One of my least favorite parts of being a student has always been reading from a textbook. Despite being an English major, and despite having a professed "love for reading," reading from an over-sized, heavy-ass book always sucks. I remember struggling to heave my backpack onto my shoulders because it was packed to the point of bursting with a history tome, an English anthology, an "intro" to biology behemoth, a bitch of a math book, and all my notebooks and supplies. I remember trying to get into a comfortable position to read from one of the ten pound tree-killers and finding it impossible. Most of all, I remember opening a textbook to begin reading the 20-30 page chapter, staring at the endless columns of fine print text for ten minutes, and snapping the book shut, saying, "Fuck it. I'll just wing it." Reading Danels and Zemelman's textbook has helped both assuage and confirm some of my long-standing prejudices against textbooks.
One of the things that stood out to me the most in Chapter 3 was the authors' discussion of the business of textbook printing. It makes sense to me now why, as a high school student, I found the texts overflowing with information that I felt didn't apply to me, wasn't useful to me, and was way over my head. The politicians who establish the guidelines for curriculum are bombarded by textbook publishers' lobbyists, content requirements are demanded by various states and districts (thanks Cali and Texas...), costs and profits are taken into account, and books are churned out and assigned to teachers and students. It seems the end users of the product are only casually regarded when textbooks are designed.
Chapter 3 goes further in admonishing textbooks for their dull writing, tendency for errors, high cost, and ineffectiveness as learning resources. I found myself nodding my head in approval of the textbook bashing when I remembered I was reading all of this IN A TEXTBOOK. Daniels and Zemelman don't completely dismiss the use of textbooks (they're textbook authors, after all), but instead discuss how to use them effectively. In Chap. 3 they lay out some steps to use texts more "strategically and sparingly" (47). Chapter 6 goes in-depth to provide some of the best strategies for implementing textbooks in your classroom. I thought the "Guide-O-Rama" was an excellent idea. It provides the students with a clearer image of what is expected of them as readers. It helps them to whittle down the bulk of the text into more cohesive bullet points so that they glean the useful information that actually pertains to the class and dismiss the fluff. The example provided in "Subjects Matter" seemed to encourage the students and really make reading chunks of textbooks much easier and more manageable.
My dislike for textbooks did not change after reading these two chapters, but my fear of them did. Knowing how much I hated them as a student makes me more anxious to instruct from them as a teacher. I worry about assigning reading and having my students get overwhelmed by the mass of words like I did, then coming into class with heads down, hands down, and mouths shut. Utilizing some of the strategies from Daniels and Zemelman will help me avoid these pitfalls in the future.
