What our kids learn in schools is censored by the textbook selection process. They learn a standard take on knowledge as written in textbooks and selected by state governments. In recent years there has been loud clatter about how students might learn the wrong thing on the internet. In its early years, we would defend online knowledge by saying that in the open internet at least students are exposed to the spectrum of ideas on subjects.
Through methodology of the search industry, open internet knowledge now not only offers varying takes on subjects. It offers broadly vetted material. Google’s towering success is based on elevating webpages that are liked and respected in the open golden swamp of the internet. This open vetting process has become highly refined and effective under the intensive pressures for quality results from the e-commerce sector (with educators barely noticing).
Meanwhile, as Seed Magazine reports today, the textbook narrowness expensively reigns on in schools. For example, pretty much nationwide, our kids learn the science Texas thinks they should:
. . . because of the state’s enormous purchasing power for textbooks, Texas’s standards will ultimately affect textbooks nationwide. The board spent more than $200 million on K-12 textbooks last year—buying more high school science books than any other state. “Publishers typically write their textbooks to Texas standards and then sell those books to smaller states,” explains Kathy Miller of the civil liberties watchdog Texas Freedom Network. If the board rejects a textbook, it can destroy a publisher.
