my science classes, to give my students opportunities to encounter all kinds of texts – but how much freedom will I have to do that? This will depend on what school I end up at. Going beyond the textbook takes extra time and money – but that is a challenge I can handle. But as D&Z point out, some schools dictate not only what textbook is to be used, but also how it will be used. I would not want to teach at such a school, but I also feel that such schools need reform and how will reform ever happen if teachers who care about reform always chose to teach elsewhere? This question comes up a lot for me and once again, I’ll just leave it hanging there…

I want to say a little about my personal relationship to textbooks. I guess this just goes to show how much of a nerd I am, but I kind of love a good textbook (“good” being the operative word here). Not that I often sit around reading them in my free time (though that has happened), but I enjoy reading textbooks. I have always been a keeper of textbooks, rarely selling them back at the end of a semester. I love having them to turn to when I need information. In college textbooks were central to most courses I took (there were even a couple courses that I pretty much taught myself from the textbook), and I realize that this has left me with a strong imprint of this model of a course being structured around a textbook. But while this is a model that I am familiar and comfortable with, I don’t want it to be how I approach teaching my own classroom. These chapters by D&Z are a good reminder that while textbooks can be a valuable resource, they should be used as a reference, not as a framework for curriculum or a book that students are expected to read from cover to cover. I think it’s important that we teach kids strategies for reading textbooks so that they are comfortable with them whenever they encounter them in their future. I also think it’s important for kids to respect textbooks for what they are (provided said textbooks are worthy of respect), while at the same time being critical of textbooks and understanding that there are many sources of information beyond textbooks.

These chapters bring up a lot of implications in terms of how I want to teach, which I will inelegantly summarize here:

• incorporate multiple types of text into my curriculum
• teach students the value of multiple sources and viewpoints – I love this quote from D&Z, “…it is unacceptable for schools in a democracy to teach young people that only one view is sufficient … We might think that students just need to learn the basics first and save the controversies for later – but too often, later never arrives.” I would add that it is also important that we expose students to the controversies so that we can teach them strategies for dealing with them.
• be a fact checker – keep up with developments in the content I teach so that I can bring it to my students attention if their textbook is incorrect or outdated
• keep a well-rounded classroom library – I am so excited about this and had actually already started an Amazon wishlist for books I would want in it
• strive for balance – in genres and types of texts used (fiction, nonfiction, classic, contemporary, primary, secondary, etc), in text level and length, in student/teacher choice of text, in “windows and mirrors”
• remember that readers do grow by reading “easy” material – students should have plenty of opportunities to read without struggle – but we should also challenge students to read at a higher level, while providing scaffolding for that challenge

D&Z note that a recent study shows that students preferred schoolbooks in paper over digital form. I was glad to read this, as a paper-preferrer myself. This got me thinking beyond preference to the implications of digital text on the learning experience. I am in no ways a luddite – I think technology can enrich the leaning experience in many ways – but I think we should be critical of the digital revolution. This article in Scientific American presents some interesting research on how reading on paper versus screen affects our brains and suggests there might be some cognitive advantages to good, old-fashioned book reading.

In addressing how teaching strictly to the textbook can lead to a focus on content-coverage in which the important big ideas of a discipline are lost, D&Z say, “It’s hard to make yourself put that textbook down and “teach less,” giving up so much time for one book, covering just one big idea.” D&Z propose that to do this, to teach more by “teaching less,” teachers should identify a few key concepts and link all teaching to these across the year (for example, a key concept in a history class could be “what it means to be an American”). This reminded me of the UbD concept of essential questions, ongoing inquiries leading to big ideas that “connect the dots of seemingly disconnected or disorderly content.” This idea of prioritizing the big ideas over the superficial coverage of every little thing in the textbook resonates with me – this is the kind of teacher I want to be – but again I wonder, how much freedom will I have to do this? 

A picture from David Macaulay's 'The Way We Work' - a book that I definitely want to include in my classroom library. Macaulay's books could almost be considered textbooks in that they present a lot of information - but they do so in such an engaging and beautiful way.