I would have called it an educational example of what's wrong with textbooks :-) Good link though, this is a serious issue. As a european I'm horrified by most of what I see about the American school system; conservatives and liberals both seem intent on wrecking it in different ways. Examples like this make me wonder if the purpose of k-12 isn't so much to educate as to act as an obstacle course for the less fortunate. I also wonder about the price of textbooks here. I'm more familiar with college than k-12 books, but the prices here are a major scam. In Europe I can walk into a bookshop and pay about $30 for an (American) book that sells for >$100 here. Over there the academic books are almost always cheaper than the 'introduction to learning X in 24 hours for complete dummies'. In fact, I ended up owning a bunch of textbooks on subjects that interested because they were the affordable option. The first time I went looking for a CS book here in the US I nearly had a heart attack.
The problem is going to persist as long as education is a state matter but economics leads most states to play 'me-too' and go with whatever is selected in Texas. Kickbacks by academic publishers to selectors (which I hear sometimes takes place) should be prosecuted criminally. Textbooks should be certified by a panel of relevant academic associations, eg the AAAS or other well-established groups - not the 'Brand New Hisotrical Revisionism Society'. Those are just my superficial reactions, and not very good ones.
I was uncomfortably reminded of programming books by this article. There's a lot of junk out there...makes me think of how many programming books are built around things like administering a payroll system, which coincidentally involves nothing more complex than arithmetic and the most primitive kind of database. If you're a self-study sorta person like me, it's a real pain in the ass for find good tutorial material.
The idea is good, and we all know games are a source of great UI innovation too. But the G-word is likely to be a problem for them. Most people think 'game theory' is what happens on ESPN at half time.
May I suggest http://ocw.mit.edu? I didn't go to MIT, but my computer science program was based on MIT's, and the reading list was excellent (starting with SICP of course!)
The problem is going to persist as long as education is a state matter but economics leads most states to play 'me-too' and go with whatever is selected in Texas. Kickbacks by academic publishers to selectors (which I hear sometimes takes place) should be prosecuted criminally. Textbooks should be certified by a panel of relevant academic associations, eg the AAAS or other well-established groups - not the 'Brand New Hisotrical Revisionism Society'. Those are just my superficial reactions, and not very good ones.
I was uncomfortably reminded of programming books by this article. There's a lot of junk out there...makes me think of how many programming books are built around things like administering a payroll system, which coincidentally involves nothing more complex than arithmetic and the most primitive kind of database. If you're a self-study sorta person like me, it's a real pain in the ass for find good tutorial material.