Lies My Teacher Told Me- Ch 12

This long chapter talks about the textbooks created by the publishing companies. Lowen thinks that these companies are doing things wrong and creating books that are not adequate for the learning of students. He wants more resources in textbooks. I must say that I am not liking is later chapters as much. I do not think that blaming textbook companies would solve all of the problems. They can be useful in some situations. Although I do think that they should not be heavily used in a classroom, there are benefits to them. In my novice teaching class, my instructor created his curriculum around the textbook. This does not mean that he takes the worksheets from it and that is all he does to teach. He simply uses it as a guide on what to focus his class on. In my world history class, the last chapter was Mesopotamia then it went to Ancient Egypt. That is how we structured the class timeline. We use it more as a timeline, not a major teaching tool. That is how I would use a textbook in my classroom. I think that some teachers do not use them properly and try to do minimal work in the classroom. This is where textbooks hurt the learning of students. I believe that there can be changes made to textbooks that can help students and teachers. Involving more primary documents in a textbook can be useful. Looking through my novice textbook, I do not see many primary document sources to help me teach. I have to find these in different ways. There should be more teaching resources in the textbooks to help.

I seems to me that textbooks are heavily linked with standardized testing that lots of people have issues with.

Question: What other ways can using a textbook in the classroom be effective?

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Link: http://dynamicbooks.com