Mar 23, 2011

Who Writes this Stuff?

by Cliopatria

OK... I've got a problem. I'm reviewing the Africa content for a new World History text by a Major Publisher Who Shall Remain Nameless. It is targeted at a secondary school audience.

Here's the problem. It's terrible. It's often flat out wrong. It's mired in misinformation on a host of levels. The periodization is a total mishmash. The writing is REALLY bad. The main source of information appears to be the on-line edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

So, fine, I'm going to spend A LOT of time correcting this stuff, and I'm trying hard not to be too mean in my manuscript comments. But I'm at a loss to understand how somebody can be hired to write something this important and do such a mind-bogglingly bad job. I have a hard time even believing that this person is a trained historian, as most of the material reads like a bad term paper that was cranked out at the last minute by an unmotivated college sophmore.

And it's not just the Africa content... there's stuff attached on India, Asia, and the Middle East, and it's every bit as bad.

So, help me out here.
Does anybody out there know how secondary textbooks get written?? I'd love to gain some insight into who writes them and how much time goes into them.

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More Comments:

Jonathan T. Reynolds - 3/24/2011

It just gets scarier. I have determined that this isn't a new book. It's a new edition of an existing book. This means that the chances of the publisher ditching it are zero. Worse, I'm utterly terrified to think that this material has been passed off as World History over the past several years.

This does however explain in part how so many of my students appear to know so little despite having had World History courses in High School.

Jeff Vanke - 3/23/2011

A few years ago, a long-time Economist writer died and was written up in their pages. One time an editor had asked him to clean up a piece. This guy looked at it and refused, something to the effect of, "You can't polish shit."

I believe Ralph recently covered Virginia's history textbook flap. One of the state's textbooks (districts get to choose) was one of these check-the-boxes, compete-on-price jobs. It was awful, in various ways. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/historians_find_myriad_errors_in_va_history_textbo.php

Statewide politicians and appointees decide what MUST be included in a textbook for a given school year. Publishers then compete to provide the best and cheapest fulfillment of those requirements. Publishers chose safe, quick, cheap writers -- operative word being writers, not specialists. Local districts -- in states where they have authority -- shop around in part based on price. Presto.

Ralph E. Luker - 3/23/2011

It's at about *that* point ("five pages of corrections, single-spaced, for the first chapter alone!"), Jonathan, that I call it quits on a manuscript. No publisher can pay me enough to continue at that pace through an entire manuscript and no author of such a mess deserves to have his or her name of a published book. I recommend that the publisher reject the manuscript.

Jonathan T. Reynolds - 3/23/2011

Yes... I wondered about this. The only thing this manuscript seems to be careful about is listing endless state standards that the various sections map to.

But... that doesn't excuse the "author" for getting nuts-and-bolts stuff like dates wrong.

I've got five pages of corrections, single-spaced, for the first chapter alone!

Jonathan Dresner - 3/23/2011

It's possible that the problem isn't with the author - though I highly doubt that it was put together by a Ph.D. historians at that level - but with the outdated but nonetheless detailed state standards to which the book has almost certainly been written.

Like wikipedia, which tends to revert to the conventional wisdom even when presented with revisionist scholarship, state education standards lag considerably behind even college-level texts.

This is then compounded by the low esteem in which textbook writers/editors hold their readership....

They don't pay us enough - I've done this gig, too - for the level of dreck they send out.