Slightly Off KIlter

A recent topic in a technical discussion group I belong to has been the state of education in the United States. Members have been discussing this based on their own experiences (as children) in the system, as well as their perceptions as parents of children in the system today. An (obvious) conclusion has been that schools differ widely.

One member posted a pointer to a rather distressing article, written by the late Richard Fenyman, regarding his experience on a school textbook review committee. Although the article was written in 1965, the Textbook League (established in 1989 to support the creation and acceptance of sound schoolbooks) claims that Feynman;’s points are just as relevant today.

In 1964 the eminent physicist Richard Feynman served on the State of California’s Curriculum Commission and saw how the Commission chose math textbooks for use in California’s public schools. In his acerbic memoir of that experience, titled “Judging Books by Their Covers,” Feynman analyzed the Commission’s idiotic method of evaluating books, and he described some of the tactics employed by schoolbook salesmen who wanted the Commission to adopt their shoddy products. “Judging Books by Their Covers” appeared as a chapter in “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!” — Feynman’s autobiographical book that was published in 1985 by W.W. Norton & Company.

To introduce a series of articles about corruption in schoolbook-adoption proceedings, we present here (with permission from W.W. Norton & Company) an extended excerpt from Feynman’s narrative.

As our “Annals of Corruption” series unfolds, readers will see that Feynman’s account is as timely now as it was when he wrote it. State adoption proceedings still are pervaded by sham, malfeasance and ludicrous incompetence, and they still reflect cozy connections between state agencies and schoolbook companies.

Having read Feynman’s essay, I can only say

Egad

The title of Feynman’s essay refers directly to one of the books under review.

We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.

I said, “The book depository didn’t send me that book, but the other two were nice.”

Someone tried repeating the question: “What do you think about that book?”

“I said they didn’t send me that one, so I don’t have any judgment on it.”

The man from the book depository was there, and he said, “Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn’t send it to you because that book hadn’t been completed yet. There’s a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it’s blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late.”

It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn’t believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating.

I believe the reason for all this is that the system works this way: When you give books all over the place to people, they’re busy; they’re careless; they think, “Well, a lot of people are reading this book, so it doesn’t make any difference.” And they put in some kind of number — some of them, at least; not all of them, but some of them. Then when you receive your reports, you don’t know why this particular book has fewer reports than the other books — that is, perhaps one book has ten, and this one only has six people reporting — so you average the rating of those who reported; you don’t average the ones who didn’t report, so you get a reasonable number. This process of averaging all the time misses the fact that there is absolutely nothing between the covers of the book!

I started first grade (in Pennsylvania) in the Fall of 1965, the same year that Dr. Feynman was on the book review committee in California.
The books he was reviewing that year were mathematics texts, specifically texts to teach what was to be called “New Math”. I hit “New Math” in the fourth grade. I used those books.

My wife says that during this period it was like living over a volcano. It would be quiet for a while, but then all of a sudden, “BLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!” — there would be a big explosion from the “volcano” below.

The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for “sets”) which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren’t accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous — they weren’t smart enough to understand what was meant by “rigor.” They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn’t understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child.

I understood what they were trying to do. Many [Americans] thought we were behind the Russians after Sputnik, and some mathematicians were asked to give advice on how to teach math by using some of the rather interesting modern concepts of mathematics. The purpose was to enhance mathematics for the children who found it dull.

I’ll give you an example: They would talk about different bases of numbers — five, six, and so on — to show the possibilities. That would be interesting for a kid who could understand base ten — something to entertain his mind. But what they turned it into, in these books, was that every child had to learn another base! And then the usual horror would come: “Translate these numbers, which are written in base seven, to base five.” Translating from one base to another is an utterly useless thing. If you can do it, maybe it’s entertaining; if you can’t do it, forget it. There’s no point to it.

He’s correct in that last paragraph… but he also turned out to be wrong. I was one of the kids who could do base conversion and it was entertaining. It was a game to me. I wasn’t very fond of mathematics in general, but base conversion was fun (if meaningless).

As it turns out, base conversion wasn’t entirely meaningless, either. In 1965, no one knew that the personal computer would be invented, and become so popular, less than two decades later. Or that a new profession, computer science, would become so popular as well. Yet, in the late 80’s, I found myself occasionally in need of converting between numbers of one base and another — specifically bases 2, 8, 10, and 16. Not very often, but still… And I recalled learning about base arithmetic in the fourth grade.

Does this make the textbook “good” in retrospect? Hardly… I’ve never again, after 4th grade, needed to translate from base 5 to base 7. The fact that base arithmetic proved useful in my chosen profession, twenty years later, was more of a happy accident than a plan, and my textbook surely provided no real-world examples. Nevertheless, this anecdote does give me a slightly different perspective on the whole textbook question; even lousy books sometimes contain a serendipitous nugget of value, even if the nugget isn’t recognizable for its worth until many years later.

Still, for myself, the scariest part of Feynman’s essay (and the Textbook League’s comments that the essay is still relevant today), is that I was there. The books Dr. Feynman was reviewing in 1965 were the very same books I would be given on the first day of school, if not the following year, then several years later. I grew up with those books. They represented the truth as it was taught us. Looking back now, from an adult perspective, I wonder how I made it to where I am today.