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Re: Textbook prescribers of the world arise!

At 03:10 PM 10-01-97 -0800, palmer@sfu.ca (Leigh Palmer) wrote:

Some of us mean spirited cynical types believe that new editions
of poor textbooks are published solely because the publishers
want to soak a new generation of students and they cannot do
that if used books are readily available.
....
I urge you to confront this situation as I do. I don't use the
textbook's problems at all; I assign problems separately. It is
more work than simply spewing out a string of numbers, but if I
do that then the students can use older editions of the text or
even other texts instead of buying a new one.
....
Perhaps there is some niche market out there of
ethical professors who do care what their students have to pay
for their books. Hello? Anyone else out there feel that way?

Leigh

Thank you! This has bothered me constantly for the 10 years I've
been teaching. Yet I've had problems when students were using
different editions of a book, and not all the problems were related
to the exercises. I might expect the students to have familiarized
themselves with certain examples, but wait -- the examples are
different in the different editions! One partial solution for me
has been to skip an edition: I arrange for the university bookstore
to continue buying back the books / tracking down other used copies
of the textbook, until they are truly unabtainable. This way you can
jump directly from the 7th to the 9th edition of a book, for example.

Ken
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| Ken CAVINESS | ESPERANTO La lingvo internacia |
| caviness@southern.edu | |
| | A language for More info: |
| Physics at Southern | cross-cultural elna@netcom.com |
| Adventist University | communication 1-800-ESPERANTO |
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