Re: Review of Middle School Physical Science Texts (part 2)

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

At 11:38 AM 2/24/01 -0600, Jack Uretsky wrote:
>  My experience is that talking to school board members about quality of
> education issues is a total waste of time.  School board members sign
> checks put before them by administrators.  They (the board members)
> become unpopular when they ask questions.
>  Criticizing a teacher's textbook is tricky business, you are often
> seen to be criticizing the teacher.  The teacher, being a public official,
> is presumed by the public to be correct.  Letters to your local paper may,
> just may, have some effect.

Let me add:  From the keen-grasp-of-the-obvious department:

Unconstructive criticism is always unwelcome and almost-always
pointless.  Saying book "A" is bad doesn't help, unless you can point to
book "B" which is clearly better.

Hubisz's report condemned all the books it reviewed.  It did not rank them
in order of least evil, nor even draw any comparisons among them.  It did
not judge them against any systematic criteria, so the reader cannot draw
comparisons with any confidence.  I hope someone will conduct a
more-systematic investigation of this important area.